The Formation of Russian Christian Psychology

Abstract

This article deals with the place of Christian psychology in the system of psychological knowledge. The author points to the need to distinguish between the two systems of knowledge: the psychology of the mind and the psychology of the person. The psychology of the mind is the science devoted to the process of the formation of a particular mental form. The psychology of the person is the science that studies established mental forms, which are already present in our minds and “exist according to their own laws.”

The author proposes a distinction between the different logics of research and the description of its results. He supposes that there are three such logics: the first works with object ignorance or ignorance of the object of study, the second works with ignorance of history and the laws that govern the formation of a certain phenomenon, and the third works with ignorance of the meaning and purpose of a phenomenon. He encourages researchers and practitioners to move from the first, object-based logic, to the third, which works at the juncture between “mind and body” and “soul and spirit.”

For this purpose, according to the author, it is necessary to harmonize Christian, psychological, and pedagogical anthropology and, as a result of the anthropological paradigm in human knowledge systems, distinguish between three types of psychological knowledge: the psychology of the mind, the psychology of the human, and Orthodox (Christian) psychology, which is the psychology of the life path.

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The Formation of Russian Christian Psychology

Notes

English translation © 2016 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, from the Russian text © 2015 “Vestnik PSTGU IV: Pedagogika. Psikhologiia.” “Stanovlenie otechestvennoi khristianskoi psikhologii: problemy i perspektivy,” Vestnik PSTGU IV: Pedagogika. Psikhologiia, 2015, no. 1(36), pp. 87–94. Viktor Ivanovich Slobodchikov, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Education, and doctor of psychological sciences, is a professor at the Institute of Psychopedagogical Problems of Childhood at the Russian Academy of Education and at the Scientific Center for the Modern Western Psychology of Religion of the Faculty of Theology, St. Tikhon's Orthodox University of Humanities; E-mail: [email protected]. Translated by Kenneth Cargill.

Additional information

Funding

This article was prepared under the project “The Modern Western Psychology of Religion: Adaptations for the Russian Context” (RNF Grant 14-18-03771, organizational recipient of funding: St. Tikhon's Orthodox University of Humanities).