Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev(1857-1927), Russian neurologist, psychiatrist and psychologist, founder scientific school. Fundamental works on anatomy, physiology and pathology nervous system. Studies of the therapeutic use of hypnosis, including in alcoholism. Works on sex education, early child behavior, social psychology. Investigated personality on the basis of a comprehensive study of the brain by physiological, anatomical and psychological methods. Founder of reflexology. Organizer and leader of the Psycho-Neurological Institute (1908; now named after Bekhterev) and the Institute for the Study of the Brain and Mental Activity (1918).

“Arriving in Kazan in 1885 as a 28-year-old professor, Bekhterev headed the Department of Mental Diseases of Kazan University and widely developed scientific work ...”

“... he created in Kazan the first psychophysiological laboratory in Russia, performed numerous studies, and in 1892 founded the Society of Neurologists and Psychiatrists at Kazan University. Bekhterev was not only its editor, but also the author of many articles.

In Kazan, Bekhterev laid the foundation for the preventive direction in psychiatry. At one time in public speaking in Kazan, he boldly pointed to economic conditions as the cause of the spread of mental illness in Tsarist Russia. For the first time in world science, Bekhterev raised the question of the need scientific approach in the upbringing of children from infancy and in the upbringing of work skills in adolescents. Living in Kazan, Vladimir Bekhterev petitioned for the creation of a special clinic for mental illness, organized drug treatment for the population, developed and implemented the method of collective hypotherapy. Belokopytov V., Shevchenko N. The streets of Kazan are named after them. - Kazan: Tatar book publishing house, 1977, p.49

More complete biography Vladimir Bekhterov

Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev was born on January 20, 1857 in the family of a minor civil servant in the village of Sorali, Yelabuga district, Vyatka province. In 1865, his father Mikhail Pavlovich, who rose to the rank of collegiate secretary, died of tuberculosis. The family by that time lived in Vyatka. All worries about her fell on the shoulders of the mother of Maria Mikhailovna, nee Nazareva.

In August 1867, the boy began classes at the Vyatka Gymnasium, one of the oldest in Russia. After graduating from seven classes of the gymnasium in 1873, the young man successfully passed the exams at the Medical and Surgical Academy - he was enrolled in the first year of the medical department. On December 6, 1876, Vladimir Bekhterev, a fourth-year student at the Medical and Surgical Academy, took part with a group of comrades in a joint demonstration of workers and students, at which political demands were put forward.

Actively participating in public life, Vladimir Bekhterev at the same time did not forget that the main thing for him is the accumulation of knowledge. He studied successfully and already in the fourth year he determined his future profession- he decided to devote himself to neuropathology and psychiatry, which at the academy were then considered as a single clinical discipline.

On April 12, 1877, Russia again entered the war. It was a Russo-Turkish war that was fought in the Balkans and the Transcaucasus. Academy professor Sergei Petrovich Botkin called on the students of the academy to take part in the summer military campaign of 1877. Vladimir Bekhterev, who had just completed his fourth year ahead of schedule, then joined the sanitary detachment, organized with the money of wealthy students - the Ryzhov brothers.

From the front, Bekhterev returned sick with "Bulgarian fever" and was hospitalized in a clinic, where he was treated for about two months.

The course of study at the Medico-Surgical Academy was quickly coming to an end. Although the war with the Turks ended with the Treaty of Saint-Stefan signed on February 19, 1878, the international situation remained tense. The Russian army was in dire need of doctors, and final exams at the Academy in 1878 he was held ahead of schedule. From April 1 to April 20, Bekhterev was among the three graduates who had more than two-thirds of excellent grades for the entire course of study at the academy. In this regard, he received a cash bonus of 300 rubles and, most importantly, the right to take an exam at the Institute for the Improvement of Doctors that existed at the Academy, or, as it was often called, the “professorial” institute that trained scientific and pedagogical personnel.

Bekhterev successfully passed the exam at the Institute for the Improvement of Doctors, receiving the highest score, however, like his comrades who were awarded this right, he was not enrolled in it. In view of the tense foreign policy situation, all of them entered the temporarily organized reserve of army doctors at the Clinical Military Hospital - the basic medical institution of the Academy. As a result, Vladimir Bekhterev turned out to be a trainee doctor at the clinic for mental and nervous diseases headed by I. P. Merzheevsky. In the clinic, Bekhterev worked enthusiastically. He read a lot and, in addition to medical activities, paid great attention to experimental research.

In 1879, Vladimir Bekhterev was accepted as a full member of the St. Petersburg Society of Psychiatrists. In September of the same year, Vladimir Mikhailovich married nineteen-year-old Natalya Petrovna Bazilevskaya, who studied at women's pedagogical courses. She arrived in St. Petersburg in 1877 from Vyatka, where her family lodged in the Bekhterevs' house. Thus, Vladimir knew both Natasha and her parents well back in his gymnasium years.

The Bekhterevs rented an apartment not far from the Medico-Surgical Academy. Natasha turned out to be a good housewife and managed to create good working conditions for her husband. Now the young scientist did not always sit up in the clinic in the evenings. In the first months family life he usually spent the evenings at home. During this period, in 1880, he wrote a long-conceived series of "everyday and ethnographic essays" published under the title "Votiaks, their history and state of the art” in two issues of the major St. Petersburg magazine Vestnik Evropy.

The ethnographic essays of Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev received a significant response in wide circles of the Russian democratic public. For the first time, many learned from them the unattractive details of the savage life of one of the numerous small nationalities that inhabited Russian empire. Doctor Bekhterev also became known as a publicist, able to reveal social problems that were topical for the country.

