Kogan I. Empathy and peculiarities of its development in primary school students.

The thesis is focused on the process of character formation in children at the school age and on finding out of psychological conditions favourable for forming of empathic ability in primary school students. Empathy is defined as a psychological mechanism enabling understanding of another individual. Specific character of such empathic understanding implies that it includes, as an integral part, reflection of the emotional state of another person in the subject's own emotional states and sensations congruent to the counterpart's sensations. Within empathy, three levels can be distinguished: immediate emotional co-experience, sensual imagery sympathy, and reflexive personal understanding. Functionally, empathy can be seen as a mechanism of psychological reconciliation of general ideas of a human as such, of the subject's own self, and of his concrete counterpart ("Human"-conception - "Self"-conception - "You"-conception). In the interaction between "Me" and "Another person", empathy makes the subject'scounterpart, initially alien to the subject, turn into the emotionally significant person, i.e. causes transition from the abstract idea of "Another" to the significant "You"-conception. Under conditions of purposeful education, empathy can be developed in primary school students in two different forms: as a personal trait (emotional sensitivity) and as a personal ability to interact empathetically (to sympathise) that becomes the basis underlying further development of all components of empathy, first of all, personal reflection. Empathy formation immediately results in increase of the number of schoolchildren featuring altruistic emotional stance.