American Journal of Interdisciplinary Research and Development ISSN Online: 2771-8948 Website: www.ajird.journalspark.org Volume 28, May - 2024 336 | P a g e GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY (Subject. The Subject, Methods and Tasks of Psychology) Ravshanov Akmal Mirzhamilovich Abstract The subject of psychology and the history of its emergence Psychology, like other sciences, has followed a certain path in its development. At the end of the 19th century, at the beginning of the 20th century, the great psychologist G. Ebbinghaus said about psychology very briefly and precisely - psychology is a great pre-history and a very short history. The term "history" refers to the period when psychology was studied in honor of the separation from philosophy and closer to concrete sciences and the establishment of its own experimental method. It happened in the second half of the 19th century, but the sources of psychology disappear over the centuries. Four stages can be conditionally distinguished in its history. At each stage of the development of psychology, the subject of its study is filled with its own special content. Introduction With the manifestation of the psyche, a person faces from what he knows. But mental processes remained an incredible puzzle for him. For example, the idea of the soul as a separate entity outside the body has taken root among the people. Such an idea was formed because of the fear of death in humans, because primitive people knew that both animals and humans die. In this case, the human mind was not in a position to explain what happens to a person when he dies. At the same time, primitive people knew that when a person sleeps, he does not come into contact with the outside world, that he sees dreams - inexplicable images of non-existent reality. Perhaps the attempt to explain the relationship between life and death, the body and some unfamiliar intangible world, led to the idea that a person consists of two parts: a tangible body and an intangible soul. From this point of view, life and death could be explained as a state of unity of soul and body. As long as a person is alive, his soul is in his body, when his soul leaves his body, he dies. When a person sleeps, the soul temporarily leaves the body and is in some other place. Thus, until the psychological process, characteristics, conditions became the subject of scientific analysis, a person tried to explain its origin and content in a form convenient for him. Therefore, the initial psychological knowledge is collected at the life, or in other words life level, and has a pre-scientific character. The scientific study of psychic phenomena began within the framework of philosophy. Philosophy became a science from the standpoint of man trying to explain his existence. Therefore, the main issues of any philosophical direction are related to the problems of the origin of man and his spirituality, especially related to what is primary: soul, spirit, this ideal (supreme goal, or body, matter. Second, a less important issue of philosophy - this issue is whether it is possible to know the reality that surrounds us and the person himself. American Journal of Interdisciplinary Research and Development ISSN Online: 2771-8948 Website: www.ajird.journalspark.org Volume 28, May - 2024 337 | P a g e Early scientific psychological views are related to people's religious ideas. For example, in the ancient Egyptian treatise "Memorial of theology of Memphis" (a treatise - a scientific work devoted to a certain problem, the end of the 6th millennium BC), an attempt was made to describe psychic mechanisms. According to this work, Ptax is said to be the creator of all creation, the architect of the whole world. People look to be controlled by their hearts and tongues so that they can think, not speak. But from that ancient time, thoughts began to form that psychic phenomena were somehow related to the human body. In that ancient Egyptian work, the importance of human sense organs was interpreted as follows: God "created the eye to see, the ear to hear, the nose to breathe, the heart to give information." Along with the idealistic point of view, in the nature of the human soul and other materialistic, they achieved a clear expression during the time of the ancient Greek philosophers. Thus, following Heraclitus (530-470 BC), philosophers of the Miletus school - Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes - think about the material side of mental phenomena and the unity of body and soul. According to their teaching, all things are the appearance of grass. In the microcosm of the organism, the general circulation rhythm of the herb is returned at all scales of the cosmos, in the organism, the herbaceous beginning and the soul is the psyche. According to Heraclitus, the soul shines in moisture, and when it returns to moisture, it dies. However, there are several variations between the "moist" and "grassy" conditions. For example, Heraclitus says about a drunk person that "he does not notice where he is going, because his psyche is wet." The wiser he is, the more his heart is not wet. We also find the idea of grass as the basis of the existing world in the works of another famous ancient Greek thinker, Democritus (460-370 BC), who developed an atomic model of the world following Leucippus . According to Democritus, the soul is an objectively existing substance composed of atoms of matter, spherical, light and very fast moving. Democritus tries to explain all mental states by physical and even mechanical causes. Thus, according to him, human intuition arises because the atoms of the soul are activated by the atoms of the air that "flow" directly from objects. Based on the above. Democritus' materialism is simply mechanical in nature. We encounter complex concepts of the soul in