In many modern sciences, the term "personification" has become widespread. This word has Latin roots and a simple, concise and understandable interpretation. However, the scope of its application is quite extensive and covers not only linguistics, but also philosophy, psychology, sociology and even mythology.
General concept
So, let's start again. Personification is a term that is used to denote the property of consciousness to endow objects that are not inspired by qualities that can only be inherent in a person. In other words, this is anthropopathism, within which various natural phenomena, animals, plants, and even characters from fictional worlds are represented as inspired individuals who possess the intellect, memory, and spiritual properties that are unique to humans. Therefore, most likely, personification is a concept that is most often found in myths and fairy tales, in fiction and science fiction films.
Etymology of the word
Before we consider the use of this term in various branches of science and art, let's get acquainted with its nature of origin. Personification is a word with Latin roots. In the first place is persona - "face" or "personality", and in second - facere, which translates as "do" or "personify". Together, these two words formed a term that received an accurate scientific explanation back in the days of the Roman Empire. He was called all those phenomena, the images of the titans and gods, as well as magical animals that knew how to talk, think and sympathize. Such characters were found in the myths of Ancient Greece and Rome, as well as in stories that have not survived, unfortunately, to this day.
Personification: Examples in the Literature
We have already established that in the myths of the ancient era this technique was very widespread. Over time, he firmly entrenched in world literature, and it began to use European, Eastern and Russian poets and writers. For example, take one folk song:
And woe, woe, woe!
And bastard girdled about
With bows, the legs are tangled.
In the poetry of the author of the Silver Age, Alexander Blok, we also meet this technique:
She lay on her bed
Her nurse is silence ...
In the prose literature of famous authors, the method of personification is encountered literally at every step. Starting from Andersen’s fairy tales, where fish can “chat” with mermaids, and tin soldiers can grieve, ending with quite realistic works by Maxim Gorky, who had “the sea laughing,” and Mikhail Lermontov, who told us how “Heavenly Clouds” feel.
Personifications in Psychology
The area in which the term is also widely used is psychology. Its significance here, however, is somewhat different, but the principle remains the same. So, personification here refers to images and pictures in the head of a person, which are formed in him from the moment of birth. At the expense of them, he sees the world through his individual prism and perceives certain phenomena in a certain way. For the first time, this term was introduced into psychology by the scientist Harry Sullivan, who believed that personality develops not only in infancy and young years, but throughout life.
Three types of personification
Sullivan divided the period of personality formation into three stages: mother, "I" and idol. At the first stage, a newborn child contacts mainly with his mother, and two images are gradually formed in his mind - “bad mother” and “good mother”. The first image is related to the fact that the nurse may not bring the desired benefit to the baby, for example, giving him a dummy. The second image is fixed by constant care and care. The child grows up and begins to make his first contacts with society, identifying himself in him. So he forms the consciousness of his own "I". Later, an adult, a mature person, enters the stage of personification of an idol. Often this is the endowment of people around him with qualities that they actually are not inherent in. In other words, this is the self-deception in which many of our contemporaries live.
Sociology
In this area for a long time and very widely began to apply the principle of personification to explain many points. For example, it is customary to combine the actions of certain people or their groups into something single that could explain what is happening. Examples of sociological personification are forms of government in various states, political views (left, right, centric), various forms of ideology, and much more. As a rule, in each of these systems a leader stands out - one person, or a party - a group of people. They have all the responsibility for what is happening. In other words, they become the personification of all those events that have arisen as a result of the actions of a much larger number of people. In the event of an unsuccessful outcome, the dominant elite often succumb to persecution.