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Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, vol. 42, no. 4, JulyAugust 2004, pp. 5570. 2004 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN 10610405/2004 $9.50 + 0.00.

L.I. BOZHOVICH

Developmental Phases of Personality Formation in Childhood (II)

In a previous article we examined the two initial critical periods in the development of a childs personalitythe crises occurring at one and at three years of age. In the present article we will consider the crisis that occurs at seven years of age, which is referred to as the transitional period between preschool and school age. It should be remembered that we have proposed that developmental crises are a result of the frustration of the childs newly developed drives, which have arisen at the end of each developmental phase as a result of the development of new basic personality structures. Also recall that each developmental phase reflects a particular role for the child with respect to the standard relationships for the society in which he lives. Thus, the life of children at each stage has a specific content, involving characteristic relationships with people in his life and a special leading type of activity, such as play, schoolwork, and work.
English translation 2004 M.E. Sharpe, Inc., from the Russian text 2001 Moskovskii psikhologo-sotsialnyi institut. Etapy formirovaniia lichnosti v ontogeneze (II), in Problemy formirovaniia lichnosti: izbrannye psikhologicheskie trudy (Moscow: Moskovskii psikhologo-sotsialnyi institut, 2001), pp. 21327. (Originally published in Voprosy psikhologii, 1979, no. 2, pp. 4756.)
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During each phase there is also a certain system of rights the child has and obligations he must fulfill. The nature of the position occupied by a child is determined, on the one hand, by the objective needs of his society, and, on the other, by the ideas in that society about the developmental capacities of children and how they should behave. These ideas develop spontaneously on the basis of extended historical experience, and, although the phases of child development they are based upon are somewhat different in societies of different types, they are similar with respect to their major features and they generally correspond to the actual course of child development. Every child, once he has reached a certain age, regardless of his individual developmental characteristics and level of readiness, is placed in the role accepted in that society, and thus becomes subject to the system of objective conditions that determine the nature of his life and activities at the given developmental stage. It is vitally important for the child to conform to these conditions because it is the only way he can feel himself successful in this position, and thus experience emotional well-being. However, during their early developmental phases (up to ages six or seven) children are not yet aware of what place they occupy in life, and thus lack any conscious desire to change their status. If children develop new capacities that are not realized in the context of their current way of life, then they experience dissatisfaction, which induces in them an unconscious protest and resistance, as in the crises at one and three years old. Things are different for children ages six to seven, who, because of the progress in their general psychological development, which we will discuss in detail below, develop a clearly expressed drive to occupy a new, more grown up position in life, doing things that are meaningful not only to themselves but also to those around them. Under conditions of universal education this drive is generally embodied in the desire to occupy the social role of the schoolchild and schoolwork, as a new socially significant activity. Of course, sometimes this desire has another specific expression:

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for example, to assume certain responsibilities, to help out in the household, and so forth. But the psychological essence of these desires is the sameolder preschoolers begin to have a drive to assume a new position in the system of social relationships as they understand these roles and to perform socially significant activity.1 The path for the appearance of this drive has been paved by the entire course of the childs psychological development and occurs when he is at a level where he can be conscious of himself not only as an initiator of actions (this was characteristic of the previous phase of development) but also as a participant in the system of human relationships. This has become possible by the end of the preschool period because of a whole series of new psychological structures that have arisen throughout the process of the childs socialization. The childs personality is now objectively a relatively stable integrated system, and he is capable, in a form appropriate to his age, of being conscious of himself in this capacity and of being aware of his relationship to the outside world. In other words, the child has developed a consciousness of his social I.2 The new level of self-consciousness occurring at the threshold of the childs school years is most appropriately expressed in his internal positioning, which forms as a result of the fact that external stimuli, refracted through the structure of the childs previously developed psychological characteristics, are in some way generalized and formed into a special new central personality structure, which is critical to the childs personality as a whole. It is this new level that determines the childs behavior and activity, as well as the whole system of his relationships to reality, himself, and the people around him. The appearance of this new structure is the critical point of the childs entire development. On the threshold of his school days, under conditions of universal education, characteristically the preschooler ceases to be satisfied with his previous way of life and wants to occupy the position of schoolchild (I want to go to school, etc.). At the same time the following must be noted: comparing

