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Vygotsky and Intersubjectivity Anatoly N Psychology in Russia: State of the Art Russian Lomonosov Psychological Moscow State Volume 7, Issue 3, 2014 Society University Vygotsky and intersubjectivity Anatoly N. Krichevets Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected] Lev Vygotsky’s statement on the development of the higher psychological functions— from the interpsychological form to the intrapsychological form—is discussed in the ar- ticle. I describe the changing of Vygotsky’s interest from nonverbal to verbal communi- cation and his emphasis on verbal communication as an only kind of interpsychological function. I then analyze works that show the importance of nonverbal communication in this process. I raise the questions of what an interpsychological function is and who is its “owner.” I argue that immediate response to the behavior (verbal and nonverbal) of an- other person is a basis for the psychological functions of a child, and this basis continues to influence processes in later stages of human development, including adulthood. Thus, interpsychological function in the development of the child is inevitably connected with some kind of passivity in reactions to social stimulation. Keywords: interpsychological and intrapsychological functions, ontogeny, intersubjec- tivity, communication, dialogue Vygotsky’s Main Formula “Every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first, on the so- cial level, and, later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychologi- cal) and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher func- tions originate as actual relationships between individuals” (Vygotsky, 1960*/1983: 145; see also Vygotsky, 1978). This passage from Lev Vygotsky’s ”The history of the development of higher mental functions” is one of the most often cited from his works. It is his principal formula, and one may find dozens of similar propositions in his other works. For reference I call this proposition his Main Formula. It is not clear what exactly “interpsychological” means in this formula. The purpose here is to clarify what it could mean. With the help of his Main Formula, Vygotsky tried to accomplish two tasks at once: to describe the parallel processes of (1) the internalization of psychological * The text was written in 1931. ISSN 2074-6857 (Print) / ISSN 2307-2202 (Online) © Lomonosov Moscow State University, 2014 © Russian Psychological Society, 2014 doi: 10.11621/pir.2014.0302 http://psychologyinrussia.com 14 A.N. Krichevets function and (2) the acquiring of behavior. Is it necessary for both processes to be connected with language? Vygotsky’s interest in the “sign without meaning” (for example, tying a string around one’s finger as a reminder) and in children’s pointing gestures in his early works shows that the process of behavior acquiring may be connected with non- linguistic signs. Later his interest shifted. Why? Why did Vygotsky in his texts that were published later interpret “interpsychological” as a special kind of communica- tion by means of language, as the order to do something? Many examples can be found to confirm this tendency. This is one of them: As a person masters the action of external natural forces, he masters his own behavior using the natural laws of this behavior. At the base of the natural laws of behavior are the laws of stimuli-response, so one cannot master the response while one has not mas- tered the stimuli. Hence, the child acquires his behavior, but the key to this process is in acquiring the system of stimuli. (Vygotsky, 1960/1983, p. 154) The Main Formula now becomes: Each system I speak about goes through three stages. The first is the interpsychologi- cal—I order, you execute; then the extrapsychological stage follows—I begin to order myself; and then the intrapsychological stage comes—two brain elements that are acti- vated by external stimuli show a tendency to perform as a whole system and become an intracortical element. (Vygotsky, 1982*, p. 130) The reference to physiological processes here is absent in the previous version of the Main Formula. And he goes further. It is impossible to understand all aspects of Vygotsky’s motivation for writing the following (I tend to think that ideological pressure was one of the causes): Let a psychological process move a brain atom a distance of one micron—and the en- ergy-conservation law is crushed, and we shall have to give up the main principle of natural science, which [our] entire present-day science is based on. So we have to sup- pose that our acquiring our own behavioral process is in essence like our domination over processes that take place in Nature. A person living in society is always under the influence of other people. Speech, for example, is one such powerful means of affecting another’s behavior, and it is natural that a developing child acquires the same means that others use to conduct his behavior. (Vygotsky, 1983, p. 279). The argument about the energy-conservation