What is associative thinking. The power of associative connections for creative thinking. How to develop associative thinking

Instructions

With associative thinking, various images appear in a person's memory, each of which is to some extent individual: it is generated by the subconscious and experience. That is why the images entail each other, and the chain of them turns out to be unique for each person, even if at first there are several standard stereotypical associations.

It is associative thinking that is the basis of the creative process that takes place in a person's head. This thinking is characteristic of everyone, regardless of age, gender, nationality, beliefs, and so on. Children have no problem using associative thinking. An example of this can easily be the child's ability to play with any object, endowing it with fictional properties. Children's imagination creates much more interesting and unusual toys than any factory producing them.

Since the social structure, which is human society, is based on some stereotypical behaviors, in the process of growing up a person assimilates them. This happens, starting from the earliest childhood, but is not limited to it. Thanks to such processes, associative thinking in people begins to be based not only on their own experience, but also on what they have learned, that is, a certain set of associations common to all people appears. They are called stereotypes. Despite the widespread negative attitude towards stereotypes, without their existence it would be impossible to imagine human society.

Associative thinking is very important for the work of the brain, since it is on this ability that memory and the ability to generate ideas are based, including for the formation of one's own life. Creativity is not only the creation of any work of art, successful or not, the whole life of a person is based on creativity. We can say that life is the main creative process for a person. That is why various knowledge that can help form new images and ideas helps people to arrange their lives in the best possible way.

The peculiarity of associative thinking is that it can be continuously developed and improved, which allows you to expand your potential. Working on this is especially important for representatives of the creative professions, but it won't hurt everyone else either. Various exercises contribute to the development of associative thinking. For example, the simplest thing is to create chains of associations. You just take any word or situation, and then have time to write down what associations will pop up in your head. One more good exercise- search for the path of associations. You need to take two words and write a path from associations between them. Any exercise that involves working with associations will help develop this type of thinking.

E. Sinitsyn, O. Sinitsyna

The secret of creativity of geniuses (excerpts from the book)

Associativity is the extraordinary ability of genius thinking

Associative thinking in science

Appealing with associative imagery is a necessary but insufficient sign of genius. The release of association is what the scales of the non-equilibrium mental state of the fantasy of a genius swing on. Associationism as a theory of thought, with its origins, goes back to the greatest philosopher of antiquity, Aristotle, and then this grandiose idea revives again in the 16th century and reveals itself in the philosophical views of J. Locke. Then the idea spreads in time, forming bursts in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the philosophical thought of England, France, Germany, Russia.

Locke proceeds from the assumption that association is a bundle that unites mental elements (sensationalist associationism). If there is an idea, then its opponent always appears. But in the twentieth century, the idea of the creator of the theory of creative thinking and gestalt psychology, Max Wertheimer, revolted in opposition to Aristotelian and Lockean.

The inexplicability of the almost open contradiction in this theory surpasses all expectations. The thinking of Wertheimer, who worked on the creation of the theory of productive thinking, is a rare paradox of his own consciousness. Gestalt theory basically presupposes the integrity of the perception of the world, its main postulate is that the properties of each part of an object are determined not only by the properties of this part, but also by all the properties of the entire integral object. Wertheimer, excluding associations and metaphors from the process of cognition, thereby tore the process of cognition to pieces, depriving it of its integrity. This was an example of a great delusion. On this occasion, the statement of José Ortega y Gasset ("Two main metaphors") is interesting: “When this or that author reproaches philosophy for using metaphors, he simply admits that he does not understand both philosophy and metaphor. Metaphor is an irreplaceable tool of reason, a form of scientific thinking. Using it, a scientist sometimes gets confused and takes an indirect or metaphorical expression of his own thought for a direct one. This kind of confusion ... must be corrected; but this kind of error can be made by a physicist in calculations. It does not follow from this that mathematics should be banished from physics. The error in the application of the method is not an argument against itself. Poetry invents metaphors, science uses them ... ”(60, p. 203).

The role of associations and metaphors in the creative thinking of a genius was analyzed by Einstein. In numerous discussions with the author of gestalt psychology, Wertheimer, Einstein described how associative, combinational flows of images arise and are born in him. Einstein doubted the correctness of the gestalt theory in the place when this theory excluded associative and combinatorial connections in productive thinking. Later he wrote: "Professor Max Wertheimer tried to conduct a survey on the difference between combination or association, I cannot judge to what extent his psychological analysis affects the essence of the issue" (Quoted from 1, with. 80-81).