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childrens attitudes toward starting school in the 1960s with the present time reveals that, during the earlier period, children only rarely failed to dream about how they would escape the confines of the family and begin to attend school and learn. Currently, the number of such children has increased dramatically. An analysis of the causes of this phenomenon suggests that this is not a matter of delay in the childrens personality development; nor is it associated with the essence of the crisis. Older preschoolers in the 1970s also had the drive to perform serious, socially significant tasks. And although they continue to engage enthusiastically in various role playing games, nevertheless, such games are gradually giving way to other sorts of activities, games with rules (board games), and so forth. In other words, now older preschoolers do not wish to merely imitate the lives of adults, but are unconsciously seeking new types of activity and new relationships capable of forming the actual content of their own lives. But many still are not so eager to start school. Analysis suggests that this may be explained with reference to two circumstances. First, there are the difficulties associated with going to school, which the child constantly hears about from those around him, and may himself surmise through observing the lives of older children. The second cause is the fact that children already begin relatively serious learning in preschool, and, thus, the motivation to want to learn to read and write is already partially satisfied. The fact is that todays first graders, like those in the past, place great value on the role they occupy in school; the same applies to their grades, the words of the teacher, complying with rules of behavior, and many of the other school requirements. This suggests that the level of development of the schoolchild remains very important to them. Subsequently, when they move from one developmental phase to another, the psychological content of this new structure (internal positioning) they develop will be different because the internal psychological processes that form the basis of the childs sense of his own objective role also differ. But in all cases these stances will reflect the childs level of satisfaction with the role he occupies and

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the presence or absence of a sense of emotional well-being, as well as serve to generate appropriate needs and drives. The existence of an internal positioning is also characteristic of the personality formation beyond childhood. Once formed, such stances become a part of the individual during all phases of his life and determine his attitude to himself and to his position in life. However, being distinct from the internal positioning of childhood, which bears the imprint of the generalized developmental characteristics of children, the internal positioning of adults shows many more individual differences. Moreover, in childhood personality development, the childs internal positioning is associated with his drive to become something new and to occupy a more adult position in life. In maturity, it is associated with the position the individual feels is most appropriate to his needs, and, during the period of decline, with the drive to retain the position he held previously. Thus, an aging persons loss of his previous position in life is also accompanied by a crisisonly in this case the crisis marks not the beginning of a new phase of development but the start of the process of the disintegration and decay of the persons previous capacities. Returning to our discussion of the crisis at age seven, we repeat, this is the first time there is a discrepancy that the child himself is aware of between his objective social position and his internal positioning. If the shift to a new position does not occur at the right time, children begin to experience the same kind of dissatisfaction that led to the childs negative behavior during the corresponding critical period. It is interesting that such behavioral problems were relatively prevalent when school instruction started at eight years of age and decreased significantly and almost disappeared when children started to attend school a year earlier. Thus, the crisis at the age of seven occurs as a result of the frustration of the drive that is generated by the new psychological structure that develops during this period. The schoolchilds internal positioning is the new central personality structure of this period. The way for it was paved throughout

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the entire preschool period and its development is completed by the end of this period. How was the way paved, and what are its specific developmental traits? To answer these questions let us trace two lines of psychological development that are fundamental for personality development in the preschool years. The first is the line of moral development, and the second is the line of cognitive development, which together lead to the formation of the unique childs-eye view and sense of the world. *** The moral development of a preschooler is closely associated with changes in the nature of his interactions with adults and the resultant development of the moral ideas and feelings that L.S. Vygotsky called internal ethical instantiations. This line of development has been relatively well studied in child psychology and is described in the book by D.B. Elkonin3 and the work of L.I. Bozhovich.4 Elkonin links the initial appearance of ethical instantiations with changes in interactions between adults and children. He writes that preschoolchildren, unlike toddlers, begin to participate in relationships of a new type, which creates a special kind of social developmental context specific to this phase. During the previous phase, the majority of what the child did was accomplished through interaction with an adult. During the preschool period the child begins to be capable himself of meeting many of his own needs and desires. Moreover, he is not merely capable of this, but possesses the strong desire to act autonomously. As a result his collaborative relationship with adults begins to break down, and, at the same time, the direct dependence of his survival on the actions of adults is lessened. However, the emotional relationship that has been built between the child and the adult does not break down and is not even attenuated. The adult continues to be the constant center of gravity around

