The concept of stable and critical periods of development. Question

Stable and crisis stages of development are distinguished. The stable period is characterized by a smooth course of the development process, without sharp shifts and changes in the child's personality. Minor, minimal changes that occur over a long period of time are usually invisible to others. But they accumulate at the end of the period. They give a qualitative leap in development: age-related neoplasms appear. Only by comparing the beginning and end of the stable period, one can imagine the huge path that the child has traveled in his development.

Stable periods make up a large part of childhood. They usually last for several years. And age-related neoplasms, which are formed so slowly and for a long time, turn out to be stable, fixed in the personality structure.

In addition to stable, there are crisis periods of development.

L.S. Vygotsky attached great importance to crises and considered the alternation of stable and crisis periods as a law of child development. At present, we often talk about turning points in the development of a child, and actually crisis, negative manifestations are attributed to the peculiarities of his upbringing, living conditions. Close adults can mitigate these external manifestations or, on the contrary, strengthen them.

Crises, unlike stable periods, do not last long, a few months, under unfavorable circumstances stretching up to a year or even two years. These are brief but turbulent stages during which significant developmental shifts occur and the child changes dramatically in many of its features. Development can take on a catastrophic character at this time.

The crisis begins and ends imperceptibly, its boundaries are blurred, indistinct. The aggravation occurs in the middle of the period. For the people around the child, it is associated with a change in behavior, the appearance of "difficulty in education", as L.S. Vygotsky. The child is getting out of the control of adults, and those measures of pedagogical influence that used to be successful are now no longer effective. Affective outbursts, whims, more or less acute conflicts with loved ones - a typical picture of the crisis, characteristic of many children. Schoolchildren's working capacity decreases, interest in classes weakens, academic performance decreases, sometimes painful experiences and internal conflicts arise.

Thus, each stage of life opens with a crisis (accompanied by the appearance of certain neoplasms), followed by a period of stable development, when the neoplasms are mastered.

Neonatal crisis (0-2 months).

Infancy (2 months - 1 year).

Crisis of one year.

Early childhood (1-3 years).

Crisis of three years.

Preschool age (3-7 years).

Crisis of seven years.

School age (8-12 years).

Crisis of thirteen years.

Adolescence (pubertal) period (14-17 years).

The crisis of seventeen years.

Youth period (17-21 years).

Construction criteria age periodizations in homelands and abroad age psychology.

There are different age periods of development. They distinguish different periods, these periods are called differently, age limits are different, because. their authors based on different criteria.

According to L.S. Vygotsky, all periodizations can be divided into 3 groups:

* First group including periodizations built on based on an external criterion related to the development process.

It can be attributed to the periodization created by biogenetic principle : the biological processes of maturation are put as the basis, and the rest of the development processes are considered as derivatives.

1) Per-tion Rene Zazzo(the systems of education and training coincide with the stages of childhood):

0 - 3 years - early childhood; 3 - 5 years - preschool childhood; 6 - 12 years old - first school arr;

12 - 16 years - education in secondary school; 17 years old and older - higher and university obre.

2) Blonsky proposed to build a periodization according to change of teeth:

0-8 months - 2.5 years - toothless childhood; 2.5 - 6.5. years - childhood milk teeth

6.5 and older - childhood permanent teeth (before the appearance of the wisdom tooth)

*Co.2nd group include periodization, based on a single internal criterion chosen arbitrarily.

1) Sigmund Freud traces the line - psychosexual development. Freud built a periodization taking into account puberty. Age development, its stages, are associated with a shift in erogenous zones - those areas of the body, the stimulation of which causes pleasure.

0 - 1 year oral stage . The Reb enjoys sucking milk, and in the absence of food, his own finger or some object. People begin to divide into optimists and pessimists, gluttony and greed can form. In addition to the unconscious "It" is formed "I").

1 - 3 anal stage . Neatness, accuracy, aggressiveness are formed. There are many requirements and prohibitions, as a result of which a formir begins in the personality of the child - "Super-I" as the embodiment of social norms, internal censorship, conscience).

3 - 5 l phallic stage . The genitals become the leading erogenous zone. Children begin to experience sexual attachment to adults, boys to their mother (Oedipus complex), girls to their father (Electra complex).

5 - 12 l latent st as if temporarily interrupting the sexual razv reb. Children's sexual experiences are repressed, and the interests of the children are directed to communication with friends, schooling.

12 - 18 l genital st corresponds to the actual sexual development reb.

2) L . Kohlberg placed emphasis on moral development.

1. Fear of punishment (up to 7 liters): fear of the right to power, fear of being deceived and not receiving benefits.

2. Shame in front of the environment (13 l): in front of comrades, inner circle; shame of public condemnation, negative assessment of large social groups.

3. Conscience (after 16 years): the desire to comply with their moral principles, their own system of moral values.

3) E. Erickson per-tion of personal equal: (normal line razv / abnormal line razv)

1) trust - distrust (1 year);

2) achieving balance: independence and indecision (2 - 4 years);

3) enterprise and guilt (4 - 6 years); 4) skill and inferiority (6 - 11 l);

5) identification of personality and confusion of roles (12 - 15 years old - girls and 13 - 16 years old - small);

6) intimacy and loneliness (beginning of maturity and family life);

7) general humanity and self-absorption (mature age);

8) integrity and hopelessness.