Already, proceeding from this remark, Einstein did not believe that associative connections were assigned a random and insignificant role in productive thinking - in contrast to Wertheimer, who believed that associations and combinations of incompatible scientific concepts- play a random and insignificant character.

Analyzing the physical essence of the relativity of space and time, the nature of the constancy of light and numerous consequences from his theory, Einstein drew attention to the psychological essence of the cognition process. In the problem of a new concept of the world, Einstein was both a creator and an observer of how illumination occurs, how the vision of physical processes is born. Possessing the highest degree of reflection, he saw in his thinking the great power of associative images.

Einstein said: “The mental elements of thinking are some more or less clear signs or images that can be reproduced and combined“ at will ”. There is, of course, some connection between these elements and the logical concepts under consideration. It is also clear that the desire to achieve, in the end, logically related concepts is the emotional basis of this rather vague play with the elements that I spoke about. But from a psychological point of view, this combination game, apparently, is the main characteristic of creative thought - before the transition to a logical construction in words or signs of a different type, with the help of which this thought can be communicated to other people ”(Quoted from 1, p. 80 ). The concept of “emotional base” mentioned by Einstein creates a bridge to the emotional fields weighing information-semantic structures in the scientist's mind.

Words and signs are already elements of the structure S 2, and the combination game is an unconscious synthesis of the associative structure of S a. And further Einstein writes: “The elements that I have just spoken about are usually of the visual or occasionally of the motor type. Words or other conventional signs have to be found (with difficulty) only in the secondary stage, when this game associations(emphasized by the authors) gave some result and can be reproduced if desired. From what has already been said, it is clear that the game of elements aims at an analogy with some sought-after logical connections. " Signs are the very symbols on which a holistic associative representation of the world stands as support. Signs-symbols fill in the gaps in knowledge, give an impetus to replace symbols with new missing links; give an impetus to the birth of new concepts and the construction of a new holistic view.

In a genius, this mental process of the appearance of signs-symbols, symbolic images, a large number their combinations, then reinterpreting them into a logically connected system of knowledge is characterized by high spontaneity and productivity. Speaking about the priority of the combinational play of images over the transition to logical construction, Einstein reinforces us in the version that there is a continuous struggle in the creative process - cooperation between the right figurative and left logical hemispheres of the brain.

To confirm the exceptional role of associations in scientific thinking and, above all, the role of associations in fundamental discoveries, let us turn to Mendeleev's discovery of the periodic law and the legend that the main clue in the form of an associative image of a table came to the scientist when he was sleeping. With the exceptional obsession of Mendeleev and his inner concentration, conditioned by the search for solutions to the problems that tormented him, he needed to weaken the censoring role of consciousness in his struggle with the unconscious. It is necessary that the conscious be weakened, then that which has already been "groped" could from the sphere of the unconscious fall into the sphere of consciousness. In a dream, when the barriers were weakened, Mendeleev saw the desired association with solitaire, recorded it in his memory, and in the morning overcame one of the barriers holding back the flow of his thought to its discovery. There is another remarkable example of the role of association in discovery, which Kedrov gives. The bridge builder Brandt fought for a long time over the solution of the most difficult and daunting task - how to throw a railway bridge over the abyss. He found a solution only when a spider web fell on his face. Brandt intuitively felt: if a spider is able to throw a web from one branch of a tree to another, then why not also make a railway bridge (39). Huygens' example is also interesting. Huygens argued that a coincidence (association) gave him the idea of how to create a telescope, otherwise, his invention would require "inhuman genius." Huygens drew attention to the children playing with glasses in his workshop and it dawned on him.

If at least one genius uses associations in his work, then this fact should have called into question the concept of the integrity of Gestalt theory without associative thinking as a creative component of the cognitive process. But how is Wertheimer's tenacity to be explained? Even Einstein could not convince him. Their countless conversations left everyone convinced that they were right. This unique example of the divergence of views among two outstanding scientists confirms the idea that there is a psychic filter in the consciousness of any person.

Without linking his theory of cognitive and psychological barriers with the presence of a mental filter in the mind, the Russian philosopher B. Kedrov (author of the idea of an associative leap in the process of insight) determined his position with conviction and clearly: random association is a necessary factor accompanying insight and, therefore, association can be considered a systemic factor influencing the birth of a discovery. No association, no discovery, Kedrov believed.

The role of unconscious associations in creativity is associated with hypersensitivity to signals from the external environment in a creative person. Filling consciousness with a stream of images, removing its censorship, getting rid of barriers, associations have a powerful explosive force that carries all the energy of the unconscious, which is capable of putting together a complete picture from disparate images. Therefore, they say that associations are a perpetual motion machine of creativity. The power of associative feelings, sensations, thinking and intuition is that they highlight such levels where the help of the mind is powerless. Fantasy is limitless, because the number of associative images is limitless; it is a set with an uncountable number of elements. Is this the source of genius uniqueness?