April 4, 1881 Bekhterev successfully defended his thesis for the degree of Doctor of Medicine. The conducted studies strengthened the position of supporters of the existence of the material basis of mental illness and the system in the life of the whole organism. Shortly after defending his dissertation "Experience in the clinical study of temperature in certain forms of mental illness" it was published as a monograph in Russian and German.

Vladimir Bekhterev was awarded academic title Privatdozent, after which they were allowed to give lectures on the diagnosis of nervous diseases to fifth-year students. In March 1884, he was enrolled in a clinic for mental illness in a full-time medical position.

In May 1884 scientific director Bekhterev Professor I.P. Merzheevsky proposed to the Conference of the Military Medical Academy to send Bekhterev to further improve scientific knowledge in the countries Western Europe. The list of printed works of the young scientist by that time consisted of fifty-eight titles. Of particular interest was his series of clinical studies of peripheral and central organs of balance, the materials of which were reflected in a number of articles and in the generalizing work "The Theory of the Formation of Our Concepts of Space".

Bekhterev's experimental work was important, making it possible to clarify the function of the so-called hillocks located in the depths of the brain. By irritating these brain structures in experimental animals, the scientist established for the first time that they "serve primarily for detecting those movements through which the emotional side of mental life is expressed."

For the article “On forced and violent movements during the destruction of some parts of the central nervous system”, written in 1883, which significantly supplemented information about the role of individual brain structures and the provision of motor functions, Vladimir Bekhterev was awarded the silver medal of the Society of Russian Doctors. In the same year, he was elected a member of the Italian Society of Psychiatrists, which testified to the recognition of the merits of the young scientist outside of Russia.

Bekhterev went abroad in June 1884. He first visited Germany and then moved to Paris, where he first of all wanted to work with Jean Martin Charcot, the founder of the world's first department for neurological patients, opened at the hospital of the medical faculty of the university in the Salpetriere suburb of Paris.

In December 1884 Bekhterev, while in Leipzig, received an official invitation to take the chair in Kazan. He accepted the offer and shortened the trip, since by September 1885 he needed to return to his homeland.

The Department of Psychiatry in Kazan Vladimir Mikhailovich had to reorganize. Having headed the department and the laboratory, Bekhterev had the opportunity to concentrate all his efforts on the implementation of a long-planned plan, to study the nervous system and the physiological, psychological and clinical problems associated with it as best as possible. The time has come for systematic knowledge of the essence of human nervous and mental activity in conditions of norm and pathology. The first stage of this knowledge was the study of the structure of the brain.

Vladimir Bekhterev wrote then that without knowledge of the morphology of the brain "... it is impossible to do without a single neuropathologist and any doctor in general who claims to have a correct understanding of nervous diseases." He paid special attention to the study of the pathways of the brain, using many methods for studying the nervous tissue, in particular, the embryonic method, or the method of development.

V. Bekhterev argued that certain areas of the cerebral cortex perform certain functions. In 1887, in the article “Physiology of the motor area of ​​the cerebral cortex,” he wrote: “... I do not at all consider myself among those authors who look at the cortex as a mosaic consisting of separate pieces of different colors. The cerebral cortex, perhaps, is likened to a map painted with separate colors in separate areas, but in such a way that neighboring colors, of course, mix with each other and at the same time, perhaps, on this map there is not a single area covered with one color, but not mixed from many colors. This idea of ​​V.M. Bekhterev later found development in the teachings of the physiologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov on the projection and associative fields of the cerebral cortex.

Morphological and physiological studies conducted by Bekhterev in the laboratories of Kazan University formed the basis a large number his publications and continued in subsequent years at the Medico-Surgical Academy.

Throughout his life, Vladimir Mikhailovich was convinced that there was no clear line between nervous and mental illnesses. He drew attention to the fact that nervous diseases are often accompanied by mental disorders, and with mental illness, signs of an organic lesion of the central nervous system are also possible.

The accumulated clinical experience allowed him to publish works in neuropathology and related disciplines. The most famous of them was his article "Stiffness of the spine with curvature of it as special shape diseases”, published in the capital magazine “Vrach”. The disease described in this article is currently known as ankylosing spondylitis, or Bechterew's disease. Many neurological symptoms first identified by the scientist, as well as a number of original clinical observations, were reflected in the two-volume book "Nervous Diseases in Individual Observations", published in Kazan.

In 1891, Vladimir Bekhterev turned to the administration of the Faculty of Medicine with a proposal to organize a neurological department in Kazan. scientific society. Consent to the creation of such a society was received, and he was unanimously elected chairman.

Since 1893, the Kazan Neurological Society began to regularly publish its own printed organ - the journal Neurological Bulletin, which was published until 1918 under the editorship of Vladimir Mikhailovich.

In the spring of 1893, Bekhterev received an invitation from the head of the St. Petersburg Military Medical Academy to take the chair of mental and nervous diseases, which was vacated in connection with the resignation “for seniority” of Merzheevsky, Vladimir Mikhailovich’s teacher.

Vladimir Bekhterev arrived in St. Petersburg at the end of September and immediately got to work. He began to create the first neurosurgical operating room in Russia. The scientist sought to create a specialized neurosurgical service, believing that surgeons who have mastered neuropathology, or neuropathologists who have learned to operate, can become neurosurgeons. At the same time, he clearly preferred neurosurgeons from neuropathologists. The scientist himself did not operate, but took an active part in the diagnosis of neurosurgical diseases.

