[Ukhtomskiĭ and the nature of the human "ego"]

A. Ukhtomskiĭ is one of those Russian naturalists of the beginning of the 20th century (K. Tsiolkovskiĭ, V. Vernadskiĭ, K. Timiriazev, I. Pavlov), whose scientific work is characterized by a combination of the valuable contribution to a specific field of science and deep philosophical conceptualizations. Ukhtomskiĭ enriched modern neurophysiology by the ideas on dominant--a stable focus of enhanced excitability, determining the organism reactions to the environmental stimuli. Unlike artificial experimental models, natural dominant--vector of the goal-directed behaviour--represents the needs of immediate satisfaction, dominating at the present moment. Formation of needs hierarchy, characteristic of the given personality, occurs during the process of people communication. Namely, another man serves to the subject a mirror, looking into which he realizes himself as a human being (K. Marx). By his teaching on the dominant, Ukhtomskiĭ has revealed the dual nature of the personality's self-consciousness in the process of its perception of the surrounding people. He showed that involuntary projection of its dominating vital and social needs (motives, intentions) to the image of another man makes the latter only the "double" of the observer, which does not promote the development and enrichment of personality. Actually productive is only the perception which is motivated by the ideal need of learning another personality, sincere interest in him, what makes another person a "well-deserved colocutor", a source of new knowledge about people and himself. The ideas of Ukhtomskiĭ on the nature of human "self" are close to ideological searchings of L. Tolstoĭ and F. Dostoevskiĭ.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)