At each stage, a new quality necessary for social life, opposite character traits, is formed, and preparations are underway for the next life stage.

4) F . Piaget took as a basis intellectual development:

1) sensorimotor stage (from birth to 18 - 24 months); 2) preoperative stage (from 1.5 - 2 to 7 liters);

3) the stage of specific operations (from 7 to 12 liters); 4) stage of formal operation (from 12 to 17 years).

* Third group identifies periods of development based on essential criteria, features.

1) Periodization L.S. Slobodchikov:

Stage 1 - revitalization (from birth to 1 year); Stage 2 - animation (from 1 g to 5 - 6 l);

Stage 3 - personalization (from 6 to 18 years old); Stage 4 - individualization (from 17 to 42 liters).

2) Periodization Vygotsky and Elkonin are used 3 criteria- social situation developed, leading activities and age-related neoplasm.

Infancy (from birth to 1 year), Early childhood (1-3 years), Playing age, doshk (3-6 years),

School age (6-12), Youth (12-20), Youth (20-25 l), Adulthood (25-60 years), Old age (from 60 l)

28. The problem of periodization the life of an adult.

Age periodization mental development of an adult.

Taking into account social, psychological and biological factors, researchers define the boundaries of adulthood in different ways.

For example Erickson highlights early adulthood (20-45 years old), middle adulthood (40-60) and late adulthood (over 60 l)

According to Bromley, adulthood consists of 4 stages:

early (20-25 l), middle (25-40 l), late adult (40 - 55 l) and pre-retirement age (55-65 l)

After it comes aging, in which the stages of \"retirement \", or \"retirement\" (65-70 years), old age (70 liters or more and decrepitude \"painful old age and death) are distinguished

By periodization Ananyeva, the average age (maturity) consists of 2 phases (from 21-22 to 35 l and from 36 to 55 - 60 l), then comes old age (from 55-60 to 75 l), then old age (75-90 l ) and age centenarians 5-90 years)

One of specific problems- this is the definition of objective criteria for the maturity of a person. These difficulties have led to the fact that in modern psychological literature quite often the concept of " maturity ” is replaced by the concept “ adulthood ”, which avoids many difficulties and, as a rule, there are 3 stages:

Early adulthood 20 to 40

Mature adulthood 40 to 60

Late adulthood 60 and older.

To determine the age of a person, the concept is also used \" biological age\", \"social age\" and \"psychological age\"

Psychological age indicates the level of a person's adaptation to the requirements of the surrounding world, characterizes the development of his intellect, learning ability, motor skills, as well as such subjective factors as identity, life plan, experiences, attitudes, motives, meanings, etc.

social age determine, taking into account the compliance of a person’s position with the norms existing in a particular society

biological age most often indicates the correspondence of the state of the body and its functional systems to a certain moment of human life

30. Crisis of youth .Growing up options in youth. Crises of age development.

The most obvious manifestation of the crisis of adolescence, the transition to an independent life, occurs in boys and girls, not enrolled in universities or colleges . The collapse of hopes is experienced very hard - it is necessary to start work on self-determination again.

Their dangers and difficulties lie in wait for young men and women who have entered educational institutions and thereby confirmed their life plans. The process of adaptation of first-year students to the university is usually accompanied by negative experiences associated with the departure of yesterday's students from the school team with their mutual help and moral support; unpreparedness for studying at a university; inability to carry out psychological self-regulation of one's own behavior and activities, aggravated by the absence of the habitual; search for the optimal mode of work and rest in the new conditions; improvement of everyday life and self-service, especially when moving from home conditions in a hostel etc.

By virtue of insufficiency life experience young people confuse ideals with illusions, romance with the exotic. In the behavior of young men and women, internal self-doubt is manifested, sometimes accompanied by external aggressiveness, swagger or a feeling of incomprehensibility, and even an idea of ​​\u200b\u200bone's own inferiority.

In student age, it is not uncommon and disappointments in professional and life choices , discrepancy between expectations and ideas about the profession and the reality of its development.

In the crisis of youth, young people for the first time face with a crisis of the meaning of life. Topical questions are about the meaning of life in general and the meaning of one's life, about the purpose of a person, about one's own self. Hence the interest in moral and ethical problems, the psychology of self-knowledge and self-education. The lack of internal means of resolving the crisis leads to such negative development options as drug addiction, alcoholism.

youth crisis

Negative moments are associated with the loss of well-established forms of life - relationships with others, methods and forms of educational activity, habitual living conditions - and the entry into a new period of life, for which there are still no necessary organs of vital activity.

positive the beginning of the crisis of youth is associated with new opportunities for the formation of a person's individuality, the formation of civic responsibility, conscious and purposeful self-education. The beginning of the stage of individualization (according to the periodization of V.I. Slobodchikov) means the entry of a person into a period not only of age (common to all), but also of individual formation.