In the laboratories of the clinic V.M. Bekhterev, together with his colleagues and students, continued numerous studies on the morphology and physiology of the nervous system. This allowed him to complete the materials on neuromorphology and begin work on the fundamental seven-volume work Fundamentals of the Teaching of Brain Functions. Then he began to pay great attention to the study of psychology.

In 1894, Vladimir Mikhailovich received the first general rank of a real state councilor. At the end of the same year, he was appointed a member of the medical council of the Ministry of the Interior, and in 1895 a member of the military medical scientific council under the Minister of War and at the same time a member of the council of the mentally ill.

The work capacity of the scientist was amazing. From 1894 to 1905, Bekhterev performed annually from fourteen to twenty-four scientific works. At the same time, it should be borne in mind that the scientist never signed a work written by another. Everything published under his name was written by his own hand.

In November 1900, the two-volume "Conducting Pathways of the Spinal Cord and Brain" was nominated by the Russian Academy of Sciences for the Academician Karl Maksimovich Baer Prize.

December 29 of the same year at a solemn meeting Russian Academy sciences to professors V.M. Bekhterev and I.P. Pavlov were presented with the award awarded to them.

It would seem that after such a success, you can relax for some time, but such a pastime was unusual for a scientist. The accumulated life and scientific experience prompted generalizations and philosophical interpretations. In 1902, he published the book Mind and Life, in which he expressed his opinion on the essence of mental processes, on the relationship between being and consciousness, the psyche and life.

By that time, Vladimir Bekhterev had prepared for publication the first volume of his fundamental work, Fundamentals of the Doctrine of the Functions of the Brain, which became his main work in neurophysiology. In it, he sought to bring into a strict system all the information accumulated in the literature and independently obtained in laboratory studies and in the process of clinical observations on the activity of the nervous system. In the book, he not only summarized all the known data on the functions of the brain, but also described the function of all its departments, based on his own long-term experimental and clinical studies.

The first volume, which was published in 1903, contains general provisions about brain activity. In it, in particular, Bekhterev presented the energy theory of inhibition, according to which the nerve energy in the brain rushes to the center that is in an active state. It seems to flow to him along the pathways connecting individual areas of the brain, primarily from nearby areas of the brain, in which, as Bekhterev believed, “a decrease in excitability, therefore, oppression” occurs.

After the completion of work on the seven volumes of "Fundamentals of the Doctrine of the Functions of the Brain", Bekhterev's special attention as a scientist began to be attracted to the problems of psychology. Proceeding from the fact that mental activity arises as a result of the work of the brain, he considered it possible to rely mainly on the achievements of physiology, and, above all, on the doctrine of combinational (conditioned) reflexes. Vladimir Bekhterev spoke about the fact that “there is not a single subjective phenomenon that would not be accompanied by objective processes in the brain in the form of a nerve cells and fibers of the current, which is ... in appearance an act of chemical-physical. Following the scientist Ivan Mikhailovich Sechenov, Bekhterev argued that "the so-called mental phenomena are reflexes."

In 1907-1910, V. Bekhterev published three volumes of the book "Objective Psychology", in which he outlined the main ideas of a new direction in psychological science created and developed by him. The scientist argued that all mental processes are accompanied by reflex motor and vegetative reactions that are available for observation and registration. Based on objective criteria, he considered it possible to study not only conscious, but also unconscious mental phenomena.

In the first volume of Objective Psychology, Vladimir Bekhterev proposed to single out individual, social, national, comparative psychology, as well as zoopsychology. In addition, he recognized the need to highlight the psychology of childhood "as a science that studies the laws and sequence mental development individual individuals."

In 1915, on the initiative of Vladimir Mikhailovich, an orphanage with a kindergarten and a school for refugee children from the western provinces was established at the Psychoneurological Institute. Constantly being in the thick of the public life of the capital, Bekhterev still paid much attention to the Psychoneurological Institute.

After October revolution Academician Bekhterev immediately joined in the creation of the health care system of the young republic. In May 1918, Bekhterev petitioned the Council of People's Commissars to organize a research institution - the Institute for the Study of the Brain and Mental Activity. Soon the Institute was opened, and Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev was its director until his death.

Vladimir Bekhterev died on December 24, 1927. He established paranoia in Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin and it cost the scientist his life.

(Samin D.K. 100 great scientists. - M .: Veche, 2000)

BEKHTEREV Vladimir Mikhailovich(1857-1927) - Russian physiologist, neuropathologist, psychiatrist, psychologist. He founded the first experimental psychological laboratory in Russia (1885), and then the Psychoneurological Institute (1908), the world's first center for the comprehensive study of man. Based on the reflex concept of mental activity put forward by Ivan Mikhailovich Sechenov, he developed a natural science theory of behavior. Arising in opposition to the traditional introspective psychology of consciousness, the theory of V.M. Bekhterev was originally called objective psychology (1904), then psychoreflexology (1910) and finally reflexology (1917). V.M. Bekhterev made a major contribution to the development of Russian experimental psychology (General Foundations of Human Reflexology, 1917).

Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev, a well-known Russian neurologist, neuropathologist, psychologist, psychiatrist, morphologist and physiologist of the nervous system, was born on January 20, 1857. in the village of Sorali, Yelabuga district, Vyatka province, in the family of a petty civil servant. In August 1867 he began classes at the Vyatka gymnasium, and since Bekhterev decided in his youth to devote his life to neuropathology and psychiatry, after finishing seven classes of the gymnasium in 1873. he entered the Medico-Surgical Academy.

