Personality structure by Platonov. Psychology of Personality

Personality is a concept in psychology, which is studied to this day. Each person is so individual, multifaceted, dynamic in his own interests, relationships and inner motivations, that no scientist could fully classify the personality of everyone. There are many classifications that approximately allow us to learn about the regular processes taking place in the development of the personality. But that's only about ...

But some still managed to "fit" all people under a certain framework of understanding in their classifications and schemes. One of such distributions for certain features is the personality structure according to Platonov.

Basic Characteristics of the Platonov Classification

For the psychological science Platonov made a great contribution, recreating the image of the individual with the help of his structure. In the domestic science, a person is usually presented as a set of grafted social traits that do not contain biological characteristics. This scientist took as a basis for the creation of his theory the dynamic component of personality. What it is?

To understand the general structure of the personality, there are two ways of its perception: statistical and dynamic. The first contains all the personal characteristics that every person can have. Here the personality is represented only by statistical data without taking into account individually changing features. The dynamic structure of the personality is the same personality, but with all the changes that occur to it throughout life. The personality structure according to Platonov takes into account all the changes that have been taking place with the subject for a long time, the connections of the previous constituent elements with the newly emerged ones.

The substructure of the directivity in the system

The first substructure includes the moral traits of the individual, which are expressed through the direction and relationship of the subject. Communication skills, exit from conflicts, positive communication and others are formed through education. In this subsystem, says the psychologist, talks about aspirations, beliefs, desires, inclinations, ideology and ideals as parameters not only of the social level (acquired only in the course of education), but also socio-psychological. That is, it is about education, as well as about the very consciousness of man. All of the above characteristics act in the person on a par with experiences and all sorts of cognition. It turns out that they are also an attribute of consciousness. This means that the psychological properties of the personality, such as desires, beliefs, ideals, and so on, are formed both with the help of the internal resources of the individual, and as a result of the influence of the social environment of the person.

The substructure of the experience of Platonov

The next subsystem, which speaks of the psychological mechanisms of acquiring experience, is treated by Platonov as a socio-biological characteristic of the subject. At this point, knowledge, skills, habits and skills are combined as genetically conditioned properties of the personality. The social structure of the personality of Platonov suggests that these parameters refer precisely to its properties. He explains his theory by the fact that in the process of learning the acquired knowledge or skills for a person become typical, ordinary and inalienable. Therefore, they begin to relate to the personality of the subject. If we talk about the correlation of social and biological in this subsystem, then the first one is more, since training is on the foreground. And it refers to the psychological and pedagogical characteristics.

The substructure of the forms of reflection, highlighted by the psychologist

This substructure contains more biological component of the personality. Here the psychologist Platonov speaks about the peculiarities of cognitive processes. The structure and development of the personality, he argues, can not exist without the processes carried out by memory, thinking, feelings, sensations, perception. In addition, Platonov established a certain order in the functioning of these mental processes. In his opinion, the strength of the genetic and biological basis in this substructure determines the following sequence: the functions of memory, emotions of the subject, sensations, thinking, perception, feelings of personality and will. The psychological properties of personality, says the scientist in his works, could not exist without physiological and genetic memory, so he puts it first. Why is there more biological? Because sensations, emotions and some types of memory are inherent in both man and animals. This point of the structure is studied primarily individually.

Biological and constitutional properties in the Platonov system

The activity and development in this substructure is determined by the state and characteristics of the human nervous system: force, inhibition and excitation processes, and speed. And also notes that the features of this substructure are only biological, the social qualities of a person here are practically inactive. The characteristics contained here can be improved by training. For example, a choleric can train in slowing the reaction rate to a stimulus, defeating his temper. Phlegmatic trains to celebrate bright events throughout the day, moving away from monotony, and so on. The study of this substructure takes place only at the psychophysiological or neuropsychological level.

By what criteria is the structure of the personality formulated according to Platonov?

Like any discovery, psychological personality theories do not arise by themselves. This requires a lot of time to devote to the study of a large sample of respondents. Then decide what is new can be identified in the characteristics of the personality and how to reduce them to generally accepted concepts. For any structure, you need a theoretical and research base, as well as certain criteria by which the classification takes place. The personality structure of Platonov is also formulated according to its criteria:

• The ratio of social and biological, acquired and innate;
• How personality traits in individual substructures are connected and internally close;
• What kind of tool are those or other characteristics of the personality formed (training, education, exercise, training);
• Biological and social qualities of a person, formed historically (the sum of psychological properties, personality as experience).

The importance of creating this structure

The concept of Platonov gained popularity due to the fact that it is the most striking example of a structural approach to perception, study and understanding of personality. This understanding is due to the fact that the psychologist undertook to study the dynamic personality. Here you can apply both an individual approach to the study of subjects, and a general, strictly classifying them.

Personality structure by Platonov: scheme

It is very difficult to briefly outline the entire structure in the scheme, but in brief it looks like this:

According to the author of the theory, in the presented substructures it is possible to enclose all the personality properties known to date.