DOCSLIB.ORG

The “Revisionist Revolution” and Future Prospects of Vygotskian Studies Andrey D

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The “Revisionist Revolution” and Future Prospects of Vygotskian Studies Andrey D Культурно-историческая психология Cultural-Historical Psychology 2021. Т. 17. № 2. С. 23—28 2021. Vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 23—28 DOI: https://doi.org/10.17759/chp.2021170202 DOI: https://doi.org/10.17759/chp.2021170202 ISSN: 1816-5435 (печатный) ISSN: 1816-5435 (print) ISSN: 2224-8935 (online) ISSN: 2224-8935 (online) The “Revisionist Revolution” and Future Prospects of Vygotskian Studies Andrey D. Maidansky Belgorod National Research University, Belgorod, Russia Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2061-3878, e-mail: [email protected] This article provides critical analysis of A. Yasnitsky’s project of “Cultural-Historical Gestalt Psychology.” He uses this term to describe Vygotsky’s biggest discovery and the future of Vygotsky studies. Yasnitsky discards the activity approach to studying the human mind and reduces the social nature of personality to an “aspect” that did not receive serious elaboration in Vygotsky’s works. In the present article, it is argued that the prospect of the development of cultural-historical theory consists in elaborating on Vygotsky’s project of “height / acmeist psychology.” Its subject matter is “the reverse movement from consciousness to life,” as Vygotsky put it. The purpose of height psychology is to help humans master their affects by means of concepts. This science realizes “the motion toward freedom — toward a life guided by reason.” Keywords: cultural-historical gestalt psychology, structure, perception, activity, consciousness, parallelism, height psychology, affect, concept. Funding. The study is funded by the Russian Science Foundation (RSF), project number 20-18-00028. For citation: Maidansky A.D. The “Revisionist Revolution” and Future Prospects of Vygotskian Studies. Кul'turno- istoricheskaya psikhologiya = Cultural-Historical Psychology, 2021. Vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 23—28. DOI: https://doi. org/10.17759/chp.2021170202 reat minds provide guidance for the movement of Now let us take a closer look at “a fairly new, not so famil- Gthought, and a historian of science should aim to iar image of Vygotsky and his scientific legacy” [18, p. 93]. disclose the heuristic potential of their writings. From Vygotsky’s work during the “instrumental” period this perspective, we aim to examine the recent “revision- of the 1920s is described as “mechanistic and fairly re- ist revolution” in Vygotsky studies, initiated by Anton ductionist.” In so doing, Yasnitsky does not discuss the Yasnitsky. Of course, we cannot avoid the question of idea of the social nature of the human mind, although inadequacy in reading the classic texts. Yet it is more im- Vygotsky’s cultural psychology began with the concept portant to understand what future the young Carbonari, of personality as “the social in us.” However, in his next with Yasnitsky at their head, are preparing for cultural- book Vygotsky: An Intellectual Biography1 Yasnitsky historical psychology. himself devotes a couple pages to an “unexpected dis- covery” (the title of the section) of the social nature of the mind. Many thinkers before Vygotsky cherished I the idea of the social and cultural origin of the human mind, Yasnitsky writes. “The social dimension of tools The program volume, Revisionist Revolution in Vy- and instruments — so clear in the philosophical works of gotsky Studies, was published in 2016. The coopera- Marx and Engels — is somewhat obscure in Vygotsky’s tion between its editors, Anton Yasnitsky and Ren é “instrumental psychology” research. ... Vygotsky and his Van der Veer, appeared to be short-lived and it is team never investigated in depth the social aspect of psy- obvious, judging from Van der Veer’s other writings chological functioning properly. Furthermore, there was and personal remarks, that their theoretical views di - no special terminology in Vygotsky’s conceptual toolkit verged in many respects. Two chapters by Ekaterina of the 1920s that would account for the social dynamics Zavershneva, previously published in Russian, were of personal interaction” [15, pp. 70—71]. falsified in a “revisionist” way when translated (for There are neither proofs, nor arguments for these state- details, see [4]). ments in his book. Dozens of papers on the social nature 1 At first, Van der Veer was announced as a co-author [18, p. 311]. CC BY-NC 23 Maidansky A.D. The “Revisionist Revolution”... Майданский А.