In 1878 graduated from the Medical-Surgical Academy in St. Petersburg, was left for further education at the Department of Psychiatry under I. P. Merzheevsky. In 1879 Bekhterev was accepted as a full member of the St. Petersburg Society of Psychiatrists.

April 4, 1881 Bekhterev successfully defended his doctoral thesis in medicine on the topic "The experience of clinical investigation of body temperature in certain forms of mental illness" and received the academic title of Privatdozent. In 1884 Bekhterev went on a business trip abroad, where he studied with such well-known European psychologists as Dubois-Reymond, Wundt, Flexig and Charcot.

After returning from a business trip, Bekhterev begins to give a course of lectures on the diagnosis of nervous diseases to fifth-year students of Kazan University. Being since 1884. professor at the Kazan University at the Department of Mental Diseases, Bekhterev provided the teaching of this subject with the establishment of a clinical department in the Kazan district hospital and a psychophysiological laboratory at the university; founded the Society of Neurologists and Psychiatrists, founded the journal "Neurological Bulletin" and published a number of his works, as well as those of his students in various departments of neuropathology and anatomy of the nervous system.

In 1883 Bekhterev was awarded the silver medal of the Society of Russian Doctors for the article "On forced and violent movements during the destruction of some parts of the central nervous system." In this article, Bekhterev drew attention to the fact that nervous diseases can often be accompanied by mental disorders, and with mental illness, signs of organic damage to the central nervous system are also possible. In the same year he was elected a member of the Italian Society of Psychiatrists.

His most famous article "Stiffness of the spine with its curvature as a special form of the disease" was published in the capital's journal "Doctor" in 1892. Bekhterev described "stiffness of the spine with its curvature as a special form of the disease" (now better known as Bekhterev's disease, ankylosing spondylitis, rheumatoid spondylitis), that is, a systemic inflammatory disease of the connective tissue with damage to the articular-ligamentous apparatus of the spine, as well as peripheral joints, sacroiliac joints, hip and shoulder joints and involvement in the process internal organs. Bekhterev also singled out such diseases as choreic epilepsy, syphilitic multiple sclerosis, acute cerebellar ataxia of alcoholics. These, as well as other neurological symptoms first identified by the scientist and a number of original clinical observations, are reflected in the two-volume book "Nervous Diseases in Individual Observations", published in Kazan.

Since 1893 The Kazan Neurological Society began to regularly publish its own printed organ - the journal Neurological Bulletin, which was published until 1918. edited by Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev. In the spring of 1893 Bekhterev received an invitation from the head of the St. Petersburg Military Medical Academy to take the chair of mental and nervous diseases. Bekhterev arrived in St. Petersburg and began to create the first neurosurgical operating room in Russia.

In the laboratories of the clinic, Bekhterev, together with his staff and students, continued numerous studies on the morphology and physiology of the nervous system. This allowed him to complete the materials on neuromorphology and begin work on the fundamental seven-volume work Fundamentals of the Teaching of Brain Functions.

In 1894 Bekhterev was appointed a member of the medical council of the Ministry of the Interior, and in 1895. he became a member of the Military Medical Scientific Council under the Minister of War and at the same time a member of the council of the mentally ill charity home.

November 1900 The two-volume "Conducting Pathways of the Spinal Cord and Brain" was nominated by the Russian Academy of Sciences for the Academician K. M. Baer Prize. In 1902 He published the book Mind and Life. By that time, Bekhterev had prepared for publication the first volume of Fundamentals of the Doctrine of the Functions of the Brain, which became his main work on neurophysiology. Here, general provisions on the activity of the brain were collected and systematized. So, Bekhterev presented the energy theory of inhibition, according to which the nerve energy in the brain rushes to the center that is in an active state. According to Bekhterev, this energy, as it were, flows to him along the pathways connecting individual areas of the brain, primarily from nearby areas of the brain, in which, as Bekhterev believed, “a decrease in excitability, therefore, oppression” occurs.

In general, Bekhterev's work on the study of brain morphology made an invaluable contribution to the development of domestic psychology. He, in particular, was interested in the course of individual bundles in the central nervous system, the composition of the white matter of the spinal cord and the course of fibers in the gray matter, and at the same time, on the basis of the experiments performed, he succeeded in elucidating the physiological significance of individual parts of the central nervous system (the visual tubercles, the vestibular branch of the auditory nerve, the inferior and superior olives, and the quadrigemina).

Dealing directly with the functions of the brain, Bekhterev discovered the nuclei and pathways in the brain; created the doctrine of the pathways of the spinal cord and the functional anatomy of the brain; established the anatomical and physiological basis of balance and spatial orientation, discovered in the cerebral cortex centers of movement and secretion of internal organs, etc.

After completing work on the seven volumes of Fundamentals of the Doctrine of the Functions of the Brain, Bekhterev's special attention began to be attracted to the problems of psychology. Bekhterev spoke about the equal existence of two psychologies: he singled out subjective psychology, the main method of which should be introspection, and objective psychology. Bekhterev called himself a representative of objective psychology, but he considered it possible to study objectively only the externally observable, i.e. behavior (in the behaviorist sense), and the physiological activity of the nervous system.

Based on the fact that mental activity arises as a result of the work of the brain, he considered it possible to rely mainly on the achievements of physiology, and above all on the doctrine of conditioned reflexes. Thus, Bekhterev creates a whole doctrine, which he called reflexology, which actually continued the work of objective psychology of Bekhterev.

In 1907-1910 Bekhterev published three volumes of the book "Objective Psychology". The scientist argued that all mental processes are accompanied by reflex motor and vegetative reactions that are available for observation and registration.