Crises of age development

Age crises are special, relatively short in time (up to a year) periods of ontogeny, characterized by sharp mental changes.

In a crisis, development acquires a negative character: what was formed at the previous stage disintegrates, disappears. But something new is also being created.

neonatal crisis. Associated with a sharp change in living conditions. A child from comfortable habitual conditions of life gets into difficult ones (new nutrition, breathing). Adaptation of the child to new conditions of life.

Crisis 1 year. It is associated with an increase in the child's capabilities and the emergence of new needs. A surge of independence, the emergence of affective reactions. Affective outbursts as a reaction to misunderstanding on the part of adults. The main acquisition of the transitional period is a kind of children's speech, called L.S. Vygotsky autonomous. It is significantly different from adult speech and in sound form. Words become ambiguous and situational.

Crisis 3 years. The border between early and preschool age is one of the most difficult moments in a child's life. This is a destruction, a revision of the old system of social relations, a crisis of singling out one's "I". The child, separating from adults, tries to establish new, deeper relationships with them. The appearance of the phenomenon “I myself”, according to Vygotsky, is a new formation “the external I myself”. "The child is trying to establish new forms of relationship with the environment - a crisis of social relations."

Crisis 7 years. The discovery of the meaning of a new social position - the position of a schoolchild associated with the implementation of highly valued by adults educational work. A change in self-consciousness leads to a reassessment of values. There are profound changes in terms of experiences - stable affective complexes. offended self-esteem or a sense of self-worth, competence, exclusivity. Children's spontaneity is lost; the child thinks before acting, begins to hide his feelings and hesitations.

A purely crisis manifestation of the differentiation of the external and internal life of children usually becomes antics, mannerisms, artificial stiffness of behavior.

Neoplasm - arbitrariness and awareness of mental processes and their intellectualization.

Pubertal crisis (11 to 15 years old) associated with the restructuring of the child's body - puberty. The activation and complex interaction of growth hormones and sex hormones cause intense physical and physiological development. There are difficulties in the functioning of the heart, lungs, blood supply to the brain. In adolescence, the emotional background becomes uneven, unstable.

Due to the rapid growth and restructuring of the body in adolescence, interest in one's appearance sharply increases. A new image of the physical "I" is being formed.

There is a feeling adulthood - feeling like an adult, a central neoplasm of younger adolescence. In addition to the desire for emancipation, a teenager has a strong need for communication with peers. Intimate-personal communication becomes the leading activity during this period.

Crisis 17 years (from 15 to 17 years). It arises exactly at the turn of the usual school and new adult life. There was a fear of a new life, of the possibility of a mistake, of failure when entering a university, among young men - of the army. High anxiety and, against this background, pronounced fear can lead to neurotic reactions, such as fever before graduation or entrance exams, headaches.

At this time, a system of stable views on the world and one's place in it is formed - a worldview. Known associated with this youthful maximalism in assessments, passion in defending their point of view. Self-determination, professional and personal, becomes the central new formation of the period.

Crisis 30 years. It is expressed in a change in ideas about one's life, sometimes in a complete loss of interest in what used to be the main thing in it, in some cases even in the destruction of the former way of life.

It arises as a result of the unfulfilled life plan. If at the same time there is a “reassessment of values” and a “revision of one's own Personality”, then we are talking about the fact that the life plan turned out to be wrong in general. If the life path is chosen correctly, then attachment “to a certain Activity, a certain way of life, certain values ​​and orientations” does not limit, but, on the contrary, develops his Personality.

It is with this period that the search for the meaning of existence is usually associated. This quest, like the whole crisis, marks the transition from youth to maturity.

Some people in adulthood have another, "unscheduled" crisis. This so-called crisis 40 years. It's like a repetition of the crisis of 30 years.

A person is acutely experiencing dissatisfaction with his life, the discrepancy between life plans and their implementation.

In addition to the problems associated with professional activity, the crisis of 40 years is often caused by the aggravation of family relations. The loss of some close people, the loss of a very important common side of the life of spouses - direct participation in the lives of children, everyday care for them.

Retirement Crisis. Contradictions between the remaining ability to work, the ability to benefit and their lack of demand. A decrease in one's social status sometimes leads to a sharp deterioration in the general physical and mental state, and in some cases even to a relatively quick death.

L.S. Vygotsky, explaining the essence of age-related crises, pointed out that age-related changes can occur abruptly, critically, and can occur gradually, lytically. At some ages, development is characterized by a slow, evolutionary, or lytic course. These are the ages of a predominantly smooth, often imperceptible, internal change in the child's personality, a change that takes place through minor "molecular" achievements. Here, over a more or less long period, usually covering several years, there are no fundamental, abrupt shifts and changes that restructure the entire personality of the child. More or less noticeable changes in the child's personality occur only as a result of a long-term hidden "molecular" process. They come out and become available to direct observation only as the conclusion of long processes of latent development.

At relatively stable, or stable, ages, development proceeds mainly through microscopic changes in the child's personality, which, accumulating to a certain limit, are then abruptly revealed in the form of some kind of age-related neoplasm. Such stable periods are occupied, judging purely chronologically, most of childhood. Since within them development proceeds, as it were, in an underground way, when a child is compared at the beginning and at the end of a stable age, huge changes in his personality clearly appear.

