The concept of consciousness is one of the most controversial and complex topics in psychology. Domestic scientists have repeatedly turned to the study of the phenomenon called "the mystery of human consciousness."
Throughout the history of the relatively young science of psychology, scientists were worried about one of the most important issues - the study of consciousness. But, oddly enough, for quite a long time this concept remained without definition. In Russian psychology, one of the first to explain the term “consciousness” was the outstanding Russian psychiatrist V. M. Bekhterev. He believed that the basis for the definition of consciousness is the difference between conscious mental processes and unconscious ones, understanding by consciousness that subjective coloration that accompanies any human activity.
Since then, the problem of studying consciousness has become more and more illuminated in Russian psychology. The main task was to search for answers to the questions: "For what and how did consciousness arise in the process of the formation and development of a person?", "Is it given from birth or is it formed during life?" and "How does consciousness develop in a child?" These and many other questions have become the starting point for the study of such an important concept not only in science, but also in human life.
In order to solve the "riddle of human consciousness", scientists began to wonder about the origin of this phenomenon. Thus, the Soviet psychologist A. N. Leont'ev believed that consciousness appears under the condition of human interaction in "social relations", and individual consciousness, paradoxically, is formed only under the influence of social consciousness.
Another Soviet psychologist, L. S. Vygotsky, continuing the ideas of Leontiev, comes to the conclusion that the experience of social interaction is the main factor in the formation and development of consciousness. From this we can conclude that consciousness is not given from birth, but, on the contrary, is the result of a person's interaction with the world around him. In addition, scientists agreed that language and speech are also prerequisites for the emergence of consciousness.
Analyzing and generalizing the work of Russian psychologists (L. S. Vygotsky, S. L. Rubinstein, A. N. Leontyev, B. G. Ananyev, V. P. Zinchenko, etc.), several functions of consciousness can be distinguished: reflection of the surrounding reality, planning, creative function, assessment and control of behavior in society, the formation of attitudes towards external factors, the formation of individuality.
Thus, in the domestic mainstream of psychology, it is gradually becoming clear why we need consciousness. However, it should be understood that the concept of consciousness is the most complex in science, and the main difficulty in studying it was that scientists had to resort only to self-observation methods, which deprived the study of objectivity. That is why this topic in Russian psychology, and in the world as well, causes the greatest number of controversies and discussions.
