In general psychology, the most common association with the word “responsibility” today is research related to attribution of responsibility (e.g. Weiner, 1995). From these studies, which have been carried out in recent decades in line with the social psychology of personality, a view of responsibility arises primarily as a subjective causality. Attribution of responsibility is the attribution of a status factor to the cause of certain events. In the context of psychotherapy and clinical psychology, it is primarily about the degree and boundaries of the therapist’s or consultant’s responsibility for the client (patient), for what happens in their interaction. This is a subtle problem and also deserves special attention. Similar problems are at the center of the problems of family relations. In everyday language, the concept of responsibility is quite strongly confused with the concept of guilt. Basically, responsibility is understood close to the legal meaning of this concept: criminal liability, administrative liability, etc. for something that has already happened. Responsibility comes when something has happened, and if nothing has happened, there is no responsibility. When it says: “you will be responsible for this,” meaning the future tense, when the event has already taken place, then you will deal with the consequences of what has already happened, that is, bear responsibility for what happened. Another facet of the everyday understanding of responsibility comes to the fore when it comes to responsibility for someone or something: for loved ones, for family, for the assigned task, for the team. If you think about the meaning of the concept of responsibility in this context, it actually means “acting on behalf of someone, being responsible for them when they are asked.” When I say that I am responsible for my family, for the team I lead, and for my country as the elected leader, I mean that when they are asked about something, I answer. This is the real meaning that is often used when people usually talk about themselves in this context. The concept of a “responsible employee” has not yet completely disappeared into history — it is one who, when asked by others, answers on their behalf. But is it possible at all and to what extent is it possible to be responsible for another person? We will return to this issue later. So, what is the phenomenon of responsibility? Three ways to control an airplane Unlike animals, humans have the ability to separate themselves and what happens to me: there is Me and there is my life, activity, behavior — what happens between me and the world (no matter what word we theoretically mean it). The relationship between what I feel as “myself” and what happens between me and the world can be one of the following types:: • I don’t reflect on what is happening to me at all, I don’t distinguish myself from the world, I don’t have a developed reflexive consciousness, like a small child, I am completely merged with the process of life. Actions take place “on autopilot”; they are controlled by causal mechanisms: impulses from within, stimuli from outside, conditioned connections and stereotypes. Behaviorism quite well describes the whole mechanics of such behavior “on autopilot”, without including any moments of reflection, awareness of what is happening to me in this process, in accordance with the formula of R.Cialdini (1998) “click—buzz”. There are programs, algorithms, and cause-and-effect chains of their implementation that act on their own; my Self has nothing to do with it. • I begin to reflect on this process, distinguishing between my Self and the flow of my life. To continue the autopilot metaphor, a pilot appears in the cockpit, who sits next to the autopilot and does not take the wheel himself, but watches how the autopilot operates and controls the process. In this case, the process is still controlled by a system of causal relationships, dependencies, but I find myself in the status of a consequence of these ongoing processes, one might say, in the status of their “victim”. The picture of neurosis is precisely related to a good, as a rule, reflection of these processes, but the inability to even think about taking the helm in your own hands. Everything that happens to me can cause me horror, panic, but there’s nothing I can do about it. How could it be otherwise? I can’t, I have to, it’s coming; being included in these systems of connections and seeing the many reasons acting on me, I freeze before these reasons like a rabbit before a boa constrictor. This is precisely the root of the well-known phenomenon of escape from freedom, described in the classic book by E. Fromm (1990).: It’s scary for people to even think about determining their own trajectories in life, their own ways of acting. Ernest Neizvestny said in an interview that in a free society, no one can force a person not to be a slave. This is a voluntary choice. Let us also recall Andrei Voznesensky: “It is unbearable when forced, but voluntarily it is unbearable.” R. May, speaking about the reasons for the popularity of B.F. Skinner’s famous book “Beyond Freedom and Dignity,” noted that people are very close to the idea that freedom is an illusion, and all behavior is something conditioned (May, 1931, p. 137). This was written several decades after Fromm, but the situation has not changed radically now. The tendency to escape from freedom and responsibility, from trying to become to some extent the cause of what is happening, has been and remains not only dominant, but also attractive to