Thinking and imagination - The concept of imaginative thinking

Concept of thinking

Life constantly presents a person with tasks and problems of varying complexity.
The emergence of such problems, difficulties and surprises requires a person to have a deeper knowledge of the world, to discover new properties, patterns and connections in it. Each person makes many discoveries in his life, and these discoveries are not necessarily great and valuable on the scale of all humanity. Psychological research into the nature of thinking is based on the distinction between sensory and rational cognition. For human orientation in the natural and social world, sensory perception alone is not enough.

• Firstly, the essence of objects and phenomena does not directly coincide with their external appearance, accessible to perception.
• Secondly, complex phenomena of the natural and social world are inaccessible to perception; they are not expressed in visual properties.
• Thirdly, perception is limited to the reflection of objects and phenomena at the moment of their direct impact on the human senses; with the help of perception it is impossible to know what has already happened (the past) and what has not yet happened (the future).

Thinking reveals what is not directly given in perception. The main task of thinking is to identify essential, necessary connections based on real dependencies by separating them from random coincidences in time and space. In the process of thinking there is a transition from the individual to the general. Thus, thinking is characterized by a generalized reflection of reality.

In the process of thinking, the subject uses various kinds of means developed by humanity in order to penetrate into the essential connections and relationships of the objective and social world: practical actions, models, diagrams, symbols, signs, language, etc. Reliance on cultural means characterizes such a feature of thinking as its mediation.

Thus, traditional definitions of thinking, which can be found in most psychology textbooks, usually capture two of its characteristics: generalization and indirectness .

Thinking is the process of a generalized and indirect reflection of reality in its essential connections and relationships.

It is important to note two more features of thinking:

• Connection with action. S.L. Rubinstein wrote: “Thinking is closely connected with action. A person cognizes reality by influencing it, understands the world by changing it. Thinking is not simply accompanied by action, or action by thinking; action is the primary form of existence of thinking. The primary type of thinking is thinking in action and through action, thinking that occurs in action and is revealed through action”;
• Connection with speech. Human thinking is verbal thinking. Its formation occurs in the process of people communicating with each other. The formation of specifically human thinking in ontogenesis is possible only in the joint activity of an adult and a child.

Thinking as a higher mental function has four interrelated characteristics, each of which characterizes in its own way the role of speech in its development:

• Firstly, the actual human mental act is social, “divided” between people, which reflects the social nature of work activity, and for its implementation speech is necessary as a means of communication;
• Secondly, thinking arises as a process mediated first by material tools of labor, and then by a system of signs, including oral and written speech, i.e. means of consolidating and transmitting socio-historical experience;
• Thirdly, conceptual, logical thinking is arbitrary, speech acts as a system of means, mastering which a person can consciously control the thought process and organize joint mental activity;
• Fourthly, thinking as the highest mental function has a systemic structure, i.e. is built on the material of various natural processes (“manual” intelligence, involuntary attention, memory, imagination, etc.), and speech is the main “tool” with the help of which this system is organized and exists as a single mental formation.

Properties

Imagination is related to consciousness. If the contents of consciousness, which also cover experience and ideas, are called ideas and constitute the subject of knowledge, then the main task of the intellect is to find the laws that govern the environment and general sensations and ideas.

The human imagination carries not only a psychological load (as in animals), but also performs the most important cognitive operations associated with the synthesis of the sensory and rational spheres of man.

The main properties include:

1. Mentally going beyond the immediate perception of the individual.
2. Anticipation and anticipation of the future, based on previous performance results.
3. Recovering past memories.

Imagination and organic processes are also closely interrelated. In a person with a rich imagination, organic processes can also change. Heart rate increases, blood pressure rises, etc.

Types of thinking

There are different types of thinking.

Visual-effective thinking is based on the direct perception of objects, the real transformation of the situation in the process of actions with objects.

