In the history of psychology, there is an activity approach that reveals the development of the human psyche and consciousness through various forms of activity. In addition, the psyche and consciousness of some researchers are also denoted by activities that are internal. They come from the external, objective actions of man. In connection with this, two fundamentally important terms arose in psychology: interiorization and exteriorization. These are processes characterizing the development of various forms of human activity (external and internal).
Forms of human activity in psychology
The external activity of a person, according to the activity approach in psychology, is represented by the visible behavior of a person: practical operations, speech. The internal form of activity is mental, invisible to other people. For a long time, the subject of the study of psychology was only internal activity, because external was considered its derivative. Over time, the researchers came to the conclusion that both forms of activity constitute a single whole, depend on each other, are subject to the same laws (the presence of a motivating need, motive, and goal). And interiorization and exteriorization are the mechanisms of interaction of these forms of human activity.
Correlation of interiorization and exteriorization
Interiorization and exteriorization are interconnected processes, mechanisms, due to which the process of assimilation of social experience by a person takes place. A person accumulates the social experience of generations through the demonstration of tools, speech. This is internalization, an active internal process of forming consciousness on the basis of acquired experience.
Based on the acquired signs and symbols of society, a person forms his actions. This is the reverse process. The existence of one of them is impossible without the previous one. The concept of “exteriorization” means, therefore, the formation of a person’s behavior and speech based on the social experience that has developed internally in him.
The concept of "exteriorization"
Externalization is a process, the result of which is the transition of the person’s internal (mental, invisible) activity to the external, practical. This transition takes on a symbolic and symbolic form, which means the existence of this activity in society.
Representatives of Russian psychology (A. Leontyev, P. Halperin) were engaged in the development of the concept, but L. Vygotsky gave it the first designation . In his cultural-historical theory, the psychologist expressed the opinion that the process of the formation of the human psyche, the development of his personality occur through the assimilation of the cultural signs of society.
In the modern sense, exteriorization is the process of building and implementing external actions of a person, including verbal expression, on the basis of his inner mental life: personal experience, plan of action, formed ideas and experienced feelings. An example of this is the assimilation of the educational influence of a child and its manifestation externally through moral actions and judgments.