a large number of people in many ways. Joseph Brodsky warned graduates of American University against this: “Avoid ascribing victim status to yourself in every possible way. Of all the parts of the body, watch your index finger the most vigilantly, for it longs to rebuke. The pointing finger is a sign of sacrifice – in contrast to the middle and index fingers raised in the Victoria sign, it is synonymous with surrender. No matter how disgusting your situation may be, try not to blame external forces for it: history, the state, superiors, race, parents, moon phase, childhood, untimely potty landing, etc.” (Brodsky, 2000a, pp. 116-117). We are really used to referring to many forces that act on us: external forces, the laws of nature, other people, social norms, temptations, habits, and our own internal irresistible impulses. We say, “I couldn’t help but do it, I wanted to do it so badly.” When we refer to the difficulties of controlling our internal impulses, we say: “I am the way I am, and what can you do about me”, “that’s how I am a bastard, that’s how bad I am”, “that’s how I have attitudes, attitudes, needs, impulses” – all this sometimes sounds quite convincing. But if we remember that at a rather tender age, almost all of us, perhaps not without difficulty, but quite successfully learned such a difficult task as controlling urination and defecation, then references to the fact that some impulses and desires attract us somewhere, and we cannot resist them, already look like not so convincing. According to an American study, antisocial psychopaths who had uncontrollable aggression were able to successfully control it with a new drug that turned out to be a pure placebo. This is an illustration of the fact that it is often simply beneficial, attractive, and tempting for us to believe that there is something in us that we cannot control at all, and we can only follow the current. Let us recall the classical studies of W. Michel, who found that the ability to delay gratification, which characterizes a person’s ability to influence what happens to him, correlates with personal development, and turns out to be an important parameter of maturity (Mischel, 1981). Accordingly, we have to recognize the third possibility. • The pilot turns off the autopilot and takes the helm, switching to manual control mode. I not only reflexively separate myself from the flow of my life, from what is happening to me, but also to some extent suspend the action of the causes and factors that influence it. Reflection is a necessary condition for this, but not sufficient. Indeed, there are many forces and factors acting on us. However, they do not have the status of reasons for my actions. Question: why am I continuing to talk at the moment, why don’t I take a break right now and go to the buffet for coffee or beer? There are many different explanations that can be given: because there are expectations of the audience and it is important to meet these expectations in order to maintain my professional reputation, because I am being paid money and I may lose something if I violate my obligations, etc.. All these explanations certainly make sense, but none of them can serve as an explanatory reason that gives a definitive answer to this question: why am I still not going anywhere now, but will remain in the audience and say something until the end of the hour. There is no causal relationship. The only correct answer to this question is that, realizing and reflecting on both the possibility of stopping and leaving, and the possibility of staying and continuing to do what I have set out to do, I choose the second option in this case and constantly confirm this choice. Of course, these opportunities, like all the opportunities that we face, are asymmetric in nature: some opportunities ultimately turn out to be more attractive than others, carry more advantages and fewer disadvantages, while other opportunities are more risky and rather dubious, but, as everyone knows, a person is far away He does not always choose the most attractive and optimal alternatives. Knowing the structure of the situation, the alternatives that a person may have in this situation, knowing motivation, attractiveness, values, and the likelihood of certain outcomes, we can calculate and conclude which of the behaviors would be optimal for a person. But people often act in a suboptimal way. Moreover, this calculation allows us to predict human behavior, as long as we do not take into account his reflexive consciousness, while he is acting “on autopilot.” As soon as we turn on our reflexive consciousness, all predictions collapse: if there are, say, 6 alternatives in a situation, then there is not one of them that I could not choose, regardless of the degree of their attractiveness. I can think of a seventh one that a psychologist describing my situation from the outside would never guess. In fact, there is a situation of my personal interference in the system of factors that determine what happens to me in life. “We could stop being just chatty consequences in the great causal chain of phenomena and try to take on the role of causes” (Brodsky, 2000b, p. 36). In this case, I myself become involved in my own life as a causal factor. One of the elements explaining this is the pause, which R. May wrote about as the space of human freedom: the nature of freedom lies in the pause between stimulus and reaction (May, 1981). As soon as we pause instead of responding immediately, the chain breaks. The “click — buzz” mechanism immediately breaks down. It