Toward the Question of the Genesis, Function, and Structure of Emotional Processes in the Child

Abstract

The study of emotions and their development is very important in the investigation of general problems of the ontogenesis of human psyche, because the latter cannot be reduced to the development of intellect. The periodic changes in cognitive activity that take place during childhood are necessarily associated—as L. S. Vygotsky has correctly pointed out (1956; 1982, vol. 2)—with deep changes in the motivational-emotional aspect of a child's personality. At the same time, the study of the genesis of human emotions has an immense psychological-pedagogical value, in that the upbringing of a young generation presupposes teaching children not only a specific system of skills, habits, and knowledge, but also the formation of a specific emotional attitude toward their surrounding reality and people, an attitude that corresponds to the goals, moral standards, and ideals of society.