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The Development of Mind The Development of Mind Selected Works of Aleksei Nikolaevich Leontyev with a preface by Mike Cole Marxists Internet Archive P.O. Box 1541; Pacifica, CA 94044; USA. Aleksei Nikolaevich Leontyev (1904-1979) 1. Psychology, 2. Activity Theory, 3. Marxism ISBN 978-0-9805428-6-8 CC-SA (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0) 2009 by Marxists Internet Archive. Cover design by Joan Levinson. Set by Andy Blunden in Garamond. Printed by Bookmasters, Inc., Ohio. Distributed exclusively by Erythrós Press and Media. Table of Contents Note on the Work of A. N. Leonteyv vi Preface by Mike Cole................................................................................. vii 1. The Problem of the Origin of Sensation ............................................. 1 I. The Problem............................................................................. 1 II. Hypothesis ...........................................................................19 III. The Functional Evolution of Sensitivity.........................44 IV. Discussion of the Results and Certain Conclusions ...103 2. The Biological and Social in Man’s Psyche ..................................... 115 3. An Outline of the Evolution of the Psyche .................................... 137 I. The Evolution of the Psyche in Animals.........................137 II. The Origin of Human Consciousness............................181 III. The Historical Development of Consciousness..........198 4. The Historical Approach to Study of the Human Psyche ............ 245 5. The Development of Higher Forms of Memory ........................... 295 6. The Psychological Principles of Preschool Play............................. 331 7. The Theory of the Development of the Child’s Psyche ............... 355 8. Child Development and the Problem of Mental Deficiency........ 379 9. Activity and Consciousness .............................................................. 395 Note on the work of A N Leontyev The selected papers of A. N. Leontyev published in this edition express the main line of his theoretical and experimental research. After his first work, devoted to an experimental study of affective responses – An Investigation into the Objective Symptoms of Affec- tive Responses (jointly with A. R. Luriya) in Sovremennye problemy psik- hologii (Moscow, 1926); Experience of the Structural Analysis of Associative Chain Series, Russko-Nemetsky meditsinsky zhurnal, 1928, 1 and 2; Ekzamen i psikhika (Examination and the Mind) (jointly with A. R. Luriya Moscow, 1929, he began to work under L. S. Vygotsky within the context of the latter’s conception of research into the on- togenetic development of the psyche – Mediated Remembering in Children with a Deficient or Morbidly Altered Intellect, Voprosy defek- tologii, 1928, 4; Development of the Internal Structure of Higher Be- haviour in Psikhonevrologicheskaya nauka (Leningrad, 1930); Razvitie proizvol’nogo vnimania u detei (The Development of Voluntary Attention in Children), Moscow, 1930. In this period he also published his first major monograph Razvitie pamyati (The Development of Memory), Moscow, 1931. From 1932 Prof. Leontyev’s work took a new path. Heading a group of young psychologists in Kharkov (V. I. Asnin, L. I. Bozhovich, P. J. Halperin, A. V. Zaporozhets, P. I. Zinchenko, O. M. Kontsevaya, G. D. Lukov, V. V. Mistyuk, K. E. Khomenko, and oth- ers), he directed research into the development of the child’s practical intellectual activity and consciousness. On this basis he and his asso- ciates worked on the problem of relating the structure of activity to forms of psychic reflection. Several of the theoretical problems that arose in this connection, prompted Prof. Leontyev to start research in the field of various psychophysiological and zoopsychic problems. At the same time at the suggestion of the Kharkov Polygraphic Institute, he organised and directed a cycle of work of a primarily practical na- ture on children’s perception of illustrations. A number of papers were prepared under his direction in this period and published in Nauchnye zapiski Khar’kovskogo pedagogicheskogo instituta (Vol. I, X, 1939; Vol. II, X, 1941), Nauchnye zapiski Khar’kovskogo instituta inostrannykh yazyko v (Vol. II, X, 1939), Trudy konferentsii po psikhologii, Vol. I (Kiev, 1941), and in a number of later works, some of which appear in the present volume. After resuming work in Moscow in 1935, Prof. Leontyev devoted his main attention to the problem of the origin of sensitivity and the general theory of the evolution of the psyche, completing his experi- mental genetic research into the origin of sensation in 1940. During World War II Leontyev devoted his efforts to the urgent problem of restoring motor functions damaged by gunshot