The Reception of the Set Theory of Dimitri Uznadze by Angia Bochorishvili

Abstract

In the present article, one of the most critical aspects of the set theory of D. Uznadze, namely the problem of the relations between the psychic and the conscious in the set theory and its reception by A. Bochorishvili (one of the most important pupils of D. Uznadze) - is discussed. The set theory of D. Uznadze was initially conceived as a general psychological theory of personality, the aim of which was the understanding and explanation of the psychic as such. In the psychology of the 19th century was a widespread postulate of immediacy. According to which the external world acts on the consciousness of man directly, without any mediation, D. Uznadze has opposed this postulate with a point of view that opposite to the external world, there is not directly the psychic, the consciousness, but first of all, the whole personality, the subject. In the initial stage of the theory formation, he had equated psychic and consciousness ("because psychic is necessarily conscious"). Instead of the term "set," he first used the terms "sub-psychic" and "biosphere." In his last work, "Experimental Foundations of Set Psychology (1949)," D. Uznadze has expanded his original understanding of the psychic and has attributed to it also an unconscious component. He justified it with the fact that from the point of view of development, a direct transition from the non-psychic (physical, physiological) to the psychic or the conscious is unthinkable without an intermediate link. In the mentioned work, D. Uznadze presented the set as an intermediate link between the external world and consciousness. This set still retained a place within the psychic, but it was now understood as an unconscious part of the psychic.Moreover, this placed set theory in the ranks of theories that postulate the unconscious psychic as the explanatory principle of the conscious psychic. It was a radical turn in Uznadze's theory. This change also had another purpose: set theory understood in this way was opposed by D. Uznadze to the Freudian theory of the unconscious, which captures the meant reality negatively already by its name, in contrast to attitude, which captures the same reality positively and thus is more accessible to experimental research. The pupils of D. Uznadze have fruitfully continued the teacher's work and have explored the phenomenon of set from different sides, which has found expression in many of their treatises and monographs. A. Bochorishvili, to whom, by the way, belongs the first experimental research in set psychology ("An analog of the illusion of heaviness in pressure," 1927), had to reject such extension of the concept of the set as logically inadmissible. For him, as for D. Uznadze, set theory was primarily a theory of personality. In the opinion of A. Bochorishvili, set theory was originally called to solve the cardinal problems of psychology, such as the understanding and explanation of the psychic, its relation to the conscious and the unconscious, etc. It was also conceived by D. Uznadze to overcome the postulate of immediacy. However, after the last change, the set theory could not fulfill this task—the train of thought of A. Bochorishvili is as follows: As long as the set theory served the explanation of the psychic and the set was not thought as a component of the psychic but as a link between the physical and the psychic, everything was all right. Considering this objective, D. Uznadze named the reality he discovered "sub-psychic" and "biosphere." Both terms point to the ontological status of the set outside the psychic. The final choice of D. Uznadze fell on the term "set," but its content was congruent with that of his predecessors. However, in the last writing of D. Uznadze set became a part of the psychic, the logical difficulty of explaining the psychic by the psychic arose, and the theory thus failed to achieve its original purpose. In his article about the attitude theory from 1955, A. Bochorishvili emphasizes: "Thus, of course, we lost the advantage that consisted in its (the set - the author) non-psychic-ness (sub-psychic-ness), its objectivity." Thereby, according to A. Bochorishvili, the unconscious psychic, was put based on consciousness. Thereby it was explained, but now to explain remained this unconscious psychic itself, "for which the whole theoretical work would have to be started either from the beginning, or we would have to allow the psychic to be explained by the psychic, which would mean that we let ourselves be caught again in the same subjective fetters, against which we called the scientific concept of personality to help us: What are the use of personality and the objective fact at all if the psychic can explain the psychic? Of course, the introduction of the concept of the unconscious, in our opinion, cannot be justified by the real needs of the set theory and is incompatible with its objective". A. Bochorishvili unequivocally maintained this view in his further publications on set psychology but always preserved unchanged reverence for his teacher. He also later researched the theoretical problems of set theory and was an uncompromising polemicist when it came to the honor of his teacher or the often occurring distortion of his theory.