Psychological and educational orientation of V. N. Karpov’s dialogues

Abstract

The article discusses psychological and pedagogical orientation of V. N. Karpov’s dialogues. Karpov is an outstanding philosopher and psychologist of the mid-19 th century. Karpov’s dialogues reflect his psychological views. The article does not explore the content of the dialogues, instead, it focuses on the technical side, i.e., the genre of a dialogue as a tool to present Karpov’s views on psychology. The research shows that it was not by chance that Karpov chose the dialogue as a method. Karpov’s method aims to engage the young reader into a dialectical conversation. Thus, the reader becomes a full-fledged participant of the dialogue unfolding in the book. The dialogue between the Mentor and the Student engages the reader as the ‘third participant’. The Mentor and the Student combine both cognitive positions, which we call epistemological types. The position of the reader shapes and actualizes the archetype of Meaning, as the most important aspect of a person’s spiritual maturity. The article reveals the content of epistemological types as cognitive elements of psychodynamics. This is in contrast to the well-known metaphors of transactional analysis, where the ego-positions of the Child, Parent, and Adult express the psycho-emotional dynamics of interpersonal relationships. In Karpov’s text, children play the role of students seeking knowledge, while the role of the parent is scientific mentoring. Adulthood is a procedural form of actualization of a person’s spiritual maturity, which, as stated above, is realized by the very format of a dialectical conversation that involves the reader in a psychodynamic semantic context. The article denotes this role as the Sage, since the concept embraces not only the philosophical tradition of understanding the spiritual and cognitive essence of the human, but also the namesake Jungian archetype of meaning. Cognitive psychodynamics revealed through dialectical conversation, embraces the archetype of meaning as a key synthetic element of the cognitive process and development of the human personality. The article puts forward a hypothesis that the study and use of the method of dialectical conversation in teaching and learning can expand the range of educational tools and enhance the effectiveness of both the learning process and the development of spiritual maturity in students.