Visual-figurative thinking is characterized by reliance on ideas and images. Its functions are related to the presentation of situations and changes in them that a person wants to achieve as a result of his activities that transform the situation. Its very important feature is the composition of unusual, incredible combinations of objects and their properties. In contrast to the visually effective, here the situation is transformed only in terms of the image.

Verbal-logical thinking is a type of thinking carried out using logical operations with concepts. It is formed over a long period (from 7-8 to 18-20 years) in the process of mastering concepts and logical operations during training.

There are also theoretical and practical , intuitive and analytical , productive and reproductive thinking.

Theoretical and practical thinking differ in the type of problems being solved and the resulting structural and dynamic features. Theoretical is the knowledge of laws and rules. An example of this is the discovery of the periodic table of elements by D. I. Mendeleev. The main task of practical thinking is to prepare a physical transformation of reality: setting a goal, creating a plan, project, scheme. One of its important features is that it is deployed under conditions of severe time pressure. Practical thinking provides very limited opportunities for testing hypotheses, all this makes it sometimes more complex than theoretical thinking. The latter is sometimes compared with empirical thinking. Here the criterion is the nature of the generalizations with which thinking deals; in one case, these are scientific concepts, and in the other, everyday, situational generalizations.

They also share intuitive and analytical (logical) thinking. In this case, they are usually based on three characteristics: temporal (time of the process), structural (division into stages), level of occurrence (awareness or unconsciousness). Analytical thinking unfolds in time, has clearly defined stages, and is represented in the human mind. Intuitive thinking is characterized by rapidity, the absence of clearly defined stages, and is minimally conscious.

It is important to distinguish between productive and reproductive thinking, based on the degree of novelty of the resulting result of mental activity.

Today, psychologists are convinced that creative thinking can be taught. To do this, it is necessary to develop the appropriate abilities involved in the process of creative thinking and overcome internal barriers to creativity. Typically, psychologists name four internal barriers to creativity.

• Conformity is the desire to be like others. People are afraid to express original ideas so as not to stand out from others. Their fears are most often associated with sad childhood experiences of misunderstanding and condemnation of their ideas among adults or peers.
• Rigidity is the difficulty of switching from one stereotypical point of view to another. Rigidity does not allow you to improve ready-made solutions, to “see” the unusual in the ordinary, familiar.
• The desire to find the answer immediately. It has been noted that the best solutions come during a “creative break,” when a person gives himself the opportunity to distract himself from persistently working on a problem and relax. If a person strives to solve the problem immediately at any cost, then the risk of a premature, ill-conceived solution is very high.
• Censorship is internal criticism of any one’s own idea. People with strict internal censorship prefer to wait for a natural solution to the problem or try to shift the responsible decision to someone else. Such lack of initiative usually develops in children whose parents adhere to an authoritarian parenting style and tend to criticize any actions of the child.

It is also necessary to isolate involuntary and voluntary thought processes: involuntary transformations of dream images and purposeful solution of mental problems.

How to develop

Games

Games are suitable not only for children; adults can also “pump up” their imaginative thinking, moreover, in a fun and interesting way.

• Narrator. If you have a child, try not only reading books to him, but also inventing his own, special fairy tales. Let these be short stories. If the main characters in them are his favorite animals and toys, then he will remember them for many years. You can come up with a story together with your friends. When you suggest one phrase at a time, you will be surprised what comes out in the end. What if your company has such great potential that the world will receive new works of literature? At the very least, you'll have a lot of fun.
• Crocodile. Few people don’t know about this game, but just in case, I’ll briefly tell you about the rules. It is necessary to choose one person who will depict, and maybe even draw, the word given to him. The task of the other participants will be to guess what he is showing.
• Fantastic questions. Come up with an unusual, non-standard question and try to find equally unusual answers to it. For example: “What would you do if you now hear a bear roaring from the toilet in your house asking you to release it?”

Schemes and maps

Ordinary maps of the world or your country will do just fine. Carefully study each city and island, trying to imagine what it looks like in reality. Let's say that polar bears run around Antarctica, penguins catch fish and hatch chicks.