Д. «Ревизионистская революция»... (not simply an “aspect”) of the human mind in Vygotsky’s ropean psychology has split into two wings — objective works have been written. Perhaps, they could help to elu- and subjective, deterministic and teleological. The way cidate what was “somewhat obscure,” but Yasnitsky did out of this crisis was found “in the recognition of the not see fit to take them into consideration. structural unity of mental and physiological processes. ... In the 1930s Vygotsky’s thinking underwent a “ma- Structural psychology rises to a higher requirement: to jor shift” that Yasnitsky ascribes to the beneficial influ- study the human personality as a whole, as a structure, ence of Gestalt psychology. He calls this period of Vy- and, above all, to study it in its structural correlation gotsky’s work “holistic.” As a result, “cultural-historical with the environment” [7, p. 116]. Gestalt psychology” (CHGP) was born. The term was Even in that period Vygotsky saw two fundamental invented by Yasnitsky about ten years ago (see [12; 13]). flaws in Gestalt psychology: (i) the ahistorical, “meta- Since then, he has repeatedly, in great detail, highlighted physical” character of the concept of Gestalt, and (ii) the Vygotsky’s personal contacts with the Gestaltists. How- “utter neglect of a social factor in human psychology.” ever, never has he examined in concreto the content of Nevertheless, structural research so far seems to him the CHGP — excluding general phrases about holism to have been a movement “in the same direction as the and a “Galileian mode of thinking.” Marxist reform of psychology” [7, pp. 124—125]. Recently two more revisionist volumes have been Already by the autumn of 1930, his critical tone had published [16; 17]. Also, Yasnitsky has announced a col- turned much harsher. Then he claimed that “Gestalt- lection of his edited works entitled Cultural-Historical theorie ignores the concrete person” [11, p. 141]. The Gestalt Psychology: Historical, Methodological and Theo- structural unity of personality (isomorphism of mental retical Perspectives (forthcoming in 2022). It seems a and physiological processes) no longer satisfies him. Vy- reader can expect to find out what CHGP is and how it gotsky is developing a doctrine of a deeper unity — sys- works. temic. “Systems are the key to the person” [11, p. 141]. It is important to realize that everything Yasnitsky A person emerges and develops in cultural-histori- and his coauthors write about Vygotsky is not only a cal systems; his human way of life is determined “from revision of the past, but also a vector for developing the above” — by society, namely, by his relationships with theoretical program created by Vygotsky and his circle. other people. In this sense, Vygotsky refers to his theory In discussing the evolution of Vygotsky’s views, Yas- as “height psychology,” in contrast to Freudian “depth nitsky attempts to address what is dead and what is alive psychology,” studying the determination of mental life in his legacy (in his heir’s humble opinion, of course). “from below.” And we, too, in showing the inadequacy of his reading In 1931 Vygotsky wondered how to deal with Wolf- of Vygotsky, must offer an alternative way of developing gang Köhler’s laws presenting the historically evolved cultural-historical psychology. structures of perception as eternal. “Köhler — reject or demarcate while leaning on him? His regularities are pseudoregularities, i.e., what is historical is presented as II eternal or as something that is lying in another plane” [11, p. 180]. As we can see, two variants of divergence The relationship between cultural-historical theory are weighed: (i) complete rejection and (ii) adopting de- and Gestalt psychology is the first thing to be consid- limitation. ered. Is it correct to say that the “‘Vygotsky—Luria cir- This note was made at the first internal conference cle’ continuously converged with the group of Gestalt on the results of Alexander Luria’s Uzbek expedition. psychologists, their students, and followers during the They were interpreted as an experimental refutation of second half of the 1920s and, particularly, in the 1930s” Köhler’s theory of perception. Gita Birenbaum, a stu- [12, p. 64; 18, p. 208]? dent of Kurt Lewin, objected: “Gestalt[theorie] is not In terms of personal contacts, awareness of new con- refuted.” (Yasnitsky and Eli Lamdan were braver: they cepts and experiments of Gestalt psychologists — the an- claimed that the expedition fully confirmed the Gestalt- swer is yes, definitely. Another question is whether there theorie and refuted the hypothesis of cultural-historical has been a far-reaching convergence of research programs conditioning of perceptual structures.) that would allow one to detect the emergence of a hybrid The character of human perception is determined called CHGP? Vygotsky’s recently published notebooks by the concepts that