turns out that there are different possibilities, different alternatives. With the help of a pause, I suspend the influence of external and internal (in the traditional sense of these words) factors. The pause allows you to turn off the autopilot and take the helm in your own hands. At this point, my behavior gains freedom and responsibility. The genetic aspect of freedom and responsibility Freedom is a kind of activity that is controlled at every point. Responsibility is the awareness of the ability to cause changes in oneself and in the world and the conscious management of this ability (Leontiev, 1997). These are very similar things, at first glance it even seems that they are the same thing. Indeed, many authors have noted that responsibility and freedom are two sides of the same coin and they are inseparable. However, as experimental data convincingly show, freedom and responsibility merge only at a certain stage, and they develop from two different sources. Freedom gradually develops in the process of developing forms of activity, through gaining the right to one’s own activity and the value justification for which this activity is carried out. Responsibility develops in the process of becoming forms of self-regulation, gradually assuming control over various aspects of our activities and behavior, which initially, when we were very young, was fully assumed by our parents. Initially, we couldn’t even move ourselves, we were carried in our arms; gradually, we first take over the motor regulation of our behavior, begin to move ourselves, then we learn different ways of acting, then we learn to set goals ourselves that were previously set from the outside, then autonomous meanings arise that differ from the meanings and values of our close family environment (and this often causes surprise and perplexity among parents — where did he learn this?) – there is a process of progressive emancipation, during which something that takes the form of responsibility in adulthood is gradually developing. Freedom and responsibility, which are not yet fully formed, can form different constellations. In two empirical studies of adolescents (Kaliteyevskaya & Leontiev, 2004; Kaliteyevskaya a.o., in press), it was shown that there are different constellations of freedom and responsibility: the most advanced variant of their integration, when they really become one, a variant of impulsive quasi-freedom in the absence of responsibility; a variant of symbiotic quasi-responsibility for other people’s goals and values In the absence of freedom, there is also a conformal variant, when both mechanisms are absent (see also Leontiev, 1997). The differences between freedom and responsibility can also be seen in the fact that I can behave unfree, but at the same time realizing that I myself am the cause of these actions. I can understand that the situation forces me to act this way, but I have two options in front of me: either I act as the situation forces me, but I don’t perceive these actions as my own and look for someone to blame by raising my index finger, or outwardly I seem to be doing the same thing (from the point of view of a behaviorist observer). but at the same time, I accept the necessity of these actions, I realize their inevitability, perhaps on the basis of religious acceptance or something else, that is, I perceive these actions as my own, no matter what. This is the responsibility. An example of these seemingly forced, but internally accepted actions is the story of Hamlet as interpreted by Merab Mamardashvili (1996, p.47). Mamardashvili sees the essence of Shakespeare’s tragedy in the fact that Hamlet finds himself in a situation where it seems already in the first act it is clear what he should do, who should be killed and in what order: There is a certain concatenation of events, the “wheel of fate,” as Mamardashvili says, using an ancient metaphor. But Hamlet hesitates – he does not want to be a part of this automatic chain of events, he tries to find another way out, he problematizes his whole path and tries not to go this way. In the end, he suffers defeat, having done in the fifth act what he did not want to do in the first, but this is a very instructive, heroic defeat that demonstrates the struggle against the mechanical coupling of circumstances, against autopilots and causal chains, in which, of course, it is not always possible to win and easily win, but defeat is by no means it is predestined. Non-alibis, sanity, and force majeure Thus, the area of responsibility is to recognize my actions as mine, what I do myself, and not what just happens to me, and, accordingly, to recognize myself as the cause of certain events. Mikhail Zhvanetsky expressed his aphoristic formula of responsibility: “Thank you for everything.” This echoes what Mikhail Bakhtin expressed with the remarkable formula “non-alibi in being” (Bakhtin, 2003, p. 39). Perhaps, among philosophers and psychologists, no one has analyzed the problem of responsibility in an existential aspect more deeply than Bakhtin. The legal concept of alibi means proof of absence at the crime scene. Accordingly, non-alibi means real participation in what is happening, responsibility for it. J.