Each of the images and each of the ideas woven by imagination, fantasy and extracted from the unconscious are unusual. According to Kedrov's theory of overcoming cognitive and psychological barriers, associations determine the change in combinations and give the right to select the necessary connections. Perhaps such associations "threw as a springboard" Einstein's thought over the cognitive-psychological barrier and a theory appeared where, contrary to the previous and obvious Newtonian paradigm, time and space became relative. It seemed that the stability of the eternal Newtonian world was broken. And in this overthrow of truths were guilty of a whole series of simple associations that came to mind Einstein and such great scientists as Poincaré, Weil, whose genius possessed the hallucinating power of associative thinking. Perhaps the associative understanding of the world gives impetus to revolutionary upheavals in the understanding of reality and to new paradigms in the sciences (mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, etc.)

If the role of associations in discoveries in science is so great, if information-semantic structures imprinted in memory expand and develop due to associations, then the inevitable question arises - what is their neurophysiological nature? It turned out that the release of the association and its "linkage" with new meanings have a deep neurophysiological nature. A model, image, memory trace (engram) is easily reproduced or read from memory if the trajectory of a scientist's thought accidentally encounters another image associated with it (solitaire cards and periodic table, Rutherford's planetary model of the atom, Einstein's theory of relativity, etc.) ...

The new paradigm begins with the fact that the scientist's thought, colored by feeling, moves along the elements of the old information-semantic structures and cannot escape from their captivity. Here we recall an interesting metaphor expressing the thought of two outstanding scientists: the mathematician Hadamard and the psychologist Taine. Their principle is to be able to think "about". In other words, in order to break out of the circle of false ideas, you just need to catch luck - to "catch" at least one associative element, and then everything develops at lightning speed. The hypothesis of storing associatively related images in the brain is supported by data from brain physiology on the structural construction of memory. American physiologist D. Hebb believed that nerve cells in the brain “... neurons form a cellular ensemble, and any excitation of neurons related to it will activate the entire ensemble. This is how information can be stored and instantly retrieved under the influence of any sensations, thoughts or emotions that excite certain aspects of the cellular ensemble ”(Quoted from 9, p. 161).

The very structures that Gestaltists talked about are apparently stored in the brain in the form of a cellular ensemble and the excitement or irritation of one of the elements sooner or later brings up the entire structure to the surface of consciousness in the process of an intense search. In turn, the prominent physiologist A. Ukhtomsky said: “In higher mental life, the inertness of the dominant excitement, that is, the dominant of the experienced moment, can serve as a source of“ prejudice ”,“ obsessive images ”,“ hallucinations ”, but it also gives the scientist that flywheel , "Guiding idea", the main hypothesis, which relieve thought of impulses and variegation and contribute to the cohesion of facts into a single experience "(Quoted in 74, p. 49.).

In the gift of genius, apparently, is hidden the ability of a person to "catch" behind a huge number of associations, when they overtake his consciousness - "new", and then another gift enters the battle - the gift of selection. Failures are inevitable, but the irrationality of the already accomplished discovery and thought throwing out wins in the end. When the necessary associative connection is captured in the network of semantic structures, then everything further spins up at lightning speed. The entire network of semantic structures is unevenly colored by emotions, there are sharp peaks of positive emotions, there are peaks of negative emotions. Each element of semantic structures is weighed in the emotional field. Those elements that are most excited are ready to quickly enter into an associative connection. The stream of associations saturated with psychic energy with lightning speed strengthens the still shaky, just-born conceptual structure with new props. New associations and new meanings, new local structures are constantly being substituted under it. Everything becomes irreversible, movement along the axis of meanings has occurred. Like red-hot lava, which, rapidly spreading along the slope, changes the world and in consciousness, everything that falls under the stream of associations is subject to irreversible change. Uncontrollable by any resistance, a new building of knowledge is being built in the consciousness inflamed with emotions. The discovery came true thanks to the extraordinary power of the imagination and fantasy of the genius, his unique ability to draw from the unconscious association and choose the one that breaks through the boundaries of the psychic filter.