You can also create a map of your own apartment and not just its location, but indicating the route you should take to find hidden treasures. Carefully left by you in advance. For any occasion, this quest will be an excellent gift not only for a child, but also for a loved one.

Entertaining geometry and mathematics

If writing stories and drawing fantastic animals are not the best qualities and talents of your personality, then you can perform tasks that are suitable for people with a technical background.

Let's say there are quite complex and beautiful drawings of dots that need to be connected by lines in order. Look at interesting problems with matches, draw geometric shapes without lifting your pencil from the paper.

Solve examples in your head. If it doesn’t work out, imagine yourself subtracting or adding to a column, or, say, counting apples, cars, rings, or even sandwiches. In general, give free rein to your imagination.

Reading

During the reading process, images involuntarily appear in your head that describe characters, nature, and events. We imagine ourselves in the place of the people in question, thanks to this we experience different feelings.

Therefore, pay more attention to fiction. It will also help strengthen your memory, expand your vocabulary, improve spelling, increase your intellectual level and much more. You will learn about other useful properties of reading if you follow this link.

Photo

Look at pictures, photographs, works of art. This will help broaden your horizons and inspire you to create your own creations, even culinary ones.

Yes, and indulging in fantasies and dreams is sometimes very important. This gives energy and incentive to move on, develop and become better.

By the way, you can then create a collage of wishes from the photos you like the most. It also contributes to the realization of dreams, if only because the image of what you want becomes clearer and understandable. You can learn more about how to make it here.

Mental operations

The main mental operations are distinguished:

• analysis,
• comparison,
• synthesis,
• generalization
• abstraction , etc.

► Analysis is a mental operation of dividing a complex object into its constituent parts or characteristics.

► Comparison is a mental operation based on establishing similarities and differences between objects.

► Synthesis is a mental operation that allows one to mentally move from parts to the whole in a single process.

► Generalization is the mental unification of objects and phenomena according to their common and essential characteristics.

► Abstraction (distraction) is a mental operation based on highlighting the essential properties and connections of an object and abstracting from other, unimportant ones.

Features of imagination as a mental process

The creations of great artists and culinary recipes, vivid fantastic images created by the creativity of writers, and folk tales, ingenious inventions and new collections of famous fashion designers - all this was created thanks to the imagination. And our imagination is also associated with our fears, anxieties, hopes, dreams - everything that gives birth to our consciousness and subconscious. It is difficult to find at least one mental process that does not depend on this unusual phenomenon.

It is not for nothing that imagination is called the most amazing and mysterious phenomenon of the psyche, and, despite the long history of study, many mysteries related to it have not yet been solved. Read about how to develop your imagination here.

In a broad sense, imagination refers to the reproduction and transformation of images stored in memory. The second signaling system, that is, words-concepts, play a secondary role in the imagination, and more often act as catalysts that stimulate the process of creating new images. For example, we can imagine an animal we have never seen or a place we have never been to based on its verbal description.

Forms of thinking

The main forms of logical thinking are concept, judgment, inference .

A concept is a form of thinking that reflects the essential properties, connections and relationships of objects and phenomena, expressed in a word or group of words.

Concepts can be general and individual , concrete and abstract .

In its development, thinking goes through two stages: pre-conceptual and conceptual.

During the normal development of a child, pre-conceptual thinking, the components of which are concrete images, is replaced by conceptual (abstract) thinking, which is characterized by concepts and formal operations. Conceptual thinking does not come immediately, but gradually, through a series of intermediate stages. Thus, L. S. Vygotsky identified 5 stages in the transition to the formation of concepts.

1. The first is for a child 2-3 years old. When asked to put together similar objects that fit together, he puts any objects together, believing that those placed next to each other are suitable - such is the syncretism of children's thinking.
2. The second stage is different in that children use elements of objective similarity between two objects, but the third object can be similar only to one of the first pair - a chain of pairwise similarities arises.
3. The third stage occurs at the age of 7-10, when children can combine a group of objects by similarity, but are not able to recognize and name the features that characterize this group.
4. And finally, in adolescents aged 11-14 years, conceptual thinking appears, but it is still imperfect, since primary concepts are formed on the basis of everyday experience and are not supported by scientific data.
5. Perfect concepts are formed at the 5th stage, in adolescence, when the use of theoretical principles allows one to go beyond one’s own experience.