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which the childs life is structured. This gives rise to the need the child feels to participate in the lives of adults, to follow their example. He wants not only to repeat the individual actions of the adult (as was the case in the toddler years), but also to imitate the complex nature of adult activity, acts, interactions with othersin other words the entire way of life of adults. However, in actuality, the child is still not capable of realizing his desire. Evidently it is this that explains the flourishing of creative role playing in the preschool period. In such play the child reproduces various situations from adult life, taking on the role of the adult, and, in his imagination, behaving and performing as an adult does. This gives the child the opportunity to meet his needs, in his own way, doing what in reality he still cannot do. As Vygotsky writes, Play would not exist if preschoolchildren did not have newly maturing drives that were not realizable immediately.5 Play, he writes, must be understood as the imagined, illusory realization of unrealizable desires.6 He emphasizes that play is based not on isolated affective reactions, but on enriched (although the child is not conscious of this) affective drives. For these reasons, creative role play is, in Vygotskys definition the most important work of the preschoolchild,7 by means of which many of his psychological traits develop, and of which the most important is the ability to be guided by ethical instantiations. Of course, the childs new capacities do not form through play alone and it is not only in play that the child encounters social behavioral standards. In their everyday lives adults make certain demands of children: that they be neat, conscientious, organized, sympathetic, kind, and so forth. When they meet these standards children win approval, when they violate them they are reproached or even punished. And at this age, the approval of adults, especially parents, means so much to children that they try to earn it through their behavior. In this way, the required behavioral habits develop through the everyday lives of preschoolers, as does some kind of generalized

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meaning of many moral standards, which gives them an idea of what is good and what is bad. However, play undoubtedly has a special and very important role in moral development. When he plays his chosen role in a game, a child identifies for himself the rules and standards that are accepted in his social environment and makes them the rules of his play behavior. For example, if a little girl takes on the role of mother, she manifests concern, kindness, and attention to her baby, cares for him, prepares food, talks to him, punishes him for bad behavior, and tries to be fair. In other words, she attempts to assume in play the behavior she has taken as her model. A very interesting experiment performed by Elkonin may be cited here. The model for this was an incident described by [James] Sully in which two little girls (five and seven years old) decided to pretend to be sisters, and, while they were playing, conducted themselves not the way they usually did but the way they thought ideal sisters are supposed to behave. Elkonin asked his own daughters to pretend to be sisters as well. Although the little girls were surprised, they agreed. During their game they had no conflicts or arguments, since, following the rules of the game, they treated each other the way sisters are supposed to. The older guided the younger; the younger obeyed her sister and showed her mutual respect. From this it is clear that play facilitates the representation of socially accepted moral standards of behavior and their interpretation in the childs consciousness. At the same time, play makes these standards the childs own and not something imposed from outside, since the child makes the demands on himself. To speak metaphorically, play is the mechanism that transforms the demands of the social environment into the motivations of the child himself. He himself defines how he ought to behave in one or another situation and does not expect the approval of others for this. His reward is his own feeling of satisfaction and happiness. Thus, through everyday behavior and interaction with adults,

