The reception of the set theory of D. Uznadze by A. Bochorishvili

Abstract

In the present article, one of the most critical aspects of the set theory of D. Uznadze, namely theproblem of the relations between the psychic and the conscious in the hard theory and its receptionby A. Bochorishvili - one of the most important pupils of d. Uznadze - is discussed. Hard theory of D.Uznadze was initially conceived as a general psychological theory of personality, aiming to understand and explain the psychic as such. In the psychology of the 19thcentury, a so-called postulate of immediacy was widespread, according to which the external worlddirectly acts on man's consciousness, without any mediation. D. Uznadze has opposed thispostulate with a point of view that opposite to the external world, there is not directly the psychic, theconsciousness, but first of all, the whole personality, the subject. In the initial stage of the formationof theory, he had equated psychic and consciousness (" because psychic is necessarily conscious") 1and instead of the term "set" first used the terms "subpsychic" and "biosphere". In his last work" Experimental Foundations of Set Psychology (1949)" D. Uznadze expanded his originalUnderstanding the psychic has also attributed to it an unconscious component. He justified itwith 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 intermediatelink. In the mentioned work, D. Uznadze presented the set as an intermediate link between theexternal world and consciousness. This set retained a place within the psychic, but it was nowunderstood as an unconscious part of the psychic. Moreover, this placed set theory in the ranks oftheories that postulate the unconscious psychic as the explanatory principle of the conscious-psychic. This was a radical turn in Uznadze's theory. This change also had another purpose: settheory understood in this way was opposed by D. Uznadze to the Freudian theory of theunconscious, which captures the meant reality negatively already by its name, in contrast toattitude, which captures the same reality positively and thus is more accessible to experimentalresearch. The pupils of D. Uznadze have fruitfully continued the teacher's work andexplored the phenomenon of set from different sides, which has found expression in many of theirtreatises and monographs. A. Bochorishvili, to whom, by the way, belongs the first experimental research in set psychology("An analogue of the illusion of heaviness in pressure", 1927), had to reject such an extension of theset concept as logically inadmissible. For him, as for D. Uznadze, set theory was primarily atheory of personality. In the opinion of A. Bochorishvili's set theory was originally called to solve thecardinal problems of psychology, such as the understanding and explanation of the psychic, itsrelation to the conscious and the unconscious, etc. It was also conceived by D. Uznadze toovercome the postulate of immediacy. However, after the last change, the set theory could not fulfill thistask. Train of thought of A. Bochorishvili is as follows: As long as the set theory served theexplanation of the psychic and the set was not thought as a component of the psychic but as a linkbetween the physical and the psychic, everything was all right. Taking this objective into account, D.Uznadze named the reality he discovered "subpsychic" and "biosphere". Both terms point tothe ontological status of the set outside the psychic. D. Uznadze's final choice fell on the term"set" but its content was congruent with that of his predecessors. However, in the last writingof D. Uznadze, the set became a part of the psychic, the logical difficulty of explaining the psychic by thepsychic arose, and the theory thus failed to achieve its original purpose. In his article about theattitude theory from 1955, A. Bochorishvili emphasizes: " Thus, of course, we lost the advantage thatconsisted in its (the set - the author) non-psychic-ness (sub-psychic-ness), its objectivity" 2Thereby, according to A. Bochorishvili, the unconscious psychic was put based on theconsciousness, and thereby it was explained, but now to explain remained this unconscious-psychicitself, " for which the whole theoretical work would have to be started either from the beginning, or wewould have to allow the psychic to be explained by the psychic, which would mean that we letourselves be caught again in the same subjective fetters, against which we called the scientificconcept of personality to help us: What is 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 isA. Bochorishvili unequivocally maintained this view in his further publications on set psychologybut always preserved unchanged reverence for his teacher. He also later researched the theoreticalproblems of set theory and was an uncompromising polemicist when it came to the honor of histeacher or the often occurring distortion of his theory.