Stable ages have been studied much more fully than those characterized by a different type of development - crises. The latter are distinguished by features opposite to stable, or stable ages. In these periods, over a relatively short period of time (several months, a year, or at most two), abrupt and major shifts and shifts, changes and fractures in the personality of the child are concentrated. The child in a very short period of time changes as a whole, in the main personality traits. Development takes on a stormy, impetuous, sometimes catastrophic character; it resembles a revolutionary course of events both in terms of the pace of the changes taking place and in the meaning of the changes taking place. These are turning points in child development, sometimes taking the form of an acute crisis.

The first feature of such periods is, on the one hand, that the boundaries separating the beginning and end of the crisis from adjacent ages are highly indistinct. The crisis occurs imperceptibly, it is difficult to determine the moment of its onset and end. On the other hand, a sharp aggravation of the crisis is characteristic, usually occurring in the middle of this age period. The presence of a culminating point, at which the crisis reaches its apogee, characterizes all critical ages and sharply distinguishes them from stable epochs of child development.

The second feature of critical ages served as the starting point for their empirical study. The fact is that a significant proportion of children who are going through critical periods of development find it difficult to educate. Children, as it were, fall out of the system of pedagogical influence, which until quite recently ensured the normal course of their upbringing and education. At school age, during critical periods, children show a drop in academic performance, a weakening of interest in schoolwork, and a general decrease in working capacity. At critical ages, the development of the child is often accompanied by more or less acute conflicts with others. The inner life of a child is sometimes associated with painful and painful experiences, with internal conflicts.

True, all this is far from necessary. Different children have critical periods in different ways. In the course of a crisis, even among children closest in type of development, in terms of the social situation of children, there are much more variations than in stable periods. Many children do not have any clearly expressed educational difficulties or decline in school performance. The range of variations in the course of these ages in different children, the influence of external and internal conditions on the course of the crisis itself are significant.

The third feature of the crisis is negative development. Everyone who wrote about these peculiar periods noted first of all that development here, in contrast to stable ages, does more destructive than creative work. The processes of withering away and curtailment, disintegration and decomposition of what was formed at the previous stage and distinguished the child of this age come to the fore.

A child entering periods of crisis loses the interests that yesterday still directed all his activities, which absorbed most of his time and attention, and now, as it were, freezes; the previously established forms of external relations and internal life, as it were, are being abandoned. L.N. Tolstoy figuratively and accurately called one of these critical periods of child development the wilderness of adolescence.

At turning points in development, the child becomes relatively difficult to educate due to the fact that the change in the pedagogical system applied to the child does not keep pace with the rapid changes in his personality. Pedagogy of critical ages is the least developed in practical and theoretical terms.

Just as all life is at the same time dying, so also child development - this is one of the complex forms of life - necessarily includes the processes of curtailment and death. The emergence of the new in development necessarily means the death of the old. The processes of reverse development, the withering away of the old and are concentrated mainly at critical ages. However, in critical periods we also observe constructive processes of development. The negative content of development during critical periods is only the reverse, or shadow, side of the positive personality changes that make up the main and basic meaning of any critical age.

Thus, the positive significance of the crisis of three years is reflected in the fact that here new characteristic features of the child's personality arise. It has been established that if a crisis proceeds sluggishly and inexpressively for any reason, then this leads to a deep delay in the development of the affective and volitional aspects of the child's personality at a subsequent age. With regard to the 7-year crisis, all researchers noted that, along with negative symptoms, there were a number of great achievements in this period: the child's independence increases, his attitude towards other children changes. During the crisis at the age of 13, the decrease in the productivity of the student's mental work is due to the fact that here there is a change in attitude from visualization to understanding and deduction. The positive content of the crisis of one year is associated with the positive acquisitions that the child makes when he gets on his feet and masters speech. The same can be applied to the crisis of the newborn.

The most essential content of development at critical ages lies in the emergence of neoplasms, which are highly original and specific. Their main difference from neoplasms of stable ages is that they are of a transitional nature. This means that in the future they are not preserved in the form in which they arose during the critical period, and are not included as a necessary component in the integral structure of the future personality.

As such, neoplasms of crises die off with the onset of the next age, but continue to exist in a latent form within it, not living an independent life, but only participating in that underground development, which at stable ages leads to the spasmodic emergence of neoplasms (Table 1).

Table 1. Differences between stable and crisis periods.

Elkonin D.B. developed the ideas of L.S. Vygotsky on age development. He considers the child as an integral person, actively learning the world around him: the world of objects and human relations, including him in two systems of relations: "child - thing" and "child - adult". At the same time, these systems of relations are mastered by the child in various types of activities. Among the types of leading activities, D.B. Elkonin distinguishes two groups: activities that orient the child to the norms of relations between people and activities, thanks to which socially developed methods of actions with objects are assimilated.

Thus, neoplasms serve as the main criterion for dividing child development into separate ages. The sequence of age periods is determined by the alternation of stable and critical periods. Crises contribute to the transition of a person's personality to a higher level of development and are a positive phenomenon.