So, thinking develops from concrete images to perfect concepts, designated by words. The concept initially reflects the similar, unchangeable in phenomena and objects.

Another form of thinking is judgment.

Judgment is a form of thinking that reflects connections between objects and phenomena; affirmation or denial of something. Judgments can be true or false.

Inference is a form of thinking in which a definite conclusion is drawn based on several judgments. Inferences are distinguished between inductive, deductive, and analogical. Induction is a logical conclusion in the process of thinking from the particular to the general. Deduction is a logical conclusion in the process of thinking from the general to the specific. Analogy is a logical conclusion in the process of thinking from particular to particular (based on some elements of similarity).

Individual differences in the mental activity of people are associated with such qualities of thinking as breadth, depth and independence of thinking, flexibility of thought, speed and criticality of the mind .

Breadth of thinking is the ability to cover the entire issue, without at the same time missing the details necessary for the matter. Depth of thinking is expressed in the ability to penetrate into the essence of complex issues. The opposite quality is superficiality of judgment, when a person pays attention to little things and does not see the main thing.

Independence of thinking is characterized by a person’s ability to put forward new problems and find ways to solve them without resorting to the help of other people. Flexibility of thought is expressed in its freedom from the constraining influence of techniques and methods of solving problems fixed in the past, in the ability to quickly change actions when the situation changes.

Quickness of mind is a person’s ability to quickly understand a new situation, think and make the right decision,

Haste of the mind is manifested in the fact that a person, without thoroughly thinking through a question, picks out one side of it, rushes to make a decision, and expresses insufficiently thought-out answers and judgments.

A certain slowness of mental activity may be due to the type of nervous system - its low mobility, “The speed of mental processes is the fundamental basis of intellectual differences between people” (G. Eysenck).

Criticality of mind is a person’s ability to objectively evaluate his own and others’ thoughts, carefully and comprehensively check all put forward provisions and conclusions.

Individual characteristics include a person’s preference for a visual-effective, visual-figurative or abstract-logical type of thinking.

Along with perception, memory and thinking, imagination plays an important role in human activity. In the process of reflecting the surrounding world, a person, together with the perception of what is acting on him at the moment, or the visual representation of what influenced him before, creates new images.

► Imagination is the mental process of creating something new in the form of an image, idea or idea.

A person can mentally imagine something that he did not perceive or do in the past, he may have images of objects and phenomena that he has not encountered before. Imagination is unique to man and is a necessary condition for his work activity.

Being a necessary condition for human labor activity, it is always aimed at his practical activities. Before taking action, he imagines what should be done and how. Thus, a person creates in advance an image of a material thing that will be produced in practice. This ability of a person to imagine in advance the final result of his work, as well as the process of creating a material thing, sharply distinguishes human activity from the “activity” of animals, sometimes very skillful.

Imagination is always a certain departure from reality. But in any case, its source is objective reality.

Imagination plays a very important role in human life and activity. Among its many functions, the most significant are the following:

• goal setting and planning . The future result and the possibilities of achieving it are initially created in the imagination of the subject;
• educational _ Imagination carries out a mental retreat beyond the limits of what is directly perceived, constructs a concept about an object even before this concept itself is formed;
• activation of thought processes . Imagination allows you to use images in the thinking process.
• adaptive _ In the child’s psyche, a conflict arises between an excess of external information and a lack of means necessary to understand and explain the environment. Under these conditions, the child’s brain must certainly counteract the external flow of information falling upon it with a means that would allow it to recombine the source material and thus increase the volume of what is perceived, for example, fairy tales and myths;
• psychotherapeutic _ Why do children tell horror stories? This is a kind of protection against fears that appear in children at a certain stage of development.

