Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev: the great experimenter

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The great Russian scientist, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize several times, devoted his life to uncovering the secrets of the human brain, healed people with hypnosis, studied telepathy and crowd psychology.

Mysticism and materialism

The experiments of Vladimir Bekhterev with hypnosis were perceived ambiguously by contemporaries, especially by the scientific community. At the end of the 19th century, the attitude towards hypnosis was skeptical: it was considered almost quackery and mysticism. Bekhterev proved that this mysticism can be used in an exclusively applied manner. Vladimir Mikhailovich sent carts through the streets of the city, collecting the drunks of the capital and delivering them to the scientist, and after that he conducted sessions of mass treatment of alcoholism using hypnosis. Only then, thanks to the incredible results of treatment, hypnosis is recognized as the official method of treatment.

Brain map

Bekhterev approached the question of studying the brain with the enthusiasm inherent in the discoverers of the era of the great geographical discoveries. In those days, the brain was the real Terra Incognita. Based on a number of experiments, Bekhterev created a method that allows you to thoroughly study the pathways of nerve fibers and cells. Thousands of the thinnest layers of the frozen brain were alternately fastened under a glass of a microscope, and from them detailed sketches were made, according to which a "brain atlas" was created. One of the creators of such atlases, the German professor Kopsch, said: "Only two people know perfectly well the structure of the brain - God and Bekhterev."

Parapsychology

In 1918, Bekhterev created the Institute for the Study of the Brain. Under him, the scientist creates a laboratory for parapsychology, the main task of whose employees was to study the reading of thoughts at a distance. Bekhterev was absolutely convinced of the materiality of thought and of practical telepathy. To solve the problems of the world revolution, a group of scientists is not only thoroughly studying neurobiological reactions, but also trying to read the language of Shambhala, planning a trip to the Himalayas as part of Roerich's expedition.

Analysis of the communication problem

Questions of communication, mutual psychic influence of people on each other occupy one of the central places in the socio-psychological theory and collective experiment of V. M. Bekhterev. Bekhterev considered the social role and functions of communication on the example of specific types of communication: imitation and suggestion. “If there were no imitation,” he wrote, “there could be no personality as a social entity, and yet imitation draws its main material from communication with itself.

like, between whom, thanks to cooperation, a kind of mutual induction and mutual suggestion develops. Bekhterev was one of the first scientists seriously involved in the psychology of the collective man and the psychology of the crowd.

Child psychology

The indefatigable scientist even involved his children in experiments. It is thanks to his curiosity that modern scientists have knowledge of the psychology inherent in the infantile period of human maturation. In his article "The initial evolution of children's drawing in an objective study," Bekhterev analyzes the drawings of "girl M", who is in fact his fifth child, his beloved daughter Masha. However, interest in the drawings soon faded, leaving the door ajar to the untapped field of information that was now provided to the followers. The new and the unknown has always distracted the scientist from the already begun and partially mastered. Bekhterev opened the doors.

Experiments with animals

V. M. Bekhterev with the help of the trainer V. L. Durova conducted about 1278 experiments of mental suggestion of information to dogs. Of these, 696 were considered successful, and that, according to the experimenters, was solely due to incorrectly composed tasks. The processing of the material showed that "the dog's answers were not a matter of chance, but depended on the influence of the experimenter on it." Here is how V. M. Bekhterev's third experiment, when a dog named Pikki had to jump on a round chair and hit the right side of the piano keyboard with his paw. “And here is Pikki's dog in front of Durov. He looks intently into her eyes, covers her muzzle with his palms for a while. Several seconds pass, during which Pikki remains motionless, but being freed, he rushes swiftly to the piano, jumps up on a round chair, and from the blow of a paw on the right side of the keyboard there is a ringing of several treble notes."

Unconscious telepathy

Bekhterev argued that the transmission and reading of information through the brain, this amazing ability, called telepathy, can be realized without the knowledge of the suggesting and transmitting. Numerous experiments in transmitting thought at a distance have been perceived in two ways. It was as a result of the latest experiments that Bekhterev continued his further work "under the gun of the NKVD." The possibilities of instilling information in humans, which aroused the interest of Vladimir Mikhailovich, were much more serious than similar experiments with animals and, according to contemporaries, were interpreted by many as an attempt to create a psychotronic weapon of mass destruction.