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and also through role playing, the preschoolchild develops some sort of generalized knowledge of social standards, but this knowledge has still not been thoroughly assimilated by the child himself and is inextricably bound up with his positive or negative emotional experiences. In other words, the first ethical instantiations are still relatively simple systemic structures, which, nevertheless, contain the seeds of the moral feelings that will form the basis for future, fully mature, moral feelings and convictions. Ethical instantiations in preschoolers give rise to moral motivations that guide their behavior. Experimental results suggest that these can have a stronger influence than many other more immediate motivations, including primary ones.8 A.N. Leontiev, on the basis of numerous studies he and his colleagues conducted, has advanced the hypothesis that the preschool period is the age in which systems of hierarchical motivation first appear, engendering personality integration, and thus that this period should be considered the time of the initial, actual formation of personality. This system of hierarchical motivations, in his opinion, begins to control the childs behavior and determines the whole course of his further development.9 This generally correct inference should, however, be supplemented with the results of subsequent psychological experiments. What develops in preschoolchildren is not simply a motivational hierarchy without which no living creature could exist or act in its own interest. Even an infant, when he experiences hunger (physical or sensory) subordinates all other drives to this dominant motivation and he begins to operate in a way strictly determined by this motivation. What develops in preschoolchildren is, first of all, not merely a motivational hierarchy, but a relatively stable extrasituational hierarchy. Furthermore, this hierarchy is dominated by motivations that are uniquely human, that is, mediated, motivations. In the preschooler they are mediated, primarily, by models of behavior and of adult activities, interactions with adults, and social standards that have been incorporated in ethical instantiations. Because of the great affective attraction the models and the

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social standards assimilated have for the child, they begin to act as powerful motivations, directing the childs behavior and actions. Thus, in a number of cases preschoolers can overcome other desires and act according to the moral motivation you should. But this is possible not only because at this age children already are able to consciously direct their behavior, but also because these moral feelings have greater motivational force than other motivations. This allows them to win out over competing motivation in a spontaneous struggle that the child does not control. In other words, older preschoolchildren develop a kind of involuntary volition and this gives their behavior stability and creates personality integration. Thus, the relatively stable hierarchical structure of motives that a child develops toward the end of the preschool period transforms him from a situational being who is controlled by the stimuli directly influencing him, and by his immediate drives, into a being who has some degree of internal integration and organization, and is thus capable of being guided by stable desires and drives associated with his assimilation of social standards. This is characteristic of the new level of child personality development, which allowed Leontiev to speak of the preschool period as the initial, actual formation of personality. However, in order to understand how all these developmental processes are reflected in this consciousness and the feelings of the child himself, as well as the nature of that self-awareness and attitude to his position in life, which we have termed internal positioning, we must analyze one more line of psychological development in preschoolersthe level and unique characteristics of his thinking. *** The cognitive path a child traverses between the ages of three and seven is enormously long. During this time, he learns so much about the world around him and masters various intellectual operations so

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well that many psychologists and educators of the past assumed that in the preschool years the childs thinking has basically undergone all the development necessary and all that is required in the future is for him to acquire the knowledge generated by various disciplines. At first glance, this opinion seems justified. It is true that the child (especially by the end of the preschool period) is already able to observe, generalize, draw conclusions, and make comparisons. He has already acquired the desire to know why things happen, to discover for himself the connections and relationships among phenomena. This can be seen in the persistence, even annoying persistence, with which children in the first half of the preschool period ask, Why? The truth is that frequently children are satisfied with the most superficial and even absurd answers. However, they still demand some kind of answer, and if an answer is not provided, the child finds his own answer using the logic characteristic of his age. And the topics they ask questions about concern children profoundly because these topics are intimately associated with their emotional attitudes to the world around them. One six-year-old boy asked his mother whether it was true that all people die and that the house in which they were living would end up empty and abandoned. His mother answered that, indeed, all people die, but that a house never remained empty because when parents die, their children live in the house, and when they die, their own children live in it, and so on forever. This answer reassured and cheered up the boy. All this suggests that the consciousness of a preschoolchild is not simply filled up with individual images, representing fragmentary knowledge, but is marked by some degree of integrated perception and interpretation of the reality that surrounds him as well as his attitudes to it. To some extent, one can say that he has his own views of the world and this world includes him and his interactions with other people. Psychological research attests to the fact that during the preschool