To describe the complex forms of reflex activity, Bekhterev proposed the term "associative-motor reflex" He also described a number of physiological and pathological reflexes, symptoms and syndromes. Physiological reflexes discovered by Bekhterev (shoulder-shoulder reflex, large spindle reflex, expiratory, etc.) make it possible to determine the state of the corresponding reflex arcs, and pathological reflexes (Mendel-Bekhterev's dorsal reflex, carpal-finger reflex, Bekhterev-Jacobson reflex) reflect the defeat of the pyramidal pathways. Ankylosing spondylitis symptoms are observed in various pathological conditions: dorsal tabes, sciatic neuralgia, massive cerebral strokes, angiotrophoneurosis, pathological processes in the membranes of the base of the brain, etc.

To assess the symptoms, Bekhterev created special devices (an algesimeter that allows you to accurately measure pain sensitivity; a baresthesiometer that measures pressure sensitivity; a myoesthesiometer - a device for measuring sensitivity, etc.).

Bekhterev also developed objective methods for studying the neuropsychic development of children, the relationship between nervous and mental illnesses, psychopathy and circular psychosis, the clinic and pathogenesis of hallucinations, described a number of forms of obsessive states, various manifestations of mental automatism. For the treatment of neuropsychic diseases, he introduced an associative reflex therapy of neuroses and alcoholism, psychotherapy by the method of distraction, collective psychotherapy As a sedative, Bekhterev's mixture was widely used.

In 1908 Bekhterev created the Psychoneurological Institute in St. Petersburg and became its director. After the revolution in 1918 Bekhterev petitioned the Council of People's Commissars to organize an Institute for the Study of the Brain and Mental Activity. When the institute was created, Bekhterev took the position of its director and remained so until his death. The Institute for the Study of the Brain and Mental Activity was subsequently named the State Reflexology Institute for the Study of the Brain named after. V. M. Bekhtereva.

In 1921 Academician V. M. Bekhterev, together with the well-known animal trainer V. L. Durov, conducted experiments of mental suggestion to trained dogs of pre-conceived actions. Similar experiments were carried out in the practical laboratory of zoopsychology, which was directed by V. L. Durov with the participation of one of the pioneers of mental suggestion in the USSR, engineer B. B. Kazinsky.

Already by the beginning of 1921. in the laboratory of V.L. Durov, over 20 months of research, 1278 experiments of mental suggestion (to dogs) were carried out, including 696 successful and 582 unsuccessful. Experiments with dogs showed that mental suggestion does not have to be carried out by a trainer, it could be an experienced inducer. It was only necessary that he knew and applied the method of transmission established by the trainer. The suggestion was carried out both in direct visual contact with the animal, and at a distance, when the dogs did not see or hear the trainer, and he did not hear them. It should be emphasized that the experiments were carried out with dogs that had certain changes in the psyche that arose after special training.

In 1927, Bekhterev was awarded the title of Honored Scientist of the RSFSR. The great scientist died on December 24, 1927.

Russian psychiatrist, neuropathologist, physiologist, psychologist, founder of reflexology and pathopsychological direction in Russia, academician.

In 1907 he founded the psycho-neurological institute in St. Petersburg - the first in the world science Center on the integrated study of man and the scientific development of psychology, psychiatry, neurology and other "human science" disciplines, organized as a research and higher educational institution, now bearing the name of V. M. Bekhterev.

Biography

Vladimir Bekhterev was born into the family of a minor civil servant in the village of Sarali, Yelabuga district, Vyatka province, presumably on January 20, 1857 (he was baptized on January 23, 1857). He was a representative of the ancient Vyatka family of Bekhterevs. He was educated at the Vyatka Gymnasium (1873) and the St. Petersburg Medical and Surgical Academy. At the end of the course (1878), Bekhterev devoted himself to the study of mental and nervous diseases and for this purpose he worked at the clinic of prof. I. P. Merzheevsky.

In 1879, Bekhterev was accepted as a full member of the St. Petersburg Society of Psychiatrists. And in 1884 he was sent abroad, where he studied with Dubois-Reymond (Berlin), Wundt (Leipzig), Meinert (Vienna), Charcot (Paris) and others.

On the defense of his doctoral dissertation (April 4, 1881), he was approved as a Privatdozent of the St. Petersburg Medical and Surgical Academy, and since 1885 he was a professor at Kazan University and head of a psychiatric clinic in the Kazan district hospital. While working at Kazan University, he created a psychophysiological laboratory and founded the Kazan Society of Neurologists and Psychiatrists. In 1893 he headed the Department of Nervous and Mental Diseases of the Medico-Surgical Academy. In the same year he founded the journal Neurological Bulletin. In 1894, Vladimir Mikhailovich was appointed a member of the medical council of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and in 1895 - a member of the military medical scientific council under the Minister of War and at the same time a member of the council of the mentally ill charity home. Since 1897 he also taught at the Women's Medical Institute.

Organized in St. Petersburg the Society of Psychoneurologists and the Society of Normal and Experimental Psychology and scientific organization labor. He edited the journals "Review of Psychiatry, Neurology and Experimental Psychology", "Study and Education of Personality", "Issues of the Study of Labor" and others.

In November 1900, the two-volume Bekhterev's Pathways of the Spinal Cord and the Brain was nominated by the Russian Academy of Sciences for the Academician K.M. Baer Prize. In the same year, Vladimir Mikhailovich was elected chairman of the Russian Society of Normal and Pathological Psychology.