The age crisis has a complex structure. The idea of ​​a critical stage as a homogeneous stage, in which there are supposedly only processes of excitation, fermentation, explosions - in a word, such phenomena that are incredibly difficult to cope with - is wrong. The processes of development in general, and in the critical period in particular, are distinguished by an immeasurably more complex structure, an immeasurably finer structure. The process of development during the critical period is heterogeneous, three types of processes proceed simultaneously in it, and each of them requires timely and holistic consideration in connection with all others when working out methods of education. The three types of processes that make up the critical period in development are as follows:

growing stabilization processes that consolidate the body's previous acquisitions, making them more and more fundamental, more and more stable;

the processes are really critical, completely new; and very fast, rapidly growing changes;

processes leading to the formation of nascent elements, which are the basis for further creative activity of a growing person.

Critical ages have a clearly expressed three-member structure and consist of three phases connected with each other by lytic transitions: precritical, critical, and postcritical (Table 2). It is assumed that in the precritical phase there is a contradiction between the objective and subjective components of the social situation of development (environment and the child's attitude to the environment). In the critical phase itself, this contradiction becomes aggravated and manifests itself, revealing itself in a difficult education, and reaches its climax. Then, in the post-critical phase, the contradiction is resolved through the formation of a new social situation of development, through the establishment of a new harmony between its components. Later, when studying critical ages, this gradation was preserved, but the inner content of the phases of the crisis has not yet been fully disclosed.

Table 2. The structure of the age crisis.

K.N. Polivanova considered the structure of critical ages. The analysis is based on the premise that the structure of adolescence is a reflection of the dynamics of mutual transitions between real and ideal forms. At the same time, it is assumed that the change in the child's experience of environmental influences is due to the fact that at the moment of the age transition a new ideal form of development is discovered - it is this idea of ​​the critical age that makes it possible to discover its inner content and explain changes in the behavior of children during periods of crisis.

Thus, critical periods in a child's development are the ultimate exposure, primarily for the child himself, of the always implicitly present coexistence of real and ideal forms. Crises are moments of exposure, "appearances" of the boundary between real and ideal forms.

Precritical phase consists in the fact that the child discovers the incompleteness of the real form in which he lives. Such a discovery is possible only on the basis of the emergence of an idea of ​​a different (new) ideal form. K.N. Polivanova admits that the child has discovered something else that awaits him in the future, an image of adult behavior. Before such a discovery, the child is content with today's problems and their solutions. At critical moments in life, this is not enough. A different future, the future turns out to be attractive, attractive.

This discovery of the future can only be discovered indirectly, because it is non-reflexive. Thus, the play of older preschoolers differs from the same activity of younger children in that they both play and discuss the correctness of playing roles. Children, playing, are simultaneously in two plans - conditional game and real. In the previous stable period, the child was completely immersed in the game, it was part of his being, was his existential characteristic. Now the game situation itself is still attractive, but along with the rest. L.S. Vygotsky calls the first phase of the crisis the attraction phase. It is at this moment that the child emerges from the "here and now" of the previous activity into a temporal perspective, discovers a new ideal form, and idealizes it in the next phase. This stage K.N. Polivanova calls the stage of emancipation: in the previous stable period, the child was completely immersed in the situation of playing, learning, and other activities, now this situation itself appears to him still as attractive, but only as one of many. The pre-critical phase was discovered in the study of the child's relationship to an unfamiliar adult: by the age of six, children begin to adequately characterize their actions when meeting with an unfamiliar adult, before that this situation was perceived more as a meeting with a play partner.

On the first stage there is an attempt to directly implement the most general ideas about the ideal form (idealized and naive) in real life situations. The child makes an attempt to materialize the ideal form. Having discovered a new, different, missing from him, he immediately tries to "get" into this other dimension. The specificity of this stage is connected with the peculiarities of the ideal form itself, with the fact that the ideal form exists in culture not in isolation, not by itself, but in various incarnations. Acting according to the logic of the ideal form, the child will at first completely copy the one whom he considers independent. For him, as yet, there is no content of independence, there is only a concrete independent action of a given person.

Then comes the second stage - stage of conflict. Conflict is seen as a necessary condition for normal development in a crisis. The conflict allows the child and the adults around him to reveal their own positions to the utmost. The positive meaning of the conflict lies in the fact that at this stage the impossibility of the direct embodiment of the ideal (idealized) form into real life is revealed for the child himself.

Through conflict, it is revealed that some of them really were connected with taboos losing their relevance (and they are then removed), but some part is also connected with their own insufficiency.

In conflict, barriers to the realization of the ideal form are exposed and emotionally experienced with the utmost clarity. External barriers associated with the rigidity of the upbringing system are then removed, but internal ones remain, associated with the insufficiency of one's own abilities. It is at this moment that the motivation for new activity arises, the conditions are created for overcoming the crisis. K.N. Polivanova considers reflection as the third stage of the crisis, which is the internalization of the conflict between the desired and the real. The child develops a differentiation of I-real and I-ideal. At the same time, I-real can noticeably decrease. The drop in self-esteem (or its differentiation) at the end of the critical period is evidence that subjectivation (based on reflection) has occurred.