wounds. For that purpose he organised a rehabilitation hospital, of which he became scientific head. (The results of this work were published in A. N. Leontyev and A. V. Zaporozhets. Vosstanovlenie dvizheniya (The Restoration of Movement), Moscow, 1945, and in a number of spe- cial papers by Leontyev and his colleagues in Uchonye zapiski MGU, 1947, 3. Apart from its practical value this experimental research into the restoration of motor processes also played an important role in elabo- ration of the theory of functional development, enabling the author later to advance a hypothesis of the systemic structure of psychic functions (1954). In the postwar years the author again returned to the problem of child and educational psychology. At the same time he worked on several questions of general psychology. The joint session of the USSR Academy of Sciences and RSFSR Academy of Pedagogical Sci- ences held in 1951 on Pavlov’s physiological teaching, turned his at- tention to study of the psyche’s reflex mechanisms, which found reflection in his work: in the following period – On the Materialist and Subjective Idealist Reflex Conceptions of the Psyche, Sovetskaya pedagogika, 1951, 10; The Dependence of Associative Connections on the Content of Action (jointly with T. V. Rozanova), Sovetskaya peda- gogika, 1951, 10; On the Systemic Nature of Mental Functions. In: Tezisy doklado v na yubileinoi sessii Moskovskogo Universiteta (Moscow, 1955); On an Effect of the Forming of a Motor Chain Habit (jointly with M. I. Bobneva). Doklady APN RSFSR, 1958, 1; and the work cited below on analysis of the systemic structure of aural perception. His work on educational psychology, and problems of general psy- chology are not included in the present volume. * * * The Progress Publishers edition, published in the USSR in 1981 has been reproduced with the addition of “Activity and Conscious- ness,” published by Progress Publishers in 1977, with corrections and some changes to section numbering not affecting the content, by the Marxists Internet Archive, with a preface by Mike Cole. References to Marx and Engels have been amended so as to ref- erence the corresponding passage in Marx Engels Collected Works (MECW) published by Lawrence & Wishart (London) and Interna- tional Publishers (New York) 1975-2005. Other references have been left as per the Progress Publishers edition. Preface Alexei Leontyev must be counted among the most influential So- viet psychologists of the 20th century. As a student/colleague of Lev Vygotsky, he helped to form what he referred to as a “socio- historical” approach to psychology which famously features the cen- trality of the category of human activity as its central concept. As he put it in a widely read article on this topic, Human psychology is concerned with the activity of con- crete individuals, which takes place either in a collective – i.e., jointly with other people – or in a situation in which the subject deals directly with the surrounding world of objects – e.g., at the potter’s wheel or the writer’s desk. ... With all its varied forms, the human individual’s activity is a sys- tem in the system of social relations. It does not exist without these relations. The specific form in which it exists is determined by the forms and means of material and mental social interaction that are created by the development of production and that can not be real- ised in any way other than in the activity of concrete people. It turns out that the activity of separate individuals depends on their place in society, on the conditions that fall to their lot, and on idiosyncratic, individual factors. The work contained in this volume emphasises both the central- ity of human activity as cause and consequence of specifically human higher psychological processes, but also emblemises a central theo- retical tenet of the entire line of psychology derived from Vygotsky’s ideas, captured in the aphorism that “to understand behaviour, one must know the history of behaviour.” Leontyev, more than any of Vygotsky’s colleagues, pursued this idea back into the primal origins of the organization of living matter while continuing to pursue its implications for the development of human society and human chil- dren as well. For further reading see: Engeström, Y. (1987). Learning by Expanding. Helsinki; Ko- sultat Oy. Leontyev, A.N. (1979). The problem of activity in psy- chology (pp. 37-71). In J.V. Wertsch (Ed.). The concept of ac- tivity in Soviet psychology. Armonk, NY: Sharpe. Mike Cole February 2009 1. The Problem of the Origin of Sensation* I. The Problem 1 The origin, i.e. the genesis proper, of the psyche, and its subse- quent evolution, are closely related problems. Our general approach to psychic development is, therefore, directly characterised
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