Conceptual Analysis of the Development of the Model of Human in the Monographs by B.F. Lomov

In the context of studying a priori anthropology of psychological research, this text attempts to conceptualize and compare models of human in two fundamental monographs by B.F. Lomov: “Chelovek i tekhnika: ocherki inzhenernoy psikhologii” (1966) and “Metodologicheskiye i teoreticheskiye problemy psikhologii” (1984). This study was aimed at both identifying the holistic structure of explicit and implicit ideas about human and its’ nature by one of the greatest science facilitators of Soviet psychology and at comparing these ideas in two periods of his academic life. The first period is associated with the organization of the Faculty of Psychology at Leningrad State University (now St. Petersburg State University) and the second one is associated with the Institute of Psychology of Soviet Academy of Sciences (now Institute of Psychology of Russian Academy of Sciences). As a result, beyond the obvious expansion of ideas about human and its’ nature, which is connected with the subject matter of the analysed monographs (the earlier one is connected exclusively with engineering psychology, while the second one outlines the contours of the existence and development of psychological science in the Soviet Union in general), the Lomov’s model of human highlighted the uniqueness, extreme complexity, and systemic organization of human nature, and also the specificity of mental reflection.