The crisis is ending post-critical phase representing the creation of a new social situation of development. In this phase, the transition "real-ideal" and "one's own-other" is completed, new forms of cultural translation of the ideal form (new leading activity) are accepted, and a search for a new "significant other" takes place. A new ideal, not idealized, form is being realized, not formal, but full-fledged. In the pathological course of a crisis, a distortion of its normal dynamics, "stuck" at some stage of the crisis, and, as a result, the inferiority of the new formation of the crisis can occur. Compensatory mechanisms can also develop, deforming further normal development in a stable period. Thus, in children entering school at the age of six and studying under conditions of strict regulation of school life, there is an early loss of interest in learning and the emergence of school difficulties.

Thus, the crisis is not homogeneous in nature and includes phases, each of which is distinguished by its originality. Despite the fact that the crisis is a period of rapid qualitative changes, within itself there are periods of the greatest tension - conflict, as well as periods of rising tension and its decline, reflecting the complex dynamic structure of the crisis.

The concept of the social situation of development makes it possible for L.S. Vygotsky distinguish two types of ages - stable and critical. In a stable period, development takes place within the social situation of development characteristic of a given age. The critical age is the moment of changing the old social situation of development and the formation of a new one. Myers, D. Social psychology. Intensive course. M., 2004. - S. 293.

At relatively stable, or stable, ages, development proceeds mainly through microscopic changes in the child's personality, which, accumulating to a certain limit, are then abruptly revealed in the form of some kind of age-related neoplasm. Such stable periods are occupied, judging purely chronologically, most of childhood. Since within them development proceeds, as it were, in an underground way, when a child is compared at the beginning and at the end of a stable age, huge changes in his personality clearly appear.

Stable ages have been studied much more fully than those characterized by a different type of development - crises. The latter are distinguished by features opposite to stable, or stable ages. In these periods, over a relatively short period of time (several months, a year, or at most two), abrupt and major shifts and shifts, changes and fractures in the personality of the child are concentrated. The child in a very short period of time changes as a whole, in the main personality traits. Development takes on a stormy, impetuous, sometimes catastrophic character; it resembles a revolutionary course of events, both in terms of the pace of the changes taking place and in the meaning of the changes taking place. These are turning points in child development, sometimes taking the form of an acute crisis. (See Appendix B).

The first feature of such periods is, on the one hand, that the boundaries separating the beginning and end of the crisis from adjacent ages are extremely indistinct. The crisis occurs imperceptibly, it is difficult to determine the moment of its onset and end. On the other hand, a sharp aggravation of the crisis is characteristic, usually occurring in the middle of this age period. The presence of a culminating point, at which the crisis reaches its apogee, characterizes all critical ages and sharply distinguishes them from stable epochs of child development.

The second feature of critical ages served as the starting point for their empirical study. The fact is that a significant part of children who are going through critical periods of development find it difficult to educate. Children, as it were, fall out of the system of pedagogical influence, which until quite recently ensured the normal course of their upbringing and education. At school age, during critical periods, children show a drop in academic performance, a weakening of interest in schoolwork, and a general decrease in working capacity. At critical ages, the development of the child is often accompanied by more or less acute conflicts with others. The inner life of a child is sometimes associated with painful and painful experiences, with internal conflicts.

True, all this is far from necessary. Different children have critical periods in different ways. In the course of a crisis, even among children closest in type of development, in terms of the social situation of children, there are much more variations than in stable periods. Many children do not have any clearly expressed educational difficulties or decline in school performance. The range of variations in the course of these ages in different children, the influence of external and internal conditions on the course of the crisis itself are significant.

External conditions determine the specific nature of the detection and flow of critical periods. Dissimilar in different children, they cause an extremely variegated and diverse picture of critical age options. But it is not the presence or absence of any specific external conditions, but the internal logic of the very process of development that causes the need for critical, turning points in a child's life. So, if we move from an absolute assessment of education to a relative one, based on a comparison of the degree of ease or difficulty of raising a child in the stable period preceding the crisis or the stable period following it with the degree of difficulty in education during the crisis, then it is impossible not to see that every child at this age becomes relatively difficult to educate. compared to himself at an adjacent stable age. In the same way, if we move from an absolute assessment of school performance to its relative assessment, based on a comparison of the rate of progress of a child in the course of education in different age periods, it is impossible not to see that every child during a crisis reduces the rate of progress compared to the rate characteristic of stable periods.

The third and, perhaps, the most theoretically important feature of critical ages, but the most obscure and therefore difficult to correctly understand the nature of child development during these periods, is the negative nature of development. Everyone who wrote about these peculiar periods noted first of all that development here, in contrast to stable ages, does more destructive than creative work. The progressive development of the child's personality, the continuous construction of the new, which was so distinct at all stable ages, during periods of crisis, as it were, fades, is temporarily suspended. The processes of withering away and curtailment, disintegration and decomposition of what was formed at the previous stage and distinguished the child of this age come to the fore. The child in critical periods not so much acquires as loses from what was previously acquired. The onset of these ages is not marked by the appearance of new interests of the child, new aspirations, new types of activity, new forms of inner life.

