model of the Universe, each point of which contains all information. Psychologists have sounded the alarm about the growing amount of information, the information flow, in which a person lives. However, the human brain does not perceive, nor does it process the information around us. We do not perceive radio waves, TV waves; we do not hear ultrasound nor do we see infrared rays because of the stimulus barrier. According to L. Vygotsky, the psyche is a “sieve that filters the world”. But this process is not passive; the psyche “allows” that we receive exactly what we need “here and now”. It builds its structure on the basis of reflection, pleasure/displeasure, learns to select what corresponds to a person’s interests, value orientation, and only then passes to a new level of adaptation. This level is more complex since it is the basis for own reality in the process of exchange with the environment.
All open systems live by exchanging information and energy with the outside world. But this is not a random exchange, but rather a self-selection based on the principle of correspondence. The interaction occurs where compliance is found as the reason for the selective interaction of a person with the environment that seeks to find in the world “its own that has not yet become its own”. Where there is a correspondence, a meaning is born. So the sense reality is born – people live not in optical spaces, but in fields of meanings. When this “own, that has not yet become its own” finally becomes its own for the system in the course of its interaction with the outside world, it changes the structure of the system itself, complicating it. This complication occurs because each time the system receives from the outside not only what it “wanted” but also what it even “did not think of”. In other words, when a person receives something from the world, he becomes different. As a result, in the inner reality of meanings there is a harmonious fusion of what we consider to be “opposites” – “I” and “Not I”, the subject and the object, the inner and the outer. There is a multi-dimensional human world, containing both subjective and objective dimensions. This is the way of its development or rather self-development.
As Goethe said: – “Everything inside is long ago outside”. Thus a person changes the space by his subjectivity. This is a unified ability of any open complex system to “distort” the space around it in order to select again and again what most of all corresponds to it at present (I. Prigogine, 1986). “The path of man to himself lies through the world”, (V. Frankl, 1990). Indeed, we find ourselves in the world that is proportionate (corresponds) to us, but not in the world that is indifferent to us. A person meets in the world with himself – with his needs and opportunities. He is projected into this world, and from there he receives answers. But this is an active process on the part of man, since before that, having an affective sphere, the principle of pleasure/displeasure, he had built the architecture of his mental apparatus. And his brain through the lens of this apparatus filters the information field from the outside, sorting out the patterns of information corresponding to him – and in no way vice versa. But this process of filtration largely depends on the filter, or the sieve, which is used by this or that individual. And this is again a personal choice as a result of upbringing, imparted moral cultural traditions. If a person has not developed a core, he becomes an easy prey for catchers of human souls.
When he finds himself, the person occupies an active position. If this does not happen, he simply accommodates himself, but does not adapt. Actually he does not live and, according to V. E. Klochko, author of the theory of psychological systems, “a state may come when a person ceases to understand whether he lives his life, or whether his life lives”. That is, you have to be a subject, not an object of your own life. Moreover, life is not only a transition to the future, but also a transformation of its past. A person has always to reconstruct this experience of the past under new tasks. Experience includes, among other things, customs and rituals.
Gradually came the understanding that only a person has two sources of activity: not only needs, but also opportunities. Animals act mainly in the field of their needs. Human is given consciousness first of all to realize his potentials. At the beginning the concept of self-actualization was mentioned. In the light of new approaches, we are talking about self-realization, that is, first of all, about realization of the opportunities that are inherent in each person, transference of human potentials in potencies. Potentials are genetically incorporated programs. By itself the availability of potential does not guarantee that it will necessarily turn into reality. M. Mamardashvili (1997) writes that there is potential as an opportunity, and there is a potency that, unlike a simple possibility, “is an opportunity that simultaneously has the strength to realize it”. And self-development should be seen as a transition of opportunities into reality, and not only as a process conditioned by the satisfaction of basic needs. Behind creativity, for example, there is a “tense opportunity” for a person to create himself and the world.
The brain as the main constituent of the higher nervous activity (HNA) fulfills a systemic organization of all its components to form a systemic multi-level response adequate to its capabilities. This manifests its multi-functionality from the standpoint of psychology, psychoanalysis and psychopathology. The brain perceives information from the outside and from within; selects it with subsequent differentiated fixation, using the mechanisms of mirror neurons, eidetism, mechanisms of short-term, operational, long-term memory; chronicizes the effect of the stressor by the inclusion of a psychological mechanism – displacement; forms echo effects, creates flashbacks, dreams, somatic conversions; fills the sphere of the unconscious. This activity is provided by the mechanism of stressogenesis (there is no other) manifested by the GAS.
The first phase of the GAS is the phase of alarm – manifests itself as a non-specific symptom complex in the form of “neuroticism”. It has a bioelectric nature, and therefore a discontinuous (discrete) character; with a prolonged, lingering stress-situation a person enters the permanent stress zone, which is provided by the three-axis second phase of the GAS, which is neurohormonal in nature and manifests itself as psychosomatic symptoms, syndromes and diseases. The latter arise as a consequence of the transition of functional changes to structural in different organs and organ-systems. In the absence of psychotherapeutic and biotherapeutic assistance, permanent stress leads to the consumption of the hormonal limit, loss of some links of the GAS, which is fraught with the development of the third phase of the GAS – the phase of astenization revealed by the burnout syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, various asthenic and asthenic-vegetative states.
The structure of the adaptation model consists of two different levels:
1. The neurophysiological part includes: HNA with the brain in the center, sensorium, mirror neurons, the mechanism of eidetism, memory, endocrine glands, the conductor system, skin, organ systems, body.
2. The psychoanalytic part of the model includes: psychosensory reflection (sensations, feelings, pain), mechanisms of psychological defense, flashbacks, dreams, amnesias, conversions.
The inclusive concept by Hartmann (2002) regards the adaptation as a nonstop ongoing process that has its roots in the biological structure, with many of its manifestations reflecting the constant attempts of “Ego” to balance the internal or inter-systemic tension. According to A. R. Luria, if the initially developing mental activity has a relatively elementary basis while depending upon a “basal” function, it will subsequently become more complicated starting to be realized with involvement of the structurally higher forms of activity. Mental adaptation results from the activity of an open system which, according to L. Bertalanffy is characterized by “a state of mobile equilibrium” in which its structure remains constant. But in contrast to an ordinary equilibrium, this constancy persists in the process of continuous motion of its constituent substance. The mobile equilibrium of open systems is characterized by the principle of equiphility, that is an open system can be preserved and develop not depending on the initial conditions. At the same time, the author emphasizes, “the living systems can be defined as hierarchically organized open systems that preserve themselves or develop in the direction of achieving the state of mobile equilibrium” (L. Bertalanffy, 1969).
The main distinction of psychological adaptation from the biological is in that the latter provides the adaptation of man to the environment, i.e. has the function of an adaptive character when the environment is primary and determines the sphere and the range of man’s activity and behavior. Figuratively we can imagine that man and environment roll along