For the purpose of clarity of the associative creative process, below in the figure in the HUE coordinate system, the emotional field E (xy) is shown, weighing on one of the areas of consciousness a certain set of information-semantic structures excited by emotional experiences. Each point with coordinates x i at i corresponds to the value of the emotion E i (x i y i ). As can be seen from the figure, the largest peak values of emotions are confined to four local semantic structures. This excitation of local structures will spontaneously lead to their connection, despite their apparent distance from each other. This is how discoveries are born when a sudden vision of new connections allows you to build a new semantic structure. This is how new ideas, poetic metaphors and new meanings are born.

When peaks appear against the background of a calm emotional background, then simultaneously with them spontaneity spills out onto the line of the assault on consciousness. Excitation of cells in areas of the neural system in the cerebral cortex is most intense where the peaks of the emotional field are located. A certain semantic structure corresponds to each section of the neural network. These fields are a strong stimulus for the development of these structures. Although intense thought in the creative process still flows (and many times) through the elements of the old structure, but the peaks of emotions in the field are already beginning their creative and destructive work. For clarity of this process, the figure shows the fields of emotions confined to information and semantic structures.

Rice. 15. The field of emotions, confined to a certain area of semantic structures.

A strong emotional stimulus excites a dominant focus in the brain. With an accidentally arising association, the imagination draws a mental model that partially reflects the elements of another structure, in which the process of overcoming the contradictions of the old structure begins. The association gives rise to a new stimulus, which partially inhibits the previous one and causes a new center of excitation to appear in the brain. In the regional consciousness, according to the figurative expression of Ten, "still unconscious ideas are thronging," and according to Ukhtomsky's concept, the dominant of the experienced moment can serve as a source of "obsessive images." The dominant sharply reduces the area of enumeration of new ideas and new images and the likelihood of their closure in new structure increases. Otherwise, the association sharply narrows the search. Metaphorically, this can be depicted as the intersection of streaks of light from two spotlights. Lighting in one direction may not be complete, but connecting a second spotlight to it directed at the same place leads to a welcome find.

Neurophysiologists believe that the excitation of one of the neurons leads to a sequential excitation of the cells of the neuronal system, and the circuit is closed by transmitting an impulse along the nerve processes to the neuron again, that is, in response to a definitely repeated stimulation, a characteristic distribution of excitation sites arises in this cellular system of neurons. The peak values of the field of emotions have a strong correlation with the most actualized local areas of semantic structures. Actualization causes increased mental tension. Isolines of the field between the peaks show areas of consciousness where a calm background of the field of emotions is observed. If the peaks of emotions relate to information distributed over the neural network, and it can have an associative connection between individual meanings, then in this case there is an effect of synaptic facilitation of the passage of nerve impulses from one part of the neural network to another. The thought of a genius, colored and excited by his feeling, his emotional excitement repeatedly flowing through the elements of the old structure, excites all neighboring neurons on its way. When in the vicinity of an excited closed neural circuit suddenly there are elements of another structure connected by an associative meaning, then at one of the moments a spontaneous unconscious ejection of an element from the associative structure occurs. It is, as it were, captured in the first trajectory and enters the area of consciousness, and then into memory, where it is fixed. This is how associatively related elements appear and through them two or more related information-semantic structures.

Apparently, the mission of the gift of genius consists in the lightning-fast capture of a huge number of combinations of trajectories of nerve impulses and the impetus of synaptic transmissions of nerve impulses branching into countless streams. This approach explains the problem of why associations increase the likelihood of the birth of a guess, and sheds light on the hypothesis of fixation of a memory trace (this problem has not yet been resolved) that fixation is the result of breaking the nerve path along which nerve impulses went during memorization. The passage of a nerve impulse along a path facilitated by repeated signal circulation provides stronger memorization and faster reading of information (76).

Associative thinking is not limited to the space of science, but extends to all remote corners of knowledge and, above all, to the field of art.

Everything is reflected in prose and poetry. Every phenomenon, action, object and even a person involuntarily resembles something that has already been seen before, and a reminder of this emerges from the depths of memory. This is how the association mechanism works: everything that has found a glimpse in our consciousness is interconnected in order to securely anchor in memories.

A source of unexpected memories

The brain is a large set of leaflets-images, each of which occupies a strictly defined place - the shades of experience refer specifically to this group of objects or phenomena. Where do sudden memories come from? They are guided by associative memory. For example, a lollipop will lead you to the park, on a carousel on the way back in time, and the noise of cars on a summer day, when the music in the headphones suddenly stopped.

Associations as a professional tool

The power of associative connections is used by craftsmen of many professions. Marketers find a path to using tests that offer to identify analogies between words, sounds, colors. This is how they find the right words of politics or characters from commercials, come up with slogans, make up logos and go through everything that should force a person to take a certain action.

