Mental reflection is a subjective image of reality

According to the opinion of psychologists, the interaction of the individual with the environment can be carried out only if he has his own, individual "picture of what is happening." The subject, impartially forming the image of the object, carries out the process of mental reflection. And under the image of the object in this case means properties, phenomena, events of the external or internal world. What is such a mental reflection and what is its meaning for the subject and for man in the first place?

The essence of mental reflection.

Within the framework of the Soviet psychological school, the study of the process of mental reflection involved representatives of the cultural and historical concept. Psychic reflection is understood there as an orienting-regulating process of formation of conditions in which the activity takes place. The result of this reflection of the psyche is the image, i.e. A subjective collection of data on the external or internal world, allowing you to direct activities to meet the needs. Here one should make an important observation: mental reflection is always a process that is undividedly connected with the subject himself. He is also an individual image, that without the subject who created it, it makes no sense. Moreover, the image is not static, it exists only at the moment of the process of reflection of objective reality by mental processes directly. They, in turn, are inseparable and not isolated from each other. Representations of the processes of the psyche as "thinking", "perception" or "imagination" is only a model of the psyche, in reality it is integral and unified.

Psychic reflection serves to create a structured and integral image from the dismembered objects of reality.

BF Lomov distinguished the levels of mental reflection:

1. Sensory-perceptive - this is the basic level of building mental images, in the process of development arising in the first place, but not losing relevance in the subsequent activities. The subject, building on the information that comes from stimulating the senses with real objects, builds his own tactics of behavior. Simply put, the stimulus triggers a reaction: an event that occurs in real time, affects the subsequent action of the subject, causes it.
2. View level. The image can arise without the direct influence of the object on the subject's sense organs, ie, this is imagination, memory, imaginative thinking. Due to the multiple appearance of the object in the perception zone of the subject, some of the most important features of the first are remembered, eliminated from the secondary, thus creating an image independent of the immediate presence of the stimulus. A person learns to operate with images of objects, conditionally speaking, seen once before, not represented in the current situation. The main function of this level of mental reflection: planning, control and correction of actions in the internal plan, drawing up standards.
3. Verbally, logical thinking or the speech- thinking level. Operations of this level are even less connected with the event series of the actual time. The individual operates with logical concepts and techniques developed in the course of the cultural and historical development of mankind. By abstracting from his own direct experience, from the imagination and memory of events that took place in his life, he orientates and builds activity, relying on the experience of mankind as a whole. Those concepts, definitions and conclusions that were not made by him. This provides an opportunity to plan and regulate events of different directions and time remoteness, up to planning the life course of the individual.

Despite the significant difference between the third and the first, the initial level: the processes of sensory and rational regulation of activity ceaselessly flow from one to another, forming a mental reflection in the diversity of its levels and images.