Types of imagination.

There are several types of imagination, the main ones being passive and active . Passive , in turn, is divided into voluntary (daydreaming, daydreaming) and involuntary (hypnotic state, fantasy in dreams). Active imagination includes artistic, creative, critical, recreative and anticipatory .

Active imagination is always aimed at solving a creative or personal problem. A person operates with fragments, units of specific information in a certain area, combining them in various ways. Stimulation of such a process creates objective opportunities for the emergence of original new connections between the conditions recorded in the memory of a person and society. In an active imagination there is little daydreaming and “groundless” fantasy. It is connected with the future and operates with time as a well-defined category (that is, a person does not lose his sense of reality, does not place himself outside of temporary connections and circumstances). This imagination is directed more outward, a person is occupied with the environment, society, activity and, to a lesser extent, with internal subjective problems. Active imagination, finally, is awakened by a task and directed by it; it is determined by volitional efforts and is amenable to volitional control.

Recreating imagination is one of the types of active imagination, when the construction of new images and ideas occurs in accordance with stimulation perceived from the outside in the form of verbal messages, diagrams, conventional images, signs, etc. Despite the fact that its products are completely new, previously not perceived human images, it is based on previous experience.

Anticipatory imagination underlies a very important human ability: to anticipate future events, foresee the results of one’s actions, etc. Etymologically, foresee is closely related to the word “see,” which shows the importance of awareness of the situation and transferring certain of its elements into the future, which is based on knowledge or predicting the logic of events. Thanks to this ability, a person can “with his mind’s eye” see what will happen to him, to other people or to things around him in the future. F. Lersch called this the Promethean (looking forward) function of the imagination, which depends on the magnitude of life’s perspective: the younger the person, the stronger and brighter his imagination is oriented into the distance. In older and older people, the imagination is more connected with events of the past.

Creative imagination is a type of imagination when a person independently creates new images and ideas that are valuable to other people or society as a whole and which are embodied (“crystallized”) into specific original products of activity. Creative imagination is a necessary component and basis of all types of human creative activity. Its images are created through various intellectual operations. In the structure of creative imagination, two types are distinguished. With the help of the first, ideal images are formed, with the help of the second, finished products are processed.

One of the first psychologists to study these processes, T. Ribot, identified two main operations: dissociation and association .

Dissociation is a negative and preparatory operation during which sensory experience is fragmented. As a result of such preliminary processing of experience, its elements are able to give a new combination.

Without prior dissociation, creative imagination is unthinkable. This is its first stage, the stage of preparing the material. The inability to dissociate is a significant obstacle to creative imagination.

Association is the creation of a holistic image from its elements. It gives rise to new combinations, new images.

There are other intellectual operations, such as the ability to think by analogy with particular and purely accidental similarities.

Passive imagination is subject to internal, subjective factors. It obeys desires that seem fulfilled in fantasy. In the images of passive imagination, unsatisfied, mostly unconscious, needs of the individual are “satisfied”. All this is aimed at strengthening and preserving positively colored emotions and at repressing and reducing negative affects.

In the process of such passive imagination, an unreal, imaginary satisfaction of any need or desire is realized. This is the difference from realistic thinking, aimed at real, and not imaginary satisfaction of needs,

The materials of passive imagination, like active imagination, are images, ideas, elements of concepts and other information gleaned from experience.

Based on the nature of performance, the following are distinguished:

• reproducing imagination - the products of which were already known earlier.

• creative imagination.

According to the qualitative features determined by specific areas of application, T. A. Ribot gives the following types of imagination:

• plastic - it uses images and their connections indicated in space, corresponding to the actual relationship of objects, has an external character;

• vague - it uses emotional images that do not have definite outlines in space (imagination in music.