law shows that Vygotsky in his Main Formula had an interest in solving the body-mind problem in such a man- ner. It is difficult to agree that the mind can easily move a brain atom by means of a voice order. To give a voice order, one has to move some atoms of the vocal appara- tus, and one has to do so, of course, not by means of a voice order to these atoms. So the scheme of acquiring one’s behavior by means of a language order does not help us to solve the body-mind problem, but this scheme may be to some extent empirically true. I say “to some extent” because using language for a com- * This is the first publication of the text written in 1930. Vygotsky and intersubjectivity 15 mand to oneself is possible only for a person who can speak. One-year-old chil- dren are already included in intersubjective relationships, and they get their new psychological functions only in that process. I mentioned above Vygotsky’s previ- ous interest in the “sign without meaning” and in pointing gestures. His interest in these phenomena shows that he moved from a wide question about a psycho- logical function that occurs between people in any communication to a limited question about higher psychological functions and their connection to language communication only (some details of his changing interest can be found in Akhu- tina, 2004). “Intrapsychological” as a form of “interpsychological” So I assert that Vygotsky’s change of interest led him to disregard an important question that was presented in an earlier version of the Main Formula. Let us con- sider one Russian attempt to come back to the lost question of the interpsychologi- cal. In the middle of the 1980s, Kovalev and Radzikhovsky (1985) published their article on communication and the problem of internalization. Now it is almost for- gotten; I find that only a few of my colleagues mention it. Maybe the ideas were not developed because of Kovalev’s early death. As for Radzikhovsky, who was the favorite disciple of Vasiliy Davydov, he became a popular political analyst at the time of perestroika and abandoned his scientific career. The question of what interpsychological means is the central question of Kova- lev and Radzikhovsky’s article. They assert that the evolution of the notion of inter- nalization in Soviet psychology was dramatically predetermined. The fact that the theory of the step-by-step formation of mental actions [by Pyotr Gal’perin] had taken the place of internalization theory is not accidental. The transi- tion to such a theory and, especially, the departure from Vygotsky’s opinion of inter- nalization was inevitable. The reason is the critical part played by communication in Vygotsky’s opinion. Neither Vygotsky himself nor his followers could develop the no- tion of communication. The way out was found in dissolving the connection between internalization and communication (Kovalev & Radzikhovsky, 1985, p. 114). The Russian word obshcheniye, which we translate as communication, has an important connotation that is lacking in the English word. Obshche can be trans- lated as common, but this meaning is not expressed in English as clearly as it is in Russian. The meaning ofobshcheniye in Russian is “to forget the Self in the process,” “to share oneself with the Other.” This is the key for understanding what G. Kovalev and L. Radzikhovsky said. They stated that the difficulty is that the function, being between two individua, being interpsychological, cannot be attached to a single individuum. But who is such a function’s “owner”? Either we consider the psychological function as individual, and then “communi- cation” has only a commonplace psychological meaning: communication (like any other factor) influences the psychological function from outside. Or the psychologi- cal function exists in intersubjective space, and then, keeping its structure essentially 16 A.N. Krichevets intersubjective, it is internalized, determining the basic structure of the human mind. The second variant contradicts tradition and requires a new methodology of psycho- logical analysis to be developed for its support, such that the events that happen in intersubjective space can be given a real meaning (Kovalev & Radzikhovsky, 1985, p. 118). The authors suppose that the problem can be solved through developing a dia- logical approach to communication. There has to be a universal analysis, embracing not only the cases where dialogism “is not hard to plumb” (double consciousness, specific inner dialogues described by F. Dostoevsky and analyzed in detail by M. Bakhtin), but the whole set of psychological phenomena—if we assume that the dialogism is an intrinsic component of the basic structures of consciousness. To do this, it is necessary to build a real typology of all (both explicit and implicit) inner dialogue forms; to describe in detail their common structural-genetic basis, as well as the differences between those forms; and to explain the origin of these differ- ences.
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