Writers follow the path of marketers, using associative links in many ways. For linking one episode with another, for reflecting intimate experiences through the characteristics of objective phenomena or drawing a character using the example of perception. It is associations that make thinking deeper, faster, brighter. They represent a clever montage of thoughts, in which everything that is superfluous, explaining, is cut out of the chain, and the very juice, the concentrate of ideas, remains.

The psychology of the associative chain

The deep layers of associative links are conveyed by a line from Dolsky's song: "My plane is a pectoral cross." Even outside the main text, she points to clear associations: baptism, fate, crucifixion, the end of everything, and each of these meanings is really reflected in the song.

Who does the use of associative links help? People who are trying to create something new, combining the old in an incredible way. Lovers to get to the bottom of the truth of the images of films and David Lynch. Writers, actors, directors, physicists, mathematicians - everyone who knows how to organize the idea of reality into a simple and understandable formula of laws.

The energy of associative connections is most often destructive. It occurs if a person is unconsciously jealous of someone, although there is no reason for this, during depression and immersion in self-digging, as well as when watching the news, which often turns to human fears in order to draw attention to the problem. Making them work on the side of the world is a titanic work. From time immemorial, storytellers of legends about heroes have been doing this, bringing up new generations of Russian heroes. American heroes with the prefixes "super" act similarly, helping to believe in themselves or justice in this world. The ability to find an association of your life with the fate of a successful person gives you motivation. The association gives you the opportunity to look at yourself from the outside, for which it is worth putting the present on the shelves of self-awareness, delving into the reasons for the current state with a simple question: "How?"

But how to explore architectural thinking and its categories? The theoretical works mentioned above are of a critical and philosophical nature. They offer a reflection of architectural thinking and they themselves provide samples of highly developed architectural thought, but they can hardly find an explanation for the very phenomenon of architectural thinking or a theoretical model of "architectural form".

The critical aspect dominates the theoretical analysis. The suspicion may arise that the models of architectural thinking should be turned not to architectural criticism, but to the sciences of thinking.

But if we turn to the sciences that are commonly believed to investigate "thinking", namely, to psychology and logic, we will see that these sciences have not yet begun researching architectural thinking. Psychology, just like formal or dialectical logic, was not interested in either history or the logic of architectural thinking. To this day, the study of the categorical apparatus of architectural thought, its methods, criteria, for example, the presence in it of its own "paradigms" (T. Kuhn) and a specific architectural "discourse" (M. Foucault) remains extremely poorly developed, although these categories in the West in the last decades have become widespread. Therefore, one has to, so to speak, “rely on one's own strengths” and return to professional reflection, especially since it is hardly possible to understand the specific nature of architectural thinking from the outside without having professional experience and intuition.

However, in professional architectural circles, “thinking” itself remains a concept that is not methodologically reflected. Until now, it is usually understood as a kind of synonym for "thinking", which includes imagination, decision-making, judgment by an architect who solves a particular functional or compositional problem. The fact that thinking is a universal, like language, form of human activity, which has its own, historically changing logic, is rarely taken into account. Even established architectural theorists prefer historical-critical commentary over theoretical modeling.

Perhaps it is the lack of experience in the logical study of professional thinking that has led to the fact that it is customary to underestimate the verbal forms of thought and oppose thinking in images to them. We often hear that an architect thinks not in concepts, but in space and volumes, forms and compositions, that is, architecture itself - projects or buildings - is the material and traces of his thought. At the same time, they lose sight of the fact that the birth of projects and buildings is preceded by ideas, internal criticism of options, discussion and choice of solutions, and much more that is already hidden in the finished building. If we restrict ourselves to the analysis of structures or projects, then it will hardly be possible to distinguish the original from the copy.

Of course, there is not the slightest doubt that an architect solves mental problems related to volumes, spaces and shapes, that visual and tactile images and representations play a role in architectural thinking no less than verbal concepts and categories. But we do not yet have a language of this kind, with the help of which thought as such could be realized. What we have is, as a rule, the translation of the means of non-verbal thinking into verbal forms, and it is possible that in the future non-verbal forms of thinking will be mastered by logic and philosophy. But even in this case, it will hardly be possible to assert that thinking will be limited to such a visual-spatial language. The verbal component of architectural thinking remains essential. Indeed, speaking of thinking in space, volumes, lines or color and light, we understand these categories in two senses. On the one hand, these are categories denoting certain environments of the imagination in which architectural thinking freely transforms and invents forms and configurations. So space is what all the so-called spatial forms are in. On the other hand, to think in space, line, light means to form some definite structures in these environments. But in order to fix these structures, thinking must necessarily give them names, designate them. These names are included in the layers of verbal thinking not only because there is such a technical need to fix them. If you take a closer look at the emergence of these images and forms, you will notice that naming is inherent in them from the very beginning of their formation. It is here that we can talk about the genetics of images and forms, in particular about metaphors, and also different kinds assimilations and assimilations that are made with images when relying on verbal signs.