the views of Aristotle (384-322 BC). His treatise on the soul (a treatise - a scientific work devoted to a problem) is the first psychological work, a special long-term guide to psychology, and Aristotle himself can be considered the founder of this discipline. He refused to consider the soul as a substance. At the same time, he, like philosopher-idealists, believed that it is possible to consider the soul apart from matter (animate body). According to Aristotle, the soul is an organic system that functions according to purpose and represents the essence of the human body. Finally, as the higher, "metaphysical" and moral problems of human existence increased, the meaning of the concept of the soul became narrower. Such soul concepts probably originated in Ancient India. American Journal of Interdisciplinary Research and Development ISSN Online: 2771-8948 Website: www.ajird.journalspark.org Volume 28, May - 2024 338 | P a g e Thus, in the Vedic texts (2nd millennium BC), the question of the soul was studied primarily from an ethical point of view. In order to achieve happiness, it is confirmed that it is necessary to improve the upbringing of a person with the right behavior. Later, we encounter the moral issues of spiritual development in the teachings of Jainism and Buddhism (6th century BC). But the vivid moral aspects of the soul were first revealed by Plato (427-347 BC) In Plato's texts, the view of the soul as an independent substance (substance - matter that is always moving, changing and developing, the primary basis of all existence) is expressed. According to him, the soul exists together with the body, independent of it. Spirit is the invisible, great, divine, eternal basis. The body is a visible, unchanging, transitory, perishable entity. The mind and body are in a complex relationship. Tends to control the body according to its divine origin. But sometimes the body takes precedence over the soul with heart-wrenching desires and passions. Based on his vision of the soul, Plato makes the following moral conclusions: the soul is the highest of all things that exist in man, so he should care more about the health of the soul than the health of the body. After a person's death, the soul separates from the body, depending on how the person lived, different destinies await his soul: his soul either wanders near the earth, suffering from earthly elements, or flies from the earth to the ideal (higher) world. The next major stage in the development of psychology is associated with the name of the famous French philosopher René Descartes (1569-1650). Descartes is one of the founders of rational philosophy. According to his ideas, knowledge should be built on the basis of accurate data and should be produced by the method of logical thinking. This position is known in the scientific world as Cartesian philosophy, Cartesian intuition. Based on his worldview, Descartes learns many correct ideas and many wrong ideas from a young age. Therefore, in order to find the truth, according to him, it is necessary to completely eliminate doubt, while the information received through the sense organs must be reliable. In such a denial, one can go so far that the Earth ceases to exist. What is left of it? In this, our doubts remain - a clear sign of this, our thinking. From this came the famous thought attributed to Descartes: "I think, therefore I exist." Then, answering the question, "What is thought," he says, "thoughts are things that happen to us," that we "immediately take for granted." In this opinion, the main rule (postulate) of the psychology of the second half of the 19th century ( postulate - the initial rule that is accepted even without proof) - first of all, a person understands himself - this is his consciousness. But in his works, Descartes is not only the work of the internal organs, but also the state of the organism, which does not need the soul in its cooperation with the external organs. According to him, the cooperation of the organism with the external environment is carried out through the nervous machine, which consists of the brain, which is considered the center and nerve "pipe". External objects are the terminations of the peripheral nervous system located inside the inner nervous "tube", nerve "fibers", the tension of the nerve "fibers" leads from the brain to the nerve, from its channels "animal spirits" are directed to the corresponding muscles, and as a result, they open the valves of the slits. Thus, according to Descartes, the reason for the daily activity of a person is not in him, it is determined by external factors. Thus, according to Descartes, consciousness is not involved in the management of human behavior. He opposes the soul and American Journal of Interdisciplinary Research and Development ISSN Online: 2771-8948 Website: www.ajird.journalspark.org Volume 28, May - 2024 339 | P a g e the body, adhering to the existence of two unrelated substances ( substance - matter that is always moving, changing, developing, the primary basis of all existence, the root, the essence) matter and spirit. . In the history of psychology, this doctrine was named "dualism" ("dualism" comes from the Latin word dualism - two sides . Around this time, new ideas about the subject of psychology arose. Thinking, feeling, desire began to be called consciousness. Thus, psyche The psychology of the mind was preceded by the psychology of the mind. Descartes' views developed in the views of introspectionists (introspectionist psycho. - based on self- observation). The founder of the introspective method is the philosopher John Locke (1632- 1704), who developed the theses of Descartes' ideas about direct understanding . Locke asserted that there are two sources of all knowledge: the objects of the external world and our own mental activity. A person directs