represent “the specifically human give us a quite clear answer to this second question. Here, in the structures,” Vygotsky argues in his notebook en- we see the genius at work in his personal laboratory, at tries. Knowledge of the nature of visible things frees vi- the cutting edge of science. He reflects on prospects, sion from the bondage of the optical field. By this way plans for the future, and provides a critical assessment of biological affect is replaced by aesthetic reaction. “The the traversed path. determination2 from above. Height psychology is a new The “instrumental” Vygotsky held an extremely high type of movement, which I did not understand: from opinion of “structural psychology.” This is articulated concept to perception” [11, p.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • 1 (13) 2014 Journal
    SCIENTIFIC ANALYTICAL EDITION ISSN 2079-6617 ISSN 2079-6617 NATIONAL PSYCHOLOGICAL № 1 (13) 2014 JOURNAL CONTENT NATIONAL PSYCHOLOGICAL JOURNAL № 1 (13) 2014 14 L. Vygotsky’s Academic Heritage 20 Alexander G. Asmolov The historical meaning of the crisis of the cultural activity psychology 1 (13) Boris I. Bespalov № Logical - semantic analysis and development of L.S.Vygotsky’s ideas about «units» and «elements» of psychological systems Zhanna M. Glozman, Andrey I. Podolsky, Anatoliy N. Krichivets, Alexander N. Veraksa, Natalia L. Karpova, Sofya M. Konina 3rd International Conference in the memory of L.S.Vygotsky in Portugal Vladimir S. Sobkin, Valeria S. Mazanova Comments on L.S.Vygotsky’s theatre review on E.V.Geltser’s performance Personality Psychology “ Evaluation of art is ever in direct relationship Vyacheslav A. Ivannikov with psychological concept through which we Analysis of motivation from the viewpoint of the activity theory understand art ” Olga B. Polyakova Category and structure of professional deformations / Psychology of Art. L.S. Vygotsky, 1925 / Military Psychology Alexander G. Karayani, Yuliya M. Karayani, Yuri P. Zinchenko Л / NATIONAL PSYCHOLOGIGAL JOURNAL All volumes in PDF The american military psychology as area of special practice http://www.psy.msu.ru/science/npj/contents.html Developmental Psychology Natalia N. Poskrebysheva, Olga A. Karabanova ИЙ ЖУРНА Developmental approach to the study of adolescent personal autonomy ЕСК Psychophysiology ИЧ Лев Семенович ВЫГОТСКИЙ Irina S. Polikanova, Alexander V. Sergeev ОГ (18961934) The eect of long-term cognitive load on the EEG parameters Yuri G. Pavlov ИХОЛ Electronic versions of scienti c scolary journals Ecacy of Addiction Treatment by EEG biofeedback ПС • “NATIONAL PSYCHOLOGICAL JOURNAL”, • “PSYCHOLOGY IN RUSSIA: STATE OF THE ART”, Psychology of Education • “The Moscow University Herald Series 14.
    [Show full text]
  • Prism”: Understanding Vygotsky’S Perezhivanie As an Ontogenetic Unit of Child Consciousness
    International Research in Early Childhood Education 5 Vol. 7, No. 1, 2016 Finding the “prism”: Understanding Vygotsky’s perezhivanie as an ontogenetic unit of child consciousness Michael Michell University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia Abstract The concept of perezhivanie, Vygotsky’s “last word” on psychology, has been among the most difficult of his theoretical constructs to define and operationalise in research. Drawing on close analysis of key texts, this article identifies and examines three defining attributes of perezhivanie found throughout Vygotsky’s works. The attributes are: perezhivanie as a prism of psychological development, as a unit of human consciousness, and as intelligent perception of one’s environment. In contrast with common understandings of perezhivanie as “emotional experience”, privileging it as affect, this article highlights the intellectual basis of perezhivanie in Vygotsky’s writings with particular reference to his notions of “generalised” and “intelligent perception”. The article argues that perezhivanie is best understood, psychologically, as an intellectual gestalt reflecting the intellectualisation of perception and, ontologically, as an apperceptual “organ of selection” of consciousness and personality “refracting” the child’s individual social situation of development. Key words Perezhivanie; Vygotsky; intellect; ontogenesis; personality; consciousness; gestalt ISSN 1838-0689 online Copyright © 2010 Monash University www.education.monash.edu.au/irecejournal/ International Research in Early Childhood Education 6 Vol. 7, No. 1, 2016 … unlike other disciplines, paedology does not investigate the environment as such without regard to the child, but instead looks at the role and influence of the environment on the course of development. It ought to be capable of finding the particular prism through which the influence of the environment on the child is refracted, i.e.