In architectural thinking, if you look at all its historical experience, the role of verbal thinking and, accordingly, various kinds of texts from the first treatises of antiquity to the immense sea of modern architectural literature, is steadily growing, in which one can see the process of "intellectualization" of architecture, its historical transformation from crafts into a profession, when the fruits of the creativity of generations are passed on not only in the form of personal and individual exchange of experience, but also through the apparatus of professional culture.

The growth of mutual interest in architectural and philosophical thought is indicative. If in the era of modernism only rare philosophers paid attention to architecture, then in postmodern philosophy architecture was more fortunate.

Until the mid-60s, interest in architectural thinking was stimulated methodological issues interdisciplinary research in architecture and urban planning. The first time, when it was aimed at searching for a synthetic system of knowledge in the spirit of "unified science", a project of a unified science of human settlements - "ekistics" appeared, which could not be implemented, although in the course of research and exchange of views the so-called "scale of ekistics" was proposed. »As a means of systematizing knowledge related to architecture and urban planning.

Programs were also put forward for rethinking architectural knowledge and ideas in the light of new categories with powerful integration potential: space, system, environment, culture and language. There were attempts to subordinate architectural thinking to purely quantitative methods in the so-called "architectural qualimetry" In all these theoretical and methodological programs, however, the architect's thinking itself did not appear as an independent study problem. All efforts were constantly directed only to the tasks of architecture, and thinking was taken insofar as it was required to solve certain practical problems. So the experience of analyzing the mental activity of architects has so far belonged not to professionals, but to philosophers who viewed architecture in a broader context of the development of culture and mental activity.

We meet the first attempts at a philosophical interpretation of architecture in the aesthetics of G.F. Hegel and F. Schelling, from where they passed into the theoretical constructions of H. Semper. In the twentieth century, contacts between science, philosophy, art and architecture expand and the self-knowledge of architecture makes its first decisive steps in the Bauhaus and Vkhutemas, the Ulm School of Design, among Italian architectural historians, then in France among structuralists and post-structuralists.

Since the late sixties, we can note an unprecedented interest in architectural thought and reflection in professional circles, which in itself cannot be explained in any way. It just folds up. However, it is not difficult to offer an explanation for this phenomenon. Indeed, in the conditions of intellectualization of all spheres public life the development of architecture cannot rely only on the plastic or constructive endowments of individual architects. The architect is forced to be in a complex communicative relationship with society and maintain his cultural status and authority.

Architecture, of course, remains the sphere of "serving" the needs of society, but now it is faced with the task of turning this "service" into genuine service again. And it is impossible to achieve this by assimilating architecture to other cultural forms or reducing architectural thinking to something else (scientific or artistic), because in this case architecture will remain something secondary, derivative and, therefore, not authoritative.

Interest in design thinking has been awakened by works on design theory and engineering design in Russia in the mid 60s. And although architectural thinking proper was not given special attention in these studies, it was the methodological discussions of the late 60s - early 80s that gave impetus and logical means in order to re-pose the problem of the architect's thinking and its main category - architectural form.

Summing up, we can say that we are now entering a stage in the development of architecture, when the problem of architectural thinking should be posed as a special and specific problem, not canceling, but supplementing other traditional problems of architectural studies.

Thinking is the main cognitive process that determines a lot in a person's life. Associative thinking is a concept that reflects the use of associations: all connections between actions and representations come from sensations and the traces they leave in the brain. Association is a connection between concepts and representations that arises in the process of understanding them. One of the ideas evokes another in the mind - this is how associations are born.

Associative connections are not the same for different people, because they depend on personal experience... So, the word "autumn" in one person is associated with slush and bad weather, in another - with bright yellow autumn flowers, in a third - with a riot of colors in a deciduous forest, in a fourth - with mushrooms and "quiet hunting", in a fifth - with loneliness , drizzling rain and receding into the distance deserted alley, strewn with withered leaves, and at the sixth - happy birthday, friends, gifts and fun.

The term "association" was introduced by the English philosopher and educator John Locke back in 1698 and has been widely used ever since. Thanks to associative thinking, we get to know new things, discover the world for ourselves, expand the boundaries of its knowledge, learn to think outside the box.