After the completion of work on the seven volumes of "Fundamentals of the Doctrine of the Functions of the Brain", Bekhterev's special attention as a scientist began to be attracted to the problems of psychology. Proceeding from the fact that mental activity arises as a result of the work of the brain, he considered it possible to rely mainly on the achievements of physiology, and, above all, on the doctrine of combinational (conditioned) reflexes. In 1907-1910, Bekhterev published three volumes of the book "Objective Psychology". The scientist argued that all mental processes are accompanied by reflex motor and vegetative reactions that are available for observation and registration.

He was a member of the editorial committee of the multi-volume "Traite international de psychologie pathologique" ("International Treatise on Pathological Psychology") (Paris, 1908-1910), for which he wrote several chapters. In 1908, the Psychoneurological Institute founded by Bekhterev began its work in St. Petersburg. Pedagogical, legal and medical faculties were opened in it. In 1916, these faculties were transformed into the private Petrograd University at the Psychoneurological Institute. Bekhterev himself took an active part in the work of the institute and the university, headed the economic committee of the latter.

In May 1918, Bekhterev petitioned the Council of People's Commissars to organize an Institute for the Study of the Brain and Mental Activity. Soon the Institute was opened, and Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev was its director until his death. In 1927 he was awarded the title of Honored Scientist of the RSFSR.

At the age of about 70, he married a second marriage to Berta Yakovlevna Gurzhi.

He died suddenly on December 24, 1927 in Moscow. He was buried on Literatorskie bridges at the Volkovsky cemetery in Leningrad.

After his death, V. M. Bekhterev left his own school and hundreds of students, including 70 professors.

V.M. Bekhterev died on December 24, 1927 suddenly in Moscow, a few hours after he had poisoned himself with seemingly poor-quality food, either canned food or sandwiches. Moreover, this poisoning occurred as if after a very significant event: after the consultation he gave to Stalin.

Scientific contribution

Physiological Bekhterev's reflexes (scapular-shoulder reflex, large spindle reflex, expiratory, etc.) make it possible to determine the state of the corresponding reflex arcs, and pathological ones (Mendel-Bekhterev's dorsal reflex, carpal-finger reflex, Bekhterev's reflex - Jacobson) reflect the defeat of the pyramidal pathways.

He described some diseases and developed methods for their treatment (“Postencephalitic symptoms of Bechterev”, “Psychotherapeutic triad of Bechterev”, “Phobic symptoms of Bechterev”, etc.). Bekhterev described "stiffness of the spine with its curvature as a special form of the disease" ("Bekhterev's disease", "Ankylosing spondylitis", 1892). Bekhterev singled out such diseases as "chorea epilepsy", "syphilitic multiple sclerosis", "acute cerebellar ataxia of alcoholics". Created a number of drugs. "Ankylosing spondylitis" was widely used as a sedative.

For many years he studied the problems of hypnosis and suggestion, including alcoholism.

For more than 20 years he studied the issues of sexual behavior and child rearing. Developed objective methods for studying the neuropsychic development of children.

He repeatedly criticized psychoanalysis (the teachings of Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, etc.). But at the same time, he contributed to the theoretical, experimental and psychotherapeutic work on psychoanalysis, which was carried out at the Institute for the Study of the Brain and Psychic Activity headed by him.

In addition, Bekhterev developed and studied the relationship between nervous and mental illnesses, psychopathy and circular psychosis, the clinic and pathogenesis of hallucinations, described a number of forms of obsessive-compulsive disorders, and various manifestations of mental automatism. For the treatment of neuropsychiatric diseases, he introduced combination-reflex therapy for neuroses and alcoholism, psychotherapy by the method of distraction, and collective psychotherapy.

Publications

In addition to the dissertation “The experience of a clinical study of body temperature in certain forms of mental illness” (St. Petersburg, 1881), Bekhterev owns numerous works:

1. on the normal anatomy of the nervous system;
2. pathological anatomy of the central nervous system;
3. physiology of the central nervous system;
4. Clinic of Mental and Nervous Diseases
5. in psychology (Formation of our ideas about space, Bulletin of Psychiatry, 1884).

In these works, Bekhterev was engaged in the study and study of the course of individual bundles in the central nervous system, the composition of the white matter of the spinal cord and the course of fibers in the gray matter, and at the same time, on the basis of the experiments performed, elucidation of the physiological significance of individual parts of the central nervous system (optic tubercles, vestibular branches of the auditory nerve, inferior and superior olives, quadrigemina, etc.).

Bekhterev also managed to obtain some new data on the localization of various centers in the cerebral cortex (for example, on the localization of skin - tactile and pain - sensations and muscle consciousness on the surface of the cerebral hemispheres, Vrach, 1883) and also on the physiology of the motor centers of the cerebral cortex ("Doctor", 1886). Many works of Bekhterev are devoted to the description of little-studied pathological processes of the nervous system and individual cases of nervous diseases.

Compositions

• Fundamentals of the doctrine of the functions of the brain, St. Petersburg, 1903-07;
• Objective psychology, St. Petersburg, 1907-10;
• Psyche and life, 2nd ed., St. Petersburg, 1904;
• Bekhterev V. M. Suggestion and its role in public life. St. Petersburg: Edition of K. L. Ricker, 1908
• General diagnostics of diseases of the nervous system, parts 1-2, St. Petersburg, 1911-15;
• Collective reflexology, P., 1921
• General principles of human reflexology, M.-P., 1923;
• Conducting pathways of the spinal cord and brain, M.-L., 1926;
• Brain and activity, M.-L., 1928: Selected. Prod., M., 1954.

Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev, a world-famous neuropathologist, psychiatrist, physiologist, founder of the national school of psychoneurologists, was born on February 1, 1857 in the village of Sorali, Vyatka province.

The choice of specialty was influenced by Bekhterev's illness, mental disorder. Therefore, in the Imperial Medical-Surgical Academy, in his senior years, he chooses nervous and mental illnesses as a direction. Subsequently, he participated in Russian-Turkish war 1877-1878

In 1881, Vladimir Mikhailovich defended his dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Medicine on the topic "Experience in the clinical study of body temperature in certain forms of mental illness", and also received the academic title of Privatdozent.

After a number of years of leadership of the Department of Psychiatry at Kazan University, in 1893 Bekhterev headed the Department of Mental and Nervous Diseases of the Imperial Military Medical Academy, and

He also became director of the Clinic for Mental Diseases of the Clinical Military Hospital.

AT 1899 Bekhterev was elected an academician of the Military Medical Academy and awarded the gold medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences. For a short time, Vladimir Mikhailovich acted as head of the academy.

Vladi The world Mikhailovich Bekhterev took the initiative to create the Psychoneurological Institute, and thanks to his efforts in 1911 the first buildings of the institute appeared behind the Nevskaya Zastava. Soon he becomes president of the institute.

Bekhterev also actively participated in public life. In 1913, he took part in the famous politically engaged "Beilis affair". After Bekhterev's speech, the main defendant was acquitted, and the examination in his case entered the history of science as the first forensic psychological and psychiatric examination.

Such behavior displeased the authorities, and soon Bekhterev was dismissed from the academy, the Women's Medical Institute and was not approved for a new term as president of the Psychoneurological Institute.

V.M. Bekhterev was engaged in the study of a significant part of the psychiatric, neurological, physiological and psychological problems At the same time, in his approach, he invariably focused on a comprehensive study of the problems of the brain and man. He studied the problems of hypnosis and suggestion for many years.

Support Soviet power provided him with a relatively decent existence and activity in new Russia. He works in the People's Commissariat of Education, creates the Institute for the Study of the Brain and Mental Activity. However, the alliance with the authorities was short-lived. As a great scientist and independent person, he was burdened by the totalitarian system that was taking shape in the country. In December 1927, Vladimir Mikhailovich died suddenly. There is a lot of evidence that the death was violent.

The urn with the ashes of Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev was kept for many years in the memorial museum of the scientist, in 1971 it was buried at the "Literary bridges" of the Volkovsky cemetery. Famous domestic sculptor M.K. Anikushin became the author of the tombstone.

The Psychoneurological Institute bears the name of Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev, and the street on which it is located is also named after the great scientist. There is also a monument to Bekhterev.

At those moments in history, like the time we are living through, when almost every day brings news of the deaths of many hundreds and thousands of people on the battlefields, questions about “eternal” life and the immortality of the human person are especially persistent. Yes, and in everyday life, we are faced at every step with the loss of people close to us - relatives, friends, acquaintances - from natural or violent death. "There was a shot and the man was gone." "The disease has taken away from us a friend who has gone to another world." - So they usually say over a fresh grave.

But is it really so? After all, if our mental or spiritual life ended at the same time as the beating of the heart stops at the behest of fate, if we turned into nothing with death, into lifeless matter, subject to decomposition and further transformations, then the question is, what would life itself be worth? For if life ends in nothing in the spiritual sense, who can value this life with all its worries and anxieties? Even if life is brightened up by aspirations in the face of the best minds for the eternal ideals of truth, goodness and beauty, but for the person himself, living and acting, how could one justify the advantages of these ideals in comparison with one or another selfish aspirations?

After all, if there is no immortality, then there is no morality in life, and then the fatal appears: “everything is permitted!”. In fact, why should I care about others when everything - myself and they will pass into "nothing" and when, along with this "nothing", all moral responsibility is quite naturally eliminated. Does not the death of a man without an eternal spirit, which is recognized by all religions and in which all peoples believe, remove the ground from under any ethics in general, and even from under all strivings for a better future?...

About Bekhterev, a scientist and a hypnologist. Miraculous healings, healers and soothsayers for every taste, psychotherapy telesessions, mass fascination with psychics, thought transmission at a distance and bioenergy transmission, witchcraft, communication with aliens, etc. filled our daily life. True and authentic scientific word about these phenomena has an invaluable socio-political, educational and medical significance. Acquaintance with the wealth of ideas, facts, observations, advice and warnings bequeathed to us by V. M. Bekhterev in this most complex area of ​​medicine is now, more than ever, necessary.

It will also contribute to the scientific development of many problems associated with hypnosis, suggestion and telepathy. The works of the outstanding scientist were not published after his death (with the exception of the one-volume "Selected Works"). They have become a bibliographic rarity. Many of them are not familiar even to experts. V. M. Bekhterev's ideas about the essence of hypnosis, suggestion and telepathy have not yet been the subject of serious scientific research. Therefore, the publication of even a part of the numerous works of the scientist is extremely relevant. In the introductory article, we will try to analyze V. M. Bekhterev's ideas about the essence mysterious phenomena neuropsychic LIFE In the context of his multifaceted scientific work, his concept of consciousness, his personality as a doctor-scientist…

The term "suggestion", borrowed from everyday life and introduced originally into the circle medical specialty under the guise of hypnotic or post-hypnotic suggestion, now, together with a closer study of the subject, has received a wider meaning. The fact is that the effect of suggestion is not in the least necessarily associated with a special state of mental activity known as hypnosis, as is proved by cases of the implementation of suggestion made in a waking state. Moreover, suggestion, understood in broad sense words, is one of the ways in which one person influences another even under ordinary conditions of life.