his external feelings to the objects of the external world and, as a result, receives impressions about external things, and the activity of the mind is evaluated using special external sensations - reflection . Reflection, according to Locke, is "observation which the mind turns into its activity." Therefore, later, a special method was developed with the help of which it is possible to study the mind. This method is called introspection. Int rospection literally means "look inside". For a long time, this method was considered not only the main, but also the only method of psychology. This method was based on two assertions developed by representatives of introspective psychology. Firstly, cognitive processes are "closed" to external observation, but secondly, cognitive processes are able to open (present) to the subject. From these assertions, it is clear that the cognitive processes of a person can be studied only by himself and by no one else. Therefore, according to the representatives of introspection, the psychologist should study himself and not the other. Therefore, over time, society's interest in psychologists has declined. Only professional psychologists became interested in psychology. Fundamental changes in society's attitude to psychology took place with the emergence of a new direction - behaviorism . The founder of behaviorism, John Brodes Watson (1878-1958), saw the tasks of psychology in the study of the behavior of living beings adapting to their environment. In this, the main place in the work of behaviorists is allocated to solving tasks conditioned by social and economic development. Therefore, behaviorism spread throughout the world in just one decade and remained one of the most influential directions of psychological sciences for a long time. The emergence and spread of behaviorism became famous for the introduction of completely new facts into psychology - the facts of behavior, which differ from the facts of cognition in introspective psychology . In psychology, behavior is an external manifestation of human mental activity. At the same time, from the position of behaviorism, behavior is contrasted with consciousness as a set of internal, subjectively experienced processes. Watson believes that all the important things in a person are the actions and behavior of a specific individual for the people around him. He was right about this, the uniqueness of our experiences, our minds and our thinking. that is, our psychic individuality is reflected in our behavior and actions as an external manifestation. But one cannot agree with American Journal of Interdisciplinary Research and Development ISSN Online: 2771-8948 Website: www.ajird.journalspark.org Volume 28, May - 2024 340 | P a g e Watson because he rejected the need to deal with consciousness while proving the need to deal with behavior. "Behaviorist," writes Watson, "can find no evidence to prove the existence of a stream of consciousness, U. To be described so convincingly by James, he considers only the existence of a constantly extended behavior.' According to Watson, behavior is a system of reactions. Reaction is not a new concept that was introduced to psychology in connection with the development of behaviorism. As much as Watson tried to make psychology natural-scientific, it was necessary to explain the causes of human behavior from a natural-scientific position. Watson explained that any human behavior and any action is caused by one or another external influence. There is no action unless there is some reason behind it in the form of an external agent or stimulus. The famous S > R (stimulus — reaction) formula is derived from this. For behaviorists, S > R The ratio of was the unit of behavior . Therefore, from the point of view of behaviorism, the main tasks of psychology are as follows: description of the appearance of reaction types; to study the processes of their emergence; to study the process of their combination, that is, the combination of complex reactions. The services of behaviorism are important in the development of psychology. First, behaviorism brought a strong materialistic spirit to psychology, so that in return psychology began to develop among the natural sciences. Secondly, the objective method of research - a method based on the list and analysis of external observations, facts, processes, in return instrumental methods of research became widespread in psychology. Thirdly, the field of psychological research expanded: the behavior of young children, the speech of animals, etc. was systematically studied. In addition, the work of behaviorists has contributed greatly to the study of knowledge, education, competence, etc. Psychology, like other psychological sciences, has a history of its development during the change of ideas about the subject of psychological research. Scientists who made a great contribution to the development of psychology V. N. Rev. Bexte , I. M. Sechenov, A. F. Lazursky, N. N. Lange, G. I. Chelpanov, B. G. Ananev, B. F. Lomov, B. M. Teplov, A. N. Leontev, P. Yes. Galperin, D. N. Uznadze and others . In the development of psychology, L. proposed the concept of the origin of higher mental functions of a person. S. Vygotsky also made a special contribution. This concept became the basis for the development of the psychological theory of activity. Currently, the subject of study in psychology is psyche and psychological phenomena. In this case, the psyche is understood as a highly organized feature of living matter, resulting in the active reflection of the objective world by the subject, pictures of this world unfamiliar to him, and his behavior and activity on this basis. Following this definition, the chapters that follow examine a number of fundamental considerations about nature and psychic phenomena that are widely considered.