THE PROBLEM OF HAPPINESS IN THE PSYCHOLOGICAL HERITAGE OF M. GROT

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the problem of happiness in the psychological heritage of the outstanding Ukrainian psychologist Mykola Grot. The article for the first time analyzes the work of M. Grot “Fundamentals of moral duty” to study the phenomenon of happiness. The problem of happiness is more acute than ever and relevant for modern Ukrainian society and requires comprehensive psychological research, both empirical and theoretical. Historical and psychological researches are extremely relevant for modern psychological science both in Ukraine and in the world, because they allow to systematize scientific knowledge and help psychology to overcome the scientific crisis. The author analyzes the reasons why the name of the famous psychologist M. Grot was artificially “forgotten” and underestimated by domestic psychological science. It is proved that psychology and psychological research should be separated from the types of worldview that prevail in society in a given era and affect almost all the dominant spheres of human life. Psychological science therefore “broke away” from real life with a real, living person, because psychologists of the XX century mostly adhered to the materialist type of worldview (“Marxism-Leninism”), according to which matter is primary and rejected the scientific ideas of idealist psychologists, among the unjustly forgotten names which are the name of the outstanding domestic psychologist-idealist Nikolai Yakovlevich Grot (1852–1899). The purpose of the article is to explore the psychological ideas of the phenomenon of happiness in the scientific work of M. Grot. To denote the two types of happiness according to M. Grotto, the author proposed two authorial concepts: deficient happiness (D-happiness) to denote the physiological needs of the body and existential happiness (B-happiness), which manifests itself in the form of bliss by analogy with selected D-motives and B-motives of A. Maslow. The author concludes that the psychological ideas of happiness in the scientific heritage of M. Grot consist in the fact that happiness is understood as a criterion of psychological health of the individual. It is normal for every mentally healthy person to want to be happy. A person is motivated by the search for personal happiness. That is, happiness is an innate psychological need that unconsciously demands its satisfaction.