-P. Sartre identified responsibility with authorship, and the chapter on responsibility in I. Yalom’s “Existential Therapy” (1999) is based on this. We can agree with this with one caveat: it is legitimate to identify responsibility with authorship, not in the sense that I am sitting in front of a piece of paper and free to write anything, but in the sense that when I have written something, I have no right to pretend that I did not write it or that I was forced to write it. If I am the author, I must acknowledge my signature, I cannot but acknowledge my handwriting. All external causes and pressures do not remove the problem of my responsibility. “I personally am not to blame for anything. That’s what I was taught,” says the character of Evgeny Schwartz’s “Dragon.” “Everyone was taught,” the hero answers him, —but why were you the first student?” (Schwartz, 1988, p. 269). Another concept from the legal context is intertwined with the concept of responsibility – the concept of sanity. Sanity means contractual capacity, the fact that a person can be responsible for himself, accept certain obligations on his behalf, based on the fact that they will be fulfilled later. Children under a certain age and the mentally ill do not meet this criterion. There is also limited sanity or functional insanity related to affect. One of the main problems of forensic psychological examinations is determining whether a person’s ability to be responsible for their actions is impaired due to affect. F.S.Safuanov recently conducted a comprehensive analysis of the problem of limiting sanity as a restriction on a person’s freedom of choice, analyzing factors that can limit freedom of choice and linking them to legal categories that qualify limitation of sanity as an ability to be responsible for their actions (Safuanov, 2003). However, it is not entirely accurate to completely reduce sanity to freedom of choice, since the highest level of behavior regulation is associated with a state that A. and B. Strugatsky characterized as follows: maximum freedom is when you have no choice. The essence of things is not arbitrary, but imperative: when a person comes to such an understanding of the essence of things that leaves no choice, he turns out to be a guide to this essence of things, part of the objective world order. It may not be exactly the maximum freedom, but it is undoubtedly the maximum responsibility, the maximum subjective causality. Another legal concept related to the concept of liability is the concept of “force majeure”, circumstances that release from responsibility for fulfilling obligations. Translated from French, force majeure means “a higher power” — one that violates my ability to plan actions, calculate their consequences, and respond to my obligations, such as natural disasters or government actions that could not have been foreseen. But one of the characteristics of responsibility is resistance to stressors, to changes in unpredictable situations, to affective unrest and shocks that may disrupt my ability to follow the course I have taken. If I am not prepared enough for possible fluctuations, then any change of mood that happens to me turns out to be force majeure, a higher force that knocks down my plans and forecasts. Only their cause can be responsible for the consequences of actions. The willingness to be the cause of some actions and the willingness to be responsible for their consequences are psychologically inseparable. Diagnosis of civilization: incontinence syndrome The diagnosis of our time, of our civilization, is the gap between the willingness to be the cause of some actions and the willingness to be responsible for their consequences, between actions and responsibility. Unwillingness to take the helm, shifting responsibility to autopilot. It can be referred to as “incontinence syndrome” or, following the psychiatrists’ fashion of naming symptoms after their discoverers, “Chernomyrdin—Duremar syndrome.” Incontinence is when, against my will, some kind of process occurs in me that has access to the outside world, which I do not control, and I do not consider myself the cause of this process in any noticeable way; the direct consequence of this is an alibi in existence. Enuresis is quite a good example of incontinence of any natural impulses: incontinence of libido, desire for power, motivation for achievement, aggression, and anything else. And we shrug our hands: that’s the way people are, that’s the way I am, that’s the way a person is built. The most vivid verbal formulation of this syndrome is the immortal formula for the gap between actions and consequences “we wanted the best, but it turned out as always” (V.S.Chernomyrdin), and the most striking image is one of the final scenes of the movie “The Adventures of Pinocchio”, in which Karabas-Barabas is defeated, and Duremar dances on the sidelines, with humming with a smile: “And I have nothing to do with it, I have nothing to do with it at all….” Chernomyrdin—Duremar syndrome characterizes the situation of alibi in one’s own life, inability and unwillingness to take responsibility — after all, it is she who, characterizing the third, highest level of relations between me and what is happening to me, provides control over “natural” processes. Probably, people who want the best sincerely want to bring the matter to a happy end, but it doesn’t work out. MK Mamardashvili said that moral actions imply not only a desire — it’s not enough to want good for good to take place. A small child may really want to lift a closet, but he doesn’t have the muscles, the muscular strength that allows him to do so. He can fight and fight, but nothing will work out that way. Similarly, Mamardashvili says, to do some moral action, to do good, requires not only the desire to do so, but also a certain “moral muscle.” If it doesn’t exist, nothing will work. To make any purposeful responsible action