By the way…

Academician Bekhterev once remarked that only 20% of people will be given the great happiness of dying, keeping the mind on the roads of life. The rest by old age will turn into angry or naive senile and become ballast on the shoulders of their own grandchildren and adult children. 80% is significantly more than the number of those who are destined to get cancer, Parkinson's disease or to sleep in old age from fragility of bones. To enter the happy 20% in the future, it is important to start now.

Over the years, almost everyone begins to be lazy. We work a lot in our youth to rest in our old age. However, the more we calm down and relax, the more harm we do to ourselves. The level of requests comes down to a banal set: "eat tasty - get plenty of sleep." Intellectual work is limited to solving crosswords. The level of demands and claims to life and to others is growing, and the burden of the past crushes. Irritation from not understanding something results in a rejection of reality. Memory and thinking ability suffers. Gradually, a person moves away from the real world, creating his own, often cruel and hostile, painful fantasy world.

Dementia never comes suddenly. It progresses over the years, acquiring more and more power over a person. The fact that now is just a prerequisite in the future may become fertile soil for the germs of dementia. Most of all, it threatens those who have lived their lives without changing their attitudes. Traits such as excessive adherence to principles, perseverance and conservatism are more likely to lead to dementia in old age than flexibility, the ability to quickly change decisions, emotionality. "The main thing, guys, is not to grow old at heart!"

See also: How to teach the brain to learn. Tatiana Chernigovskaya

Here are some indirect signs that it is worth getting into a brain upgrade

1. You have become sensitive to criticism, while you yourself criticize others too often.

2. You don't want to learn new things. Rather agree to have your old mobile phone repaired than read the instructions for the new model.

3. You often say: "But before," that is, you remember and nostalgic for the old days.

4. You are ready to talk about something with rapture, despite the boredom in the eyes of the interlocutor. It doesn't matter that he falls asleep now, the main thing is that what you are talking about is interesting to you.

5. You find it difficult to concentrate when you start reading serious or scientific literature. You poorly understand and remember what you read. You can read half of the book today, and tomorrow you can forget its beginning.

6. You began to talk about matters in which you were never well versed. For example, about politics, economics, poetry or figure skating. And it seems to you that you are so good at the issue that you could start running the state right tomorrow, become a professional literary critic or a sports judge.

7. Of the two films - a work by a cult director and a popular film novel / detective story - you choose the latter. Why strain yourself again? You don’t understand at all what someone finds interesting in these cult directors.

8. You are confident that others should adjust to you, and not vice versa.

9. There are many rituals in your life. For example, you cannot drink your morning coffee from any mug other than your beloved one without first feeding the cat and flipping through the morning newspaper. The loss of even one element would unsettle you for the whole day.

10. At times you notice that you tyrannize others with some of your actions, and you do it without malicious intent, but simply because you think that this is more correct.

Brain development guidelines

Note, the brightest people who preserve reason until old age, as a rule, are people of science and art. On duty, they have to strain their memory and do daily mental work. They always keep their finger on the pulse of modern life, tracking fashion trends and even ahead of them in some way. This "production necessity" is the guarantee of a happy reasonable longevity.

1. Start learning something every two to three years. You don't have to go to college and get a third or even fourth degree. You can take a short-term refresher course or master a completely new profession. You can start eating foods that you have not eaten before, learn new tastes.

2. Surround yourself with young people. You can always pick up all sorts of useful things from them that will help you to always remain modern. Play with children, they can teach you a lot that you do not even know about.

3. If you haven’t learned anything new for a long time, maybe you just weren’t looking? Take a look around, how much new and interesting is happening where you live.

4. From time to time, solve intellectual problems and pass all kinds of subject tests.

5. Learn foreign languages, even if you don’t speak them. The need to regularly memorize new words will help train your memory.

6. Grow not only upward, but also inward! Take out old textbooks and periodically recall the school and university curriculum.

7. Go in for sports! Regular physical activity before and after gray hair really saves you from dementia.

8. Train your memory often, forcing yourself to remember verses that you once knew by heart, dance steps, programs that you learned at the institute, phone numbers of old friends and much more - everything you can remember.

9. Break habits and rituals. The more the next day differs from the previous one, the less likely you are to "smoke" and come to dementia. Drive to work on different streets, give up the habit of ordering the same dishes, do what you have never been able to do before.