    [Show full text]
  • LS Vygotsky's Critique
    Культурно-историческая психология Cultural-Historical Psychology 2019. Т. 15. № 4. С. 25—34 2019. Vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 25—34 doi: 10.17759/chp. 2019150403 doi: 10.17759/chp. 2019150403 ISSN: 1816-5435 (печатный) ISSN: 1816-5435 (print) ISSN: 2224-8935 (online) ISSN: 2224-8935 (online) © 2019 ФГБОУ ВО МГППУ © 2019 Moscow State University of Psychology & Education L.S. Vygotsky’s Critique: Between Aesthetics, Publitsistika and Psychology P.N. Marques*, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil, [email protected] This paper discusses L.S. Vygotsky’s early activity as a critic through an analysis of texts in which the au- thor himself reflects on the task of the critic. Fragments from the essay on Hamlet, Psychology of art and the- atrical reviews of the Gomel period (1922—23) are analyzed to provide an overview of how his understanding of the role of the critic has evolved and changed in time. By moving from the reader’s critique to the objective analytic method, Vygotsky has placed the critic in a position of social and educational engagement, a public figure committed to raise the level of the arts and the audience’s capacity optimize the aesthetic experience. His stance to the critical work is also analyzed within the context of Russian critical traditions, particularly some ideas of Boris Eikhenbaum and the Formal School of literary studies. Finally, the critical activity is seen alongside an extensive list of attributes that has been linked to Vygotsky (scientist, methodologist, philosopher etc.) as an equally important and complementary facet of a person fully committed to social transformation.
    [Show full text]
  • Critical Reflection on the Reception of Vygotsky's Theory in The
    Культурно-историческая психология Cultural-Historical Psychology 2016. Т. 12. № 3. С. 27—46 2016. Vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 27—46 doi: 10.17759/chp.2016120303 doi: 10.17759/chp.2016120303 ISSN: 1816-5435 (печатный) ISSN: 1816-5435 (print) ISSN: 2224-8935 (online) ISSN: 2224-8935 (online) © 2016 ФГБОУ ВО МГППУ © 2016 Moscow State University of Psychology & Education Critical Reflection on the Reception of Vygotsky’s Theory in the International Academic Communities1 M. Dafermos*, University of Crete, Greece, [email protected] This paper is an attempt to analyze various types of the reception of Vygotsky’s theory in the interna- tional academic communities. The paper develops a critical analysis of three widespread theoretical frame- works of interpretation of Vygotsky’s theory: cognitivism, culturalism, cultural historical activity theory. It is argues that fragmented readings of particular ideas of Vygotsky, without enough understanding of the theoretical programme in which these ideas have been included dominates in North-Atlantic research. The paper proposes the reconstruction of the theoretical programme of cultural historical psychology in the social and scientific context of its formation. Keywords: Vygotsky, cultural-historical theory, cognitivism, cultural relativism, CHAT, archival revo- lution. Introduction Mind in society is not written by Vygotsky. Mind in so- ciety is “a compilation and juxtaposition of fragments Lev Vygotsky founded an original theory commonly taken from different Vygotsky works written during dif- known as cultural historical psychology at the end of ferent periods of his scientific career” [77, p. 4]. the 1920s and 30s in the USSR. At that time Vygotsky’s A bibliography of Vygotsky’s works, which was pre- works did not have a high impact on the international pared by Lifanova [38], includes 275 titles.