• mystical - it uses symbols; mysticism transforms natural images into symbolic ones, striving to embody the ideal in the forms of external nature;

• scientific - saturated with scientific thinking (in sciences that are just being built, it acts as scientific mythology; in sciences that have developed, it revives logical schemes);

Ability to find solutions to problems

Before moving on to tools for developing productive imagination, it is important to note that everyone has the ability to imagine creatively. The human mind has an important property, which is the presence of an incentive to eliminate logical contradictions

For example, many smokers, knowing about the serious harm of smoking, always know how to explain to themselves and the people around them the reason why they do not give up this harmful habit. It turns out that smokers are faced with an internal contradiction “smoking is good - smoking is bad”, which in psychology is called cognitive dissonance (see Wikipedia). This contradiction causes psychological discomfort, and people are forced to come up with all possible ways to eliminate this contradiction, and some of them reflect the high creative abilities of a person: smoking can be harmful, but pleasant, smoking helps creativity, puts you in the right mood, helps train breathing, reduces weight etc. Almost every smoker has his own excuse, which was caused by a logical contradiction.

It turns out that a person is initially programmed to struggle with contradictions and look for a way out of the current difficult situation. In the previous lesson, we had many modified judgments regarding the object in the chosen focus. At the stage of breaking the pattern, we violated logic and came to dissonance, which will have to be corrected with the help of our imagination, life experience and natural predisposition to a certain type of thinking. Moreover, the ability of people to effectively search for solutions to logical contradictions is stronger, the more experience a person has, ideas about various models of behavior and other knowledge about the world around him.

To understand how this mechanism works for you personally, and also to train your imagination, we suggest you complete an exercise called “Jumbled Letters in Words”

Ways to build new images

The transformation of reality in the imagination is carried out by methods; called "techniques" of imagination . These include:

Combination , the combination of data in the experience of elements in new, more or less unusual combinations. This is the simplest technique of imagination, and it is what researchers of the past had in mind when they considered associations to be the mechanism of imagination.

Agglutination, a combination option in which a non-random set of traits is subject to combination, undergoes a direct selection of them according to a specific plan, concept.

Accentuation , emphasizing certain features of a phenomenon, which transforms its overall appearance. It should highlight the characteristic, essential, important.

Hyperbole and litotes - Changes in magnitude, quantitative growth and decrease - are special options for emphasis (very large or very small in relation to reality are emphasized. When in the imagination there is immediately an increase in some sides and a decrease in others, we are talking about polarization.

Idealization , The construction of idealized images free from all petty things, which sometimes cause the illusion of exclusivity and perfection of a certain phenomenon. The main essence of dreams lies in the pursuit of ideal.

Typification , Specific generalization. Through the concrete in the image that appears to the type, the generally significant is highlighted.

Alegorization, Creation of allegory - the use of an image in a figurative sense. An image acts only as a conventionally chosen sign of some phenomenon of reality.

Metaphorization , Construction of metaphors. A metaphor is a deeper mental representation of a phenomenon than an allegory, since there is a certain similarity and analogy between the metaphorical image and its meaning.

Symbolization , the use of symbols, is the most profound, essential filling of the imagination technique. Understanding the language of symbols helps a person consciously receive messages from his own unconscious (dreams, etc.). A symbol differs from a sign in that it is not conventionally chosen to designate, but is deeply, essentially united with what it denotes. Unlike a concept, a symbol has an unlimited amount of meaning. Only the universal, due to the very way of human existence, can be expressed through symbols.

In the technique of imagination, a complex dynamic unity of the conscious and unconscious is always created.

Functions

Motivation for activity. If you create a sufficiently vivid image of your desire, it will give you energy to achieve it. Regulation of behavior. When faced with complex situations that require decision-making, imagination can help discover the most effective, imaginative, and imaginative options. Illusory satisfaction of needs by replacing reality with fantasies. Sometimes this allows you to maintain peace of mind and psychological and moral state in times of difficulty. But, unfortunately, if you often use your imagination to cope with life’s troubles, there is a high risk of completely losing touch with reality. This is what happens with gambling addiction. Organization of cognition

If for some reason it is not possible to study an important object or subject, then with the help of images it is quite possible to model it, completing the missing elements.