with the intended result in the future, you need a certain kind of musculature. The disease of our time, the disease of the entire Western civilization (including Russia) associated with incontinence syndrome, is the atrophy of this musculature. Our civilization has created a huge number of niches in which it is possible to exist on all kinds of autopilots, without developing higher forms of behavior regulation at all. In terms of L.S. Vygotsky’s theory, modern Western civilization, represented by mass culture and its corresponding economic, political and other mechanisms, is based on what can be called the cult of lower mental functions. Involuntary, automatic, based on the “click—buzz” formula and easily manipulated. Postponement of satisfaction and other forms of self-ownership are not in demand on a massive scale. The concept of illness in this context is not so metaphorical: according to one of the American authors, the essence of neurosis is the problem of responsibility. Any neurosis (and partly psychosis) is characterized by the inability to distinguish between situations and contexts in which it is possible to choose and take responsibility, and those in which it is practically impossible. As a result, the neurotic spends a lot of energy fighting problems beyond his reach and is unable to make decisions within his sphere of control (Temerlin, 1965). Control of control and dialogue with impulses It would be a big mistake to contrast incontinence with impulse control and suppression. On the contrary, hypercontrol is the flip side of incontinence. When we have a need to strictly control everything, so that, God forbid, nothing happens without my constant control, in this case, incontinence of control itself occurs, it becomes involuntary, obsessive, compulsive, goes beyond my own control. There is an old, psychologically instructive anecdote about how a person came to be hired. They ask him what he can do. “I can dig.” “What else can you do?” “I don’t have to dig.” In fact, it’s not so funny: there are often people who can dig, but they can’t not dig. These two abilities are equally important. “Don’t dig” is an opportunity to pause, an opportunity to relate to the situation, to realize where you are, to realize your desires. Hypercontrol turns out to be just as unhealthy as incontinence. In fact, both extremes, both polarities — a state of rigid concentration and control and a state of maximum openness to the world — are elements of a single cycle of human activity. H. Heckhausen and colleagues developed the “Rubicon model” in the mid-1980s, having discovered experimentally that there is one point in the decision-making process at which the mode of functioning changes. Before it, a person is as receptive as possible to information from a wide variety of sources, continues to weigh alternatives, has not yet fully decided, is in a state of maximum openness, variability, and readiness for a variety of directions. But when he makes a final decision, the mode of operation changes dramatically. Heckhausen talks about the transition from a motivational state of consciousness to a volitional one. In a strong-willed state, a person is isolated from all other options except the one he has chosen. Comparison stops, a wide search for information stops, and there is a rigid orientation towards the only chosen path (Heckhausen, 2003). Overcoming both extremes, incontinence and hypercontrol, it is necessary to pay attention to the more subtle mechanisms of embedding impulses and desires in the system of behavior regulation. “Life is a dialogue with circumstances,” Andrei Sinyavsky wisely remarked. It is also necessary to have a dialogue with one’s own desires and impulses. Let’s try to consider phenomenologically the ways of dealing with your desires. Let’s take one of the most classic cases – sexual desire. Let’s say I have a desire directed at a specific woman. In this case, two typical cases are usually considered. The first is that I begin to take some actions that should eventually lead more or less directly to the realization of my desire. The second, opposite option is that I resent myself, feel guilty and ashamed: as such, I am a family man, and besides, I have to think about holding a workshop, but here are the uncontrollable desires of the “bodily bottom”; I am trying to suppress this desire, eliminate it, according to the formula of A. and B. Strugatsky, “to recognize the above an unexplained phenomenon is irrational, transcendental, and therefore does not really exist, and as such should be permanently excluded from the memory of the people” (Strugatsky A., Strugatsky B., 1992, p. 345). But in reality, a much larger continuum of intermediate relationships is possible. I can recognize this desire, reflect on it without trying to realize it immediately or ever; perhaps this desire reveals something important to me, reveals to me to some extent the world of my relationships with women and, above all, myself, has a certain value for me as such. And if I enter into a respectful dialogue with my desire, it can tell me a lot about me: “only through desire and pain can I learn about the world, others, and myself” (Mamardashvili, 1997, p. 53). And who knows when and in what form it may then merge with other streams and determinants of my actions. Who’s for whom The last aspect of the responsibility problem that needs to be considered is the interpersonal aspect. This aspect of responsibility for another person is very relevant for psychotherapists, although there is a good formulation: the