    [Show full text]
  • The Complete Works of L.S. Vygotsky: Psyanima Complete Vygotsky Project
    ISSN 2076-7099 Психологический журнал Yasnitsky / Ясницкий Международного университета природы, общества и человека «Дубна» № 3, с. 144-148, 2012 Dubna Psychological Journal www.psyanima.ru The Complete Works of L.S. Vygotsky: PsyAnima Complete Vygotsky project A. Yasnitsky This issue of PsyAnima, Dubna Psychological Journal completes a series of full-text publications of Vygotsky’s early theatrical and literary reviews and essays that originally came out in Gomel’ newspapers Nash ponedel’nik (Our Monday) and Polesskaia pravda (Pravda of Polesie) in 1922- 1923 and remained virtually unknown to general readership until this republication in PsyAnima that took place in 2011-2012. These early works of Lev Vygotsky were prepared for publication by an international team of enthusiasts—researchers, archival workers, and library staff—from Belarus, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, and Switzerland, who joined their efforts and put together highly impressive collection of L.S. Vygotsky’s published texts. In the course of research several publications were first discovered by the members of the team and, thus, these texts have not been included in any of the existent bibliographies of Vygotsky’s works to day. For the list and an overview of all major bibliographies of Vygotsky’s works see (Yasnitsky, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c, 2011d, 2011e). The completion of this publication series brings us to new, even more ambitious task. As is well known, the whole range of Vygotsky’s written works remains largely unknown up date. Indeed, the largest collection of Vygotsky's works includes six volumes that originally were published in Soviet Union in 1982-1984 in Pedagogika Press and subsequently translated into other languages such as English (The Collected Works of L.
    [Show full text]
  • Questioning Vygotsky's Legacy : Scientific Psychology Or Heroic Cult / Edited by Anton Yasnitsky
    QUESTIONING VYGOTSKY’S LEGACY This accessible collection of essays critically examines Vygotsky’s scientific legacy. The book is solidly grounded in the “revisionist revolution” context and encourages constructive questioning of Vygotsky’s theory of human development. It tackles thought-provoking issues such as the true value of his scholarship, the possible falsification of his scientific legacy, and the role of political factors and the Communist parties in the worldwide dissemination of his work. It is essential reading on Vygotskian psychology and of interest to students and researchers in developmental psychology, history of psychology, history of science, Soviet/Russian history, philosophical science and education. Anton Yasnitsky, Ph.D., is an independent researcher who specializes in the Vygotsky-Luria Circle. He is the author of Vygotsky: An Intellectual Biography (2018) and has co-edited (with René van der Veer and others) The Cambridge Handbook of Cultural-Historical Psychology (2014), Revisionist Revolution in Vygotsky Studies (2015), and Vygotski revisitado: una historia crítica de su contexto y legado (2016). This page intentionally left blank QUESTIONING VYGOTSKY’S LEGACY Scientific Psychology or Heroic Cult Edited by Anton Yasnitsky First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 selection and editorial matter, Anton Yasnitsky; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Anton Yasnitsky to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
    [Show full text]
  • A Transnational History of Russian Psychology in East Germany1
    ISSN 2076-7099 Психологический журнал Woodward / Вудвард Международного университета природы, общества и человека «Дубна» № 3, с. 167-184, 2013 Dubna Psychological Journal www.psyanima.ru From Unter den Linden, with Love: A Transnational History of Russian Psychology in East Germany1 William R. Woodward Lessons from Russian Psychology for the 21st Century Looking back at my paper of 19962, written in the wake of glasnost and the fall of the Berlin Wall, I am struck by a phrase Jaan Valsiner (1996)3 used in his chapter “Social Utopias and Knowledge Construction in Psychology,” where he averred that behaviorism, cognitivism, and Marxist psychologies each showed partisanship in science. “In the case of Russian psychology,” noted Valsiner, “it is possible to trace the origins of the various "activity" theories to social ideologies underlying the child study movement (pedology) and the frequently voiced need to improve socialist construction practices” (p. 76). This illuminated my observations in the chapter below. Activity theory was not particularly progressive, but it supported a dominant agenda for educational reform. It ignored, however, genetic epistemology (Piaget) and—despite numerous declarations of the indebtedness to Vygotsky and the alleged continuity and development of his ideas in the work of the Soviet nomenclature “activity theorists”—the cultural-historical school (Vygotsky). I encountered the ironic and counter-intuitive situation in the German Democratic Republic that Soviet psychology may have been regarded in part by some psychologists as a strait jacket, and by others as a guiding source of inspiration. Similarly in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1 Editor’s comment: “Unter den Linden” is the name of perhaps the most well-known street in Berlin and one of its main tourist attractions.