A child entering periods of crisis is rather characterized by the opposite features: he loses the interests that yesterday still directed all his activities, which absorbed most of his time and attention, and now, as it were, freezes; the previously established forms of external relations and internal life, as it were, are being abandoned. L.N. Tolstoy figuratively and accurately called one of these critical periods of child development the wilderness of adolescence.

This is what they mean in the first place when they talk about the negative nature of critical ages. By this they want to express the idea that development, as it were, changes its positive, creative meaning, forcing the observer to characterize such periods mainly from a negative, negative side. Many authors are even convinced that the whole meaning of development in critical periods is exhausted by negative content. This belief is enshrined in the names of critical ages (sometimes this age is called the negative phase, sometimes the phase of obstinacy).

At turning points in development, the child becomes relatively difficult to educate due to the fact that the change in the pedagogical system applied to the child does not keep pace with the rapid changes in his personality. Pedagogy of critical ages is the least developed in practical and theoretical terms.

Just as all life is at the same time dying, so also child development - this is one of the complex forms of life - necessarily includes the processes of curtailment and death. The emergence of the new in development necessarily means the death of the old. The transition to a new age is always marked by the decline of the old age. The processes of reverse development, the withering away of the old and are concentrated mainly at critical ages. But it would be the greatest delusion to believe that this is the end of the significance of critical ages. Development never stops its creative work, and in critical periods we observe constructive development processes. Moreover, the processes of involution, so clearly expressed at these ages, are themselves subordinate to the processes of positive personality building, are directly dependent on them and form an inseparable whole with them. Destructive work is performed during the specified periods, depending on the need to develop the properties and traits of the personality. Actual research shows that the negative content of development during critical periods is only the reverse, or shadow, side of the positive personality changes that make up the main and basic meaning of any critical age.

Thus, the positive significance of the crisis of three years is reflected in the fact that here new characteristic features of the child's personality arise. It has been established that if the crisis proceeds sluggishly and inexpressively for any reason, then this leads to a deep delay in the development of the affective and volitional aspects of the child's personality at a subsequent age. With regard to the 7-year crisis, all researchers noted that, along with negative symptoms, there were a number of great achievements in this period: the child's independence increases, his attitude towards other children changes. During the crisis at the age of 13, the decrease in the productivity of the student's mental work is due to the fact that here there is a change in attitude from visualization to understanding and deduction. The transition to the highest form of intellectual activity is accompanied by a temporary decrease in efficiency. This is also confirmed by the rest of the negative symptoms of the crisis: behind every negative symptom lies a positive content, which usually consists in the transition to a new and higher form. Finally, there is no doubt that there is positive content in the crisis of one year. Here, the negative symptoms are obviously and directly related to the positive acquisitions that the child makes by getting on his feet and mastering speech. The same can be applied to the crisis of the newborn. At this time, the child degrades at first even in relation to physical development: in the first days after birth, the weight of the newborn falls. Adaptation to a new form of life makes such high demands on the viability of the child that a person never stands so close to death as at the hour of his birth. And yet, during this period, more than in any of the subsequent crises, the fact comes through that development is a process of formation and the emergence of something new. Everything that we encounter in the development of a child in the first days and weeks is a complete neoplasm. The negative symptoms that characterize the negative content of this period stem from the difficulties caused precisely by the novelty, the first emerging and highly complex form of life.

The most essential content of development at critical ages lies in the emergence of neoplasms, which are highly original and specific. Their main difference from neoplasms of stable ages is that they are of a transitional nature. This means that in the future they are not preserved in the form in which they arose during the critical period, and are not included as a necessary component in the integral structure of the future personality. They die, as if being absorbed by new formations of the next, stable age, being included in their composition as a subordinate instance that does not have an independent existence, dissolving and transforming into them so much that without a special and deep analysis it is often impossible to discover the presence of this transformed formation of a critical period in the acquisitions of the subsequent stable age.

Age crises are the conventional name for transitional moments from one age stage to another. Sometimes these are called the negative result of the collision of a developing personality with social reality. The mental development of a person is carried out through the change of stable and critical ages: within the framework of a stable age, mental neoplasms mature, which are actualized at a critical age. The very concept of "crisis" really means an acute situation for making some kind of decision, a turning point, a crucial moment.

A number of researchers consider age crises to be a normative process, a necessary element of socialization, due to the logic of personal development and the need to resolve the main age-related contradiction (Z. Freud, E. Erickson, L. Vygotsky, L. Bozhovich). Other authors see age-related crises as a deviant, malignant manifestation of individual development (S.L. Rubenshtein, A.V. Zaporozhets).