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period the child has already formed some kind of self-appraisal. Of course, this is not the same as that of older children, but it is also not the same as that of younger ones. Toddlers (up to two or three years) typically have a high opinion of themselves regardless of anything in particular. In contrast, preschoolers form a selfevaluation based on their own particular understanding of the success of their actions, the evaluations of those around them, and the approval of their parents. It may be said that during the preschool period the child indeed develops his own, childs, understanding of the world, its relation to him, and his attitude to himself within this world. However, it is not enough to say that the preschoolchilds consciousness and worldview is unique and specific to his age. These specific characteristics must be elucidated. What are the psychological features of this worldview that distinguish preschoolchildren, that they take with them to school, and that are only further transformed as a result of the educational process by the end of their elementary school years? Here it is appropriate to note Vygotskys theory of scientific and everyday concepts. He says that before a child begins to study in school and systematically masters systems of scientific concepts relating to various realms, he already has some knowledge of them, which he has acquired through his everyday experiences and interactions with others. These pieces of knowledge form a system by means of the generalizations that he himself has made. The results of many psychological investigations enable us to conclude that these generalizations have similar traits in all children of the same age, and that they are stable and are retained in the childs consciousness, resisting outside influences, and are only gradually transformed through the process of school instruction. Study of these generalizations enables us to understand the qualitative uniqueness of a childs consciousness. Psychological studies of everyday concepts show that they are based on generalizations that, first of all, are unconscious, and, second, nevertheless allow the child to orient himself and operate

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in the surrounding world quite well. According to Vygotsky, children who are unaware of the true criteria of what is inanimate and what animate, nevertheless faultlessly know what belongs in one or the other category. They use certain features to correctly recognize what is natural and what is manmade, although the set of features that they base this on is not consciously available to them. We obtained a striking demonstration of this unique feature of childrens thinking in an experimental study devoted to this issue.10 Our methodology was as follows: each child individually was shown one and then another object and asked whether each would float or sink. These objects included a stick, a nail, a ball, a metal food can, and a cork. The child immediately ascertained whether he had been correct by putting the object in some water. It turned out that school-age children who had not yet learned the Archimedes principle, nevertheless, were universally correct in their answers. (Later, we found that older schoolchildren were also universally correct about this.) However, when we asked why one or another object floated or sank they resorted to explanations that, though partially correct, nevertheless could not have been the true basis for their reasoning. The child who appeared to have a practical understanding of this phenomenon must thus have been relying on features in addition to those he mentioned. As an example, we cite a conversation with one subject, a seven-year-old boy. He was asked whether a rubber ball would float or sink. He answered, It will float, of course. Why? Its light. And this nail? It will sink. But why, isnt it even lighter than the ball? Yes, but its iron. What about this can? It will float. But isnt it iron as well? But it has no holes in the bottom, and so forth. It is completely obvious that the boy was only citing the features he mentioned in response to the adults question. He was unconscious of the true basis of his reasoning. He was not even aware of the fact that his explanations contradicted each other: he, nevertheless, juxtaposed them. Indeed, his completely correct predictions must have been based on some (seemingly direct) knowledge that, in turn, was founded on some generalization that he

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himself was unaware of, but that was equivalent to the concept of specific weight. This generalization permitted the child to correctly predict whether one or another object would sink or float. Just such unconscious generalizations, occurring during verbal communication, give rise to the feeling for language that children possess long before they have mastered grammar in school. This feeling allows them with incredible speed to understand and master the language of those around them and generate their own original words and phrases, as if they knew all the objective rules of the language. In the same way, their moral knowledge basically relies on a system of unconscious or incompletely conscious generalizations, which determines the specific features of their understanding and attitude to the real world. Adults also have many concepts that they use intuitively but do not thoroughly understand consciously and cannot precisely and exhaustively define in words. However, this type of concept does not occupy a dominant position in their consciousness. Before children go to school and form scientific concepts, such generalizations are characteristic of their consciousness and determine the nature of their understanding and attitude to the real world. For this reason, when we say that the child is first aware of himself as performer of actions, and then as an active member of society (participant in interactions) we mean that this knowledge is not so much rational as intuitive in nature. For this reason, the world view of a preschooler would more accurately be called an integrated sense of the world, to use I.M. Sechenovs term. The nature of such thinking is still a mystery. Even, J. Piagets remarkably subtle and scrupulous studies of preoperational thinking in children do not help us here. Neither the explanation that the child thinks symbolically on the basis of sensorimotor signs, nor that he thinks in concrete operations can reveal the mechanism underlying the formation and functioning of the complex everyday concepts (for example, the concept of specific weight) that the child possesses and that enable him to orient himself in his environment and to comprehend in practice what he cannot