In view of this, suggestion serves as an important factor in our social life and should be the subject of study not only for doctors, but for all persons in general who study the conditions of social life and the laws of its manifestation. In any case, one of the important pages of social psychology opens here, which represents a vast and little developed field of scientific research.

This essay in its first edition was a speech delivered in the Assembly Military Medical Academy in December 1897, and therefore was limited to certain sizes. But the interest and importance of the topic touched on prompted the author to significantly expand the scope of his work, as a result of which this second edition comes out significantly supplemented against the first and no longer in the form of a speech.
Without pretending in this edition to the desired completeness of the presentation of the subject, the author believes that even its correct coverage may be of some use to those interested in the role of suggestion in public life.
V. Bekhterev.

• SOCIAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL CONCEPT OF V. M. BEKHTEREV.
• COLLECTIVE REFLEXOLOGY.
• DATA OF THE EXPERIMENT IN THE FIELD OF COLLECTIVE REFLEXOLOGY.
• COMMENTS AND NOTES. SOCIAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL CONCEPT OF V. M. BEKHTEREV

In the history of Russian psychological science, the name of Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev is associated with the final approval of a new paradigm in the study of mental activity, based on an objective approach to explaining the nature of the mental and methods of studying it. Following I. M. Sechenov, he opposes the introspectionist understanding of the psyche, considers the totality of mental phenomena and forms of human behavior on the basis of the concept of reflex. The analysis of combination-motor reflexes available for objective external observation and registration is defined by Bekhterev as the main research method in the sciences he created, which were called objective psychology and reflexology.

The sharp opposition of the principles of objective psychology to the introspectionist understanding of the psyche and the ways of studying it that prevailed at that time, as well as the specific theoretical and methodological level of development of psychological problems, led Bekhterev to refuse to consider the psyche and consciousness (as the main objects of introspectionist psychology) and reduce the tasks of psychological science exclusively to analysis of the external manifestations of reflex activity without taking into account the mental processes that mediate it.

However, the attitudes of Bekhterev, the founder of the reflexological doctrine, came into conflict with the observations and conclusions of Bekhterev, the experimental scientist, as soon as he stood on the ground of concrete facts. In his experimental studies, Bekhterev goes beyond the paradigm he affirms and again turns to mental phenomena and psychological categories.

Introductory article and notes. The scientific, medical and social activities of Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev proceeded in the last quarter of the 19th and the first quarter of the 20th century. At this time, capitalism was developing rapidly in Russia. At the same time, a revolutionary movement of the working class was born and rapidly growing, which, under the leadership of the Communist Party, led to the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution.

Scientists late XIX and the beginning of the 20th century, they were divided into two groups - the progressive, persecuted by the tsarist government, and the reactionary, supported by it. V. M. Bekhterev belonged to a group of progressive scientists.

Being primarily an outstanding neuropathologist and psychiatrist, V. M. Bekhterev did not limit his activities to these areas. He conducted extensive scientific research in the field of anatomy and physiology of the nervous system, as well as psychology. From the very beginning of his scientific work, he launched a wide public and organizational activity, mainly in the field of organizing medicine and public education.

In connection with the 25th anniversary of the death of V. M. Bekhterev, prof. A. G. Ivanov-Smolensky wrote that he “is one of the most prominent representatives of Russian psychoneurology, who left behind hundreds of scientific papers, including a number of fundamental ones. He left a deep and fruitful mark in neuropathology, psychiatry, neuromorphology, psychotherapy, in the theory of localization of functions, hygiene of the nervous system, neurosurgery, psychology, etc. His scientific works received worldwide fame and gained great prestige, mainly among clinicians. The importance of V. M. Bekhterev is also great as public figure and organizer of scientific institutions.

Introduction: The psychology that we will deal with in the following presentation will bear little resemblance to the psychology that has hitherto been the subject of study. The point is that in objective psychology, to which we intend to devote this work, there should be no place for questions about subjective processes or processes of consciousness. Until now, as is known, psychological phenomena were primarily those phenomena that are conscious.

Psychology can best be defined in the words of Professor Godle as the science concerned with describing and recognizing states of consciousness as such,” Professor James begins his Text book of psychology. “Under the states of consciousness,” he says, “here they mean such phenomena as sensations, desires, emotions, cognitive processes, judgments, decisions, desires, etc. The interpretation of these phenomena must, of course, include the study of both those causes and the conditions under which they arise, and the actions directly caused by them, insofar as both can be ascertained.

Thus, the subject of the study of psychology as it has been and is so far is the so-called inner world, and since this inner world is accessible only to self-observation, it is obvious that the main method of contemporary psychology can and should be only self-observation. True, some authors introduce into psychology the concept of unconscious processes, but they also liken these unconscious processes to some extent to conscious processes, and they usually attribute to them the properties of conscious processes, recognizing them sometimes as if hidden conscious phenomena. In general, the whole question of unconscious mental processes in modern psychology remains controversial. An overview of numerous works on this subject we find in the work of Dr. Cezsa, in addition, one can find an analysis of the same issue in Lewesa, in MNG, in Hamilton, and in many other authors, and we do not need to dwell on this subject in detail here. We will only note that, along with authors who recognize the existence of unconscious mental processes, there are a number of psychologists who completely exclude the unconscious from the sphere of the psychic. According to Zieheny, for example, the criterion of the mental is “everything that is given to our consciousness, and only this one ...

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