therapist is responsible for the process of work, but not responsible for the result. This problem is no less acute in family relations, in the relations between citizens and the government, which takes responsibility for people. The analysis of this situation should be based on the existential principle of indivisibility of responsibility: in a situation of interaction, the measure of responsibility that one person assumes does not in any way affect the measure of responsibility that remains with the other. These are different forms of responsibility. The main and first responsibility of any person is responsibility for himself. This is actually responsibility in the narrow sense of the word — primary, necessary, inevitable. As shown above, it is primarily a responsibility to be the cause of one’s actions. But even if I have problems with this, I come to an appointment with a therapist, I must follow the doctor’s instructions, even if I find myself in a situation of having to follow the instructions of my superiors (the classic situation is following a criminal order), there is only the illusion of release from responsibility. If the commander takes 100% responsibility for the unit’s actions, how much is left for the soldiers? The correct answer is 100%, because responsibility is not redistributed. The only question is what exactly is the responsibility of the commander, or the mother in the family, or the psychotherapist, that is, a person who expands the scope of responsibility beyond himself, and for what remains the full one hundred percent responsibility of other participants in this interaction. In government-citizen relations, the question is also not who is responsible for whom, but what exactly the government is responsible for, and what specifically I am responsible for. Here, the gap mentioned above between decision-making and responsibility for them, between authority and the very musculature of action, without which the realization of the property of being a cause is impossible, is most sharply manifested. Both the authorities and citizens suffer from Chernomyrdin—Duremar syndrome: everything goes under the influence of unclear reasons, but we shrug our hands: “We wanted the best…”. Conclusion: three sources and three components of responsibility I would like to conclude with an attempt to summarize all of the above into a simple diagram, which, like any simple diagram, should not be taken literally, but it can serve as a convenient tool for organizing various aspects of the responsibility problem. In psychology, starting with W. McDougall, a three-component scheme of psychological processes and dispositions, used in different contexts, has been registered – a cognitive component, an emotional and an effective one. If we apply this scheme to the phenomenon of responsibility, the cognitive component turns out to be subjective causality, attribution mechanisms – whether I perceive myself or external factors, stable or situational, as the main reason for what is happening to me. Subjective causation is not identical to responsibility, it is only its cognitive component. The emotional component of responsibility, apparently, is courage, that is, the willingness to accept various unpredictable turns of events without changing the general orientation, my goals, plans and what I chose to be the cause of, the ability not to succumb to the influence of various external forces, force majeure, to maintain the manageability of my own behavior, to maintain sanity and responsibility for my actions. A person who has this feature poorly expressed finds himself under the constant influence of force majeure, which any external pressure exerts on him. An effective component of responsibility is choice as the realization of subjective causality. After all, there is no right or wrong choice in life, because even in hindsight, knowing the consequences of a particular choice, we still cannot know whether it was the best or, conversely, the worst if the consequences were bad. Therefore, the problem of choice from an existential point of view is posed as follows: a “good” choice is not a “right” choice, but a choice that is accepted as one’s own responsible choice. Realizing that there can be no right choice, I take risks, accepting that the results are not guaranteed and thereby taking responsibility for it, or I refuse responsibility, trying to pretend that there is a right choice and anyone in my place would do the same. If something turns out to be wrong later, then I raise my index finger and start looking for who is to blame for what turned out so badly: I made the right choice! In the phenomenon of choice or avoidance, that is, alibi, the phenomenon of responsibility or its avoidance finds its most direct effective expression. It is through the problem of responsibility that one finds a way out of the postmodern impasse of universal relativity, the leveling of the semantic landscape and the loss of any truth and value orientations (Tulchinsky, 2002). This way out leads not through objective, abstract truth, but through subjective reality, through the affirmation of meanings and values by a responsible person who asserts his non-alibi in existence. After all, as the ancient wisdom says, which has recently become widely popular, the most important thing in life is a clear understanding of the boundaries of our own responsibility, to be able to distinguish what we can change from what we can only accept. Knowledge of the law frees from irresponsibility. Source: institut.smysl.ru (Dmitry Leontiev)