Types of associations

There are different classifications of associations. For example, according to a number of features, the following types can be distinguished:

- Cause - effect (rain - raincoat, lightning - thunder, snow - skis).

- Adjacency, proximity in time and space (sausage - refrigerator, computer - mouse).

- Similarity, similarity of concepts (cloud - feather bed, pear - light bulb).

- Contrast (white - black, fire - ice, cold - warm).

- Generalization (flower - bouquet, birch - tree).

- Submission (vegetable - tomato, bush - viburnum).

- Supplement (borscht - sour cream, salad - mayonnaise).

- Whole and parts (body - hand, house - entrance).

- Subordination to one object (pliers - pliers, chair - bench, cup - glass).

There are also associations by consonance (cat - midge, shadow - wattle) and derivational, built on the same root words (blue - blue, oven - baked goods).

In the process of building associations, different senses can be involved, so associations are gustatory, visual, auditory, olfactory, etc.

Associative theory of thinking

The first ideas about the universal laws of human mental life were associated with the formation of associations. In the 17th century, the psychology of thinking was not yet singled out as a separate section, and thinking was not considered as a special form of human activity. The development of thinking was understood as the process of the accumulation of associations.

The associative theory of thinking belongs to one of the earliest. Its supporters believed that thinking is an innate ability and boils down to associations connecting traces of the past and impressions of present experience. Unfortunately, this theory could not explain the creative nature of the thinking process, the specificity of its content and the patterns of its course.

However, based on the learning process, the associative theory of thinking identified several points that are very significant for the development of thinking:

- The importance of using visual material in the learning process;

- Awareness that learning is possible only through sensory cognition, i.e. through images and representations.

- Understanding that associations expand the boundaries of abilities, through them, consciousness is stimulated, activating the processes of comparison, analysis, generalization.

Development of associative thinking

Ideas suggested by associations have been successfully used by humans for a long time. Fish observation inspired the idea of a submarine, and surfacing and diving systems were inspired by associations with fish air bubble... The idea of echolocation is borrowed from dolphins. A burdock clinging to a dog's hair prompted Georges de Menstral, an engineer from Switzerland, to create Velcro, which is now widely used in clothing and footwear. Many unrealized ideas suggested by associations have survived in Leonardo Da Vinci's notebooks. So, birdwatching gave him the idea of an ornithopter that would allow a person to soar above the ground. His parachute sketches are a reflection of the dream of a flying man, drifting high, not afraid to fall from any height. And this is only a tiny part of the ideas inspired by associations, and the main thing is that this process cannot be stopped.

Developed associative thinking gives us a number of advantages:

Promotes the development of imagination;

Helps to generate new, outstanding ideas;

Facilitates perception and promotes the formation of new semantic connections;

Improves adaptation to new, non-standard situations and helps in finding solutions to unusual problems;

Stimulates brain function;

Improves memory capacity.

It should be noted that associations are the basis of mnemonics, which allows you to memorize large volumes of words. Learn more about associative memory.

It is better to start the development of associative thinking from early childhood, in stages. First, you just need to acquaint the child with all the concepts encountered and the actions associated with them. The next stage is teaching the child to generalize. For example, cups, plates, saucers - dishes; chair, table, armchair - furniture; machine, doll, cubes - toys. At the same time, the child learns to name and distinguish objects.

For older children, other, more complex exercises are needed: drawing up associative rows, searching for consistency in a word row, analyzing objects by attribute.

A child's associative thinking can lead him to psychologically difficult situations. When a child reacts sharply to an image or association (for example, a vaccination - an injection - a doctor - a white coat), it is important for a parent to understand that suppressed associations, driven into a dark corner, can cause the development of all sorts of complexes in the future. It is important to be patient, to talk with the child about what scares him, to explain, to tune in to the positive. You should listen to the child and his associations, try to understand his needs, images, aspirations in order to support the child, calm him down, and return him a sense of security.

Exercises for the development of associative thinking

Want to try some association games? This is the case when games develop:

1. Take any two words that are not related in meaning, and try to gradually create a semantic associative chain leading from one to the other. For example: a car and a tree. The chain can be like this: car - road - forest - tree.

2. Come up with a few words (for example: bottle, beads, window). Match them with words-associations that are similar in one or more features (for example: glassy, solid, sparkling, green).

3. Find associations that combine all words at the same time. For example: cold, shiny - ice, diamond, metal.

4. If you are on a walk or on the road, and you have a travel companion, come up with any first word and in turn lead a chain of associations from it. When the association is not clear, explain its appearance. It's fun, interesting, and develops associative thinking.