    [Show full text]
  • Rukopisi Ne Goryat Or Do They?
    ISSN 2076-7099 Психологический журнал Международного университета природы, общества и человека «Дубна» № 1, с. 133-138, 2012 Dubna Psychological Journal www.psyanima.ru Rukopisi ne goryat or do they? R. van der Veer Somewhere around 1992 Jaan Valsiner and myself decided to edit the volume with previously unpublished writings by Lev Vygotsky that would subsequently appear as The Vygotsky Reader (Van der Veer & Valsiner, 1994). The volume was part of our project to show the “embeddedness of his thinking in the work of his contemporaries and predecessors” (ibid., p. v). This project was begun in the late 1980s and had already resulted in Understanding Vygotsky: A quest for synthesis (Van der Veer & Valsiner, 1991). In that book as well, we tried to debunk the idea of Vygotsky as a lonely genius and emphasized the idea of what we termed „intellectual interdependency‟ (ibid., p. 393). The selection of the texts that were to be translated into English for the Vygotsky Reader was based on considerations of importance, representativeness, length, and so on. However, this is not to say that the final volume was the best possible volume, because the truth is that we could easily have compiled several more and equally interesting volumes with writings by Vygotsky unknown to the English readership. What is more, such volumes could still be compiled. When Jaan Valsiner and me were making a „long list‟ of potentially publishable writings, we realized that we already had a translated Vygotsky text in our possession. This was the now infamous text of Tool and symbol in child development.
    [Show full text]
  • A Transnational History of Russian Psychology in East Germany1
    ISSN 2076-7099 Психологический журнал Woodward / Вудвард Международного университета природы, общества и человека «Дубна» № 3, с. 167-184, 2013 Dubna Psychological Journal www.psyanima.ru From Unter den Linden, with Love: A Transnational History of Russian Psychology in East Germany1 William R. Woodward Lessons from Russian Psychology for the 21st Century Looking back at my paper of 19962, written in the wake of glasnost and the fall of the Berlin Wall, I am struck by a phrase Jaan Valsiner (1996)3 used in his chapter “Social Utopias and Knowledge Construction in Psychology,” where he averred that behaviorism, cognitivism, and Marxist psychologies each showed partisanship in science. “In the case of Russian psychology,” noted Valsiner, “it is possible to trace the origins of the various "activity" theories to social ideologies underlying the child study movement (pedology) and the frequently voiced need to improve socialist construction practices” (p. 76). This illuminated my observations in the chapter below. Activity theory was not particularly progressive, but it supported a dominant agenda for educational reform. It ignored, however, genetic epistemology (Piaget) and—despite numerous declarations of the indebtedness to Vygotsky and the alleged continuity and development of his ideas in the work of the Soviet nomenclature “activity theorists”—the cultural-historical school (Vygotsky). I encountered the ironic and counter-intuitive situation in the German Democratic Republic that Soviet psychology may have been regarded in part by some psychologists as a strait jacket, and by others as a guiding source of inspiration. Similarly in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1 Editor’s comment: “Unter den Linden” is the name of perhaps the most well-known street in Berlin and one of its main tourist attractions.