Age crises can be marked by significant mental discomfort, sometimes even endangering the survival of the organism. Such transitions can occur spontaneously, as in the case of a mid-life crisis. They can be caused by integrative psychotechnologies, participation in spiritual practice. The psychological transition to a higher level of well-being, clarity, and maturity is rarely smooth and painless. Rather, growth is usually marked by transitional periods of confusion and tormenting questions, or in extreme cases, periods of disorganization and utter despair. If these crises are successfully overcome, then a certain amount of disorganization and chaos can be a means of getting rid of limiting, obsolete life patterns. There is an opportunity to re-evaluate, "let loose" old beliefs, goals, identifications, lifestyle and adopt new, more promising life strategies. Therefore, a psychological crisis is physical and mental suffering, on the one hand, and transformation, development and personal growth, on the other.

During the transition from one age stage of development to another, critical periods, or crises, are distinguished, when the former form of human relations with the outside world is destroyed and a new system of relations with the world and people is formed, which is accompanied by significant psychological difficulties for the person himself and his social environment. There are small crises (crisis of 1 year, crisis of 7 years, crisis of 17-18 years) and large crises (newborn crisis, crisis of 3 years, adolescent crisis of 13-14 years). During major crises, the relationship between the child and society is rebuilt. And small crises are outwardly calmer, associated with the growth of skills and independence of a person. During the critical phase, children are difficult to educate, show stubbornness, negativism, obstinacy, and disobedience. Maturity is also divided into a number of stages and crises. The stage of early maturity, or youth (from 20-23 years old to 30-33 years old), corresponds to the entry of a person into an intense personal life and professional activity, the period of "formation", self-assertion in love, sex, career, family, society.

In mature years, their crisis periods stand out: the crisis of 33-35 years - when, having reached a certain social and family status, a person begins to think with anxiety: “Is this all that life can give me? Is there really nothing better? And some begin to feverishly change something in their lives: work, spouse, place of residence, hobbies, etc. Then comes a short stabilization period from 35 to 40-43 years old, when a person consolidates everything that he has achieved, is confident in his professional mastery, in its authority, has an acceptable level of career success and material prosperity, health, position in the family, and sex are normalized.

Following a period of stability, a critical decade of 45-55 years begins, when a person begins to feel the approach of middle age, when the first signs of deterioration in health, loss of beauty and physical fitness, alienation in the family and in relationships with grown-up children appear, there comes a fear that there is nothing better you will not get in life, in a career, in love; as a result, there is a feeling of fatigue from the boring reality, depressive moods, from which a person hides either in dreams of new love victories, or in real attempts to “prove his youth” through love affairs or a career take-off. The final period of maturity lasts from 55 to 65 years - a period of physiological and psychological balance, a decrease in sexual tension, a gradual withdrawal of a person from active work and social life. The age from 65 to 75 is referred to as the first old age. After 75 years, age is considered advanced - a person rethinks his whole life, realizes his "I" in spiritual thoughts about the years lived, and either accepts "his life as a unique destiny that does not need to be redone, or realizes that life went wrong, in vain .

In old age (old age), a person has to overcome three sub-crises: the first of them is the reassessment of his own "I" in addition to his professional role, which for many people until retirement remains the main one. The second sub-crisis is associated with the realization of the fact of deteriorating health and aging of the body, which makes it possible for a person to develop the necessary indifference in this regard.

As a result of the third sub-crisis, self-concern disappears in a person, and now he can accept the thought of death without horror.

Faced with death, a person goes through a series of stages. The first of these is the stage of denial. Thought: “No, not me!” - the most common and normal reaction of a person to the announcement of a fatal diagnosis. Then the stage of anger - anger, embracing the patient at the question: "Why me?" - is poured out on people who care about him and in general on every healthy person. To complete this stage, it is important that the dying person has the opportunity to pour his feelings outward.

The next stage of "bargaining": the patient tries to prolong his life, promising to be an obedient patient or an exemplary believer, he bargains for his life with the help of medical achievements and repentance before God for his sins and mistakes. These three phases constitute a period of crisis and develop in the order described or with frequent reversals.

After the resolution of this crisis, the dying person enters the stage of depression, he realizes: “Yes, this time it is I who will die,” withdraws into himself and often feels the need to cry at the thought of those whom he is forced to leave. This is the stage of preparatory sadness, at which the dying person renounces life and prepares to meet death, accepting it as his last life stage, and is further and further separated from living people, withdrawing into himself - a state of “social death” sets in (from society, from people, a person has already moved away, as if he had died in the social sense).

The fifth stage is the “acceptance of death”: a person realizes and agrees, resigns himself to the inevitability of imminent death and humbly waits for his end - this is the state of “mental death” (psychologically, a person has already, as it were, abandoned life). Clinical death occurs from the moment the heart and breathing stop working, but within 10-20 minutes it is still possible to bring a person back to life with medical efforts.

Brain death means the complete cessation of brain activity and its control over various functions of the body, resulting in the death of brain cells. Physiological death corresponds to the extinction of the last functions of the body and the death of all body cells.

Some scientists argue that with the death of the body, the complete death of the soul, the human psyche does not occur, there is a hypothesis that the soul of a person in the form of an information clot after the death of a person continues to exist and connects with the global information field. The traditional materialistic understanding denies the possibility of preserving the soul, the psyche of a person after his death, although the latest studies of physicists, doctors, and psychologists are no longer so categorical.