Industrial psychology: Subject, objectives of discipline and geopolitics. Part 1 (in Russian)

Abstract

The subject of psychology as a scientific discipline remains a topic of scientific discussions; the issues of the subject of individual disciplinary areas also remain open (due to the development of science, the evolution of social objects, changes in the current social demand, features of the sociohistorical environment). Purpose. The understanding of the subject, tasks and methods of industrialpsychology formulated in the early twentieth century and approved in foreign psychology is criticallyexamined. Methodology. A comparative analysis of the history of the development of states (the USA andRussia) from the end of the nineteenth century to the present (participation in defensive or aggressivewars, population losses, emigration and/or immigration, changes in territory), current social problemsis carried out. The transmission of fragments of culture (including scientific achievements as standards) is considered as components of “soft power”, consistently implemented in the logic of the geopoliticsof states — forms and means of influence of some states on others. The history of the discipline’s development, methodologemes and ideologemes dominating in foreign psychology, the validity of the methodological tools, which are not entirely acceptable for domestic industrial psychology at this historical stage, are analyzed; the problems of the state of Russian psychology and our resources are considered. It is summarized that the main tasks for us remain “saving people”, focusing psychology on solving urgent social problems (development of human resources, as development of social capital,etc.). Findings. It is proposed to carry out a creative and critical rethinking of the basic phenomenaand concepts of domestic scientists; to look for new forms of presenting “old questions” in the logic ofthe paradigm of joint activity, in the logic of the post-non-classical type of rationality, expanding our “horizons of vision”; to learn to bring our discoveries and inventions to the level of social technologies. We need to form a new vision of our subject and tasks, so that this vision of our future becomes an instrument for its approximation, a way of managing its evolution, a means of its implementation, a theory and practice of its embodiment.