    [Show full text]
  • Know: Vygotsky's Main Works and the Chronology of Their Composition
    ISSN 2076-7099 Психологический журнал 2011, № 4 Международного университета природы, общества и человека «Дубна» www.psyanima.ru Summary The Vygotsky That We (Do Not) Know: Vygotsky’s Main Works and the Chronology of their Composition A. Yasnitsky This paper summarizes a notably longer version the paper on Lev Vygotsky’s (1896-1934) written legacy that came out in the Russian-language PsyAnima, Dubna Psychological Journal (Yasnitsky, 2011b). PROBLEM AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS. Given the immense popularity of Vygotsky nowadays, it is highly suprising to see the great discrepancies in bibliographies of Vygotsky’s writings as manifested in different printed and archival sources (Lifanova, 1996; Luria, 1935a, 1935b; Murchison, 1932; Van der Veer & Valsiner, 1991; Vygodskaya, 1996; Vygotsky, 1934, 1956, 1960, 1982-84), none of which appearing ultimately and unconditionally correct. Therefore, this study posed two interrelated research questions: (1) What are the most important written works of Vygotsky that represent his theory in its most developed and advanced form? (2) What is the chronology of Vygotsky’s main works composition? DATA AND ANALYSIS. This study is deliberately focused on larger works such as published books and manuscripts of monographs, but not smaller Vygotsky’s journal articles and book chapters, created during the period of 1928-1934. Thus, it leaves out earlier and relatively immature works of ―pre-instrumental‖ period such as the 1925-1926 manuscript Psychology of Art (first published in Russian in 1965), the book of 1926 Pedagogical Psychology, or the unifinished manuscript draft of 1926-1927 Historical meaning of crisis in psychology that, according to recent archival studies, was not apparently intended for publication by its author as a whole, but was later considerably revised and eventually published as several journal articles (Zavershneva, 2009).
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction What Is This Book and What Is It About?
    Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-76269-4 - The Cambridge Handbook of Cultural-Historical Psychology Edited by Anton Yasnitsky, Rene van der Veer and Michel Ferrari Excerpt More information Introduction What is this book and what is it about? Anton Yasnitsky and Rene´ van der Veer This is a handbook for use in higher education. This means that this book was explicitly written with the idea of providing excellent teaching materials for a college course on cultural-historical psychology and its applications. As such it can be used both within and beyond the relatively narrow disciplinary confines of psychology. Thus, all contributors to this volume and its editors deliberately made considerable effort to present their ideas, no matter how complicated, most clearly and accessibly to the readers: students and course instructors alike. This is an edited handbook. Unlike many other college handbooks written by one or a few authors, this handbook has been authored by a couple of dozen contributors, international experts and prominent scholars from North America, Western Europe, Russia, Asia, and Africa. As a result, not all chapters are even in their style and in certain instances they differ notably in length and in the demands they make on the reader. However, an effort was made to compensate for the varying difficulty of the chapters by locating them in different parts of the book: typically, the most complicated topics are covered in the last chapters of each part, whereas the relatively easier chapters can be found at the beginning of the parts. This is a handbook on cultural-historical psychology.
    [Show full text]
  • A History of Cultural-Historical Gestalt Psychology: Vygotsky, Luria, Koffka, Lewin, and Others1
    ISSN 2076-7099 Психологический журнал Международного университета природы, общества и человека «Дубна» № 1, с. 98-101, 2012 Dubna Psychological Journal www.psyanima.ru A History of Cultural-Historical Gestalt Psychology: Vygotsky, Luria, Koffka, Lewin, and others1 A. Yasnitsky The interrelations between Soviet psychologists of ―Vygotsky Circle‖ (Yasnitsky, 2009, 2011) and German-American Gestalt psychologists and similarities of their theories were noted in a few studies (e.g., Chaiklin, 2011; e.g., Scheerer, 1980), but systematic investigation of the history and the substance of these connections have never been done. This study addresses this gap in scholarship and attempts to investigate the huge network of Soviet, German, and American scholars that is described here under the umbrella term ―Cultural-Historical Gestalt-Psychology‖ (Yasnitsky, 2012a). This study is based on the analysis of the archival documents found in the archives of Kurt Lewin, Kurt Koffka, Molly Harrower, and Fritz Heider (all in the Archives of the History of American Psychology, University of Akron, AHAP), Tamara Dembo (Clark University archives); and documents previously published in a number of scholarly works and memoirs (Harrower, 1983; King & Wertheimer, 2005; Lück, 2001; E. A. Luria, 1994; Marrow, 1969; Métraux, 2002; Rückriem, 2008; Vygodskaya & Lifanova, 1996; Vygotsky & Puzyrei, 2004, 2007). The paper leads its reader through several episodes that characterise the stages in the development of the interrelationships between the Soviet and the Western scholars and their gradual convergence on a number of theoretical and methodological issues. The key events and processes of the history of the ―beautiful friendship‖ are organized chronologically: 1925: European trips of Vygotsky and Luria, made independently and on different occasions, in summer 1925.
    [Show full text]