The article presents three lines of theoretical and experimental research A.M Matyushkin and his scientific school. The first line is connected with the study of motivational-emotional regulation of thinking, the development of the idea of ​​the subject's activity in the formulation and solution of thinking tasks, his cognitive activity. The second line is devoted to the study of intellectual, creative, personal possibilities of subject. The third line is aimed at studying the conditions under which it becomes possible to a real creative thinking, opening the new (subjectively and objectively).