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understand through logical thinking. It is no accident that Piaget describes preoperative thinking only negatively (i.e., its weakness) in comparison to operational thinking. He examines it as the preceding, more elementary phase before the phase when logical (in coded social signs) thinking develops. But thinking at the level of everyday concepts is not merely a phase, but a special form of thinking that has its own characteristics and developmental path. The individual is not aware of performing this form of thinking and does not control it consciously, but despite this, it is ultimately capable of attaining no worse and perhaps even better creative results than logical thinking. Today many researchers are directing their efforts at the study of so-called intuitive thinking, but its psychological nature remains relatively unknown. However, in one way or another, from the standpoint of cognitive development at the end of the preschool period, the child is already capable, of course, in the special way described above, of being conscious of himself (because by this time he is a relatively integrated person) and of the position that he occupies in life. Consciousness of his social I and the resultant development of an internal positioning, that is, a relatively integrated attitude to his environment and himself, give rise to motivations and drives, creating new needs. However, children do not yet know what they want and what they are striving for. As a result, play, which throughout the preschool years filled the life of the child with illusory participation in the socially significant life of adults, ceases to satisfy him by the end of this period. The child develops the psychological need to go beyond the confines of his childish way of life, to occupy a new position that is more suited to him, and to perform actual, socially significant tasks. The impossibility of meeting this need gives rise to the crisis at age seven. This is the nature of the stance that develops when the child is about to start school, and that determines the characteristics of his development during his elementary school years. Throughout this phase, this stance first grows weaker and then

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changes in nature. This change occurs in connection with the formation of a new level of self-consciousness, characterizing the critical period of adolescence. But this is the subject for another article. Notes
1. Additional detail regarding this question can be found in: Izvestiia APN RSFSR, no. 36, and also L.I. Bozhovich, Lichnost i ee formirovanie v destkom vozraste [Personality and Its Formation in Childhood] (Moscow, 1968). 2. Perhaps, it would be more accurate to speak here not about consciousness but about experiencing himself in the capacity of a social being, insofar as this occurs in a special form characteristic of children of this age. We will discuss this later when we touch on the characteristics of thinking and consciousness of the preschoolchild. 3. D.B. Elkonin, Detskaia psikhologiia [Child Psychology] (Moscow, 1960). 4. Bozhovich, Personality and Its Formation in Childhood. 5. L.S. Vygotsky, Igra i ee rol v psikhicheskom razvitii rebenka [Play and Its Role in Child Development], Voprosy psikhologii, 1966, no. 6, p. 63. 6. Ibid., p. 64. 7. Ibid., p. 62. 8. See, for example, the studies described in D.B. Elkonin, Psikhologiia [Psychology] (Moscow, 1960). 9. A.N. Leont ev [Leontiev], Psikhologicheskoe razvitie rebenka doshkolnogo vozrasta [Psychological Development of the Preschoolchild], in Voprosy psikhologii rebenka doshkolnogo vozrasta [Questions of Child Psychology in the Preschool Period] (Moscow, 1948), pp. 415. 10. L.I. Bozhovich, O psikhologigicheskoi prirode formalizma v usvoenii skholnykh znanii [On the Psychological Nature of Formalism in the Mastery of Academic Knowledge], Sovetskaia pedagogika, 1945, no. 11.

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