5. Come up with unusual associations. For example, wallet - money - is the usual, expected association. What else can you store in your wallet? Lottery ticket, lock of hair, amulet, note, key?

6. There is a curious test that does not take much time, but allows you to play associations, and look into your subconscious and understand what is bothering you. This is the first step towards a solution, right? You can just come up with any 16 words, or you can use auxiliary initial letters... But you should not hesitate for a long time, you need to write the first thing that comes to mind, and be honest with yourself (if your goal is to get to know yourself better and solve your problem). You can use nouns, adjectives, adverbs, phrases. So, if you decide to use letters (for a start, it's easier), take a piece of paper and write down the following letters on the left vertically: t, d, b, m, d, a, w, o, k, p, c, n, z , n, l, s. Now, opposite each of them, write a word starting with this letter - the first that comes to mind. Now take the resulting words in pairs, choosing an association for every two words running vertically in a row. Write down associations in front of each pair of words. You will have 8 words. Then again, vertically from top to bottom, combine the two resulting words and again write down the associations that are being born. Now they will be 4. Combine them in pairs, write down two new associations. By combining them, you get a key association, the most important one. Associations helped in the study of the subconscious, they were used by S. Freud, then K. Jung, and before today used by many psychoanalysts (and not only). Using the creative component of your personality, during such a test, you can look into your subconscious and find ways to solve the problem, if any. In any case, setting out associations and thoughts on paper, we subject them to analysis, look deeper into ourselves and understand better.

Violation of associative thinking

Disorders of associative thinking are expressed in a change in its pace, purposefulness and harmony. Serious painful disorders of associative thinking are the subject of study in the literature on psychiatry and clinical psychology, in the section of psychopathology.

Were identified some patterns of violations of the thought process. Based on the symptoms of disorders, for example, disorders are divided in form and content. In the first case, we are talking about violations of the associative process of thinking (how a person thinks), and in the second - violations of judgments (what a person thinks, various kinds of obsessions, delusions, super-black ideas). Below we will consider only some types of disorders of associative thinking:

By changing the pace of thinking:

- Acceleration, noticeably outstripping everyone else, the pace of information processing, generation of ideas, decision-making, sometimes a jump of ideas. This acceleration is characteristic of manic states.

- Slowing down the pace, excessive delays in thinking and making decisions.

- Involuntary intrusion of thoughts (mentism), interfering with the thought process, confusing the topic.

- Stopping thinking - cutting off the flow of thoughts, their involuntary stop.

By mobility, liveliness of the thinking process:

- An abundance of detail, minor details that are irrelevant to the topic.

- Excessive detail, aggravating the previous point with unnecessary distracting associations and details.

- The viscosity of thoughts, at which thinking ceases to be productive, the thread of the conversation is lost.

By grammatical structure of speech:

- The use of clichés, ready-made stamps, templates or questions when constructing an answer, that is, the use of speech stereotypes.

- Repetition of meaningless words, sounds or phrases.

- The incoherent repetition of words or their combinations, in which there is no logical or grammatical structure.

By focus:

- Excessive flowery when expressing a simple thought.

- Sliding from a topic into a lengthy reasoning into an abstract association with a subsequent return to the topic.

- Verbose empty and lengthy ranting without purpose, "about nothing" (reasoning).

- Direction of efforts not to resolve the issue, but to implement the protocol (formalism).

- Consideration of the issue from different angles, with different assessment criteria, changing the levels of generalization, because of which it is impossible to make a final decision (diversity).

- Fuzzy, contradictory use of concepts, when it is almost impossible to understand what the speech is about (amorphousness).

- Violation of the logic of thinking, in which either prerequisites, or cause-and-effect relationships, or evidence suffer.

- Symbolism, understandable only to the patient himself, and to no one else.

- Pathological finding of new meanings in words, proceeding, for example, from the number of letters or from their rhyming with one or another (for example, “happy” or “unlucky”) word.

- Autistic thinking is one that concerns only the patient's inner world, closed to outsiders.

- Archaic thinking - it is based on old stereotypes, judgments, views that are far from modernity.

- Perseveration (perseverance, persistence) - in this case, a person persistently repeats a word, phrase or deed, even if the relevant context has already been exhausted.

- Disintegration (lack of a logical connection between concepts, judgments and conclusions), although the grammatical structure of speech may not be violated.

To keep the brain in good shape, the complex development of its cognitive functions, such as attention, thinking, memory and perception, is important. For their development, you can use regular exercises for.

We sincerely wish you a useful and exciting pastime and success in self-development!