Vygotsky’s psychological views
The Russian State Social University
Report on Psychology.
“Vygotsky’s psychological views”
Made
by the second-year
student
of faculty of
foreign
languages,
Checked
by Khajrullin
Ruslan
Zinatullovich.
Moscow
2005
Preface.. 3
A Biographical Sketch.. 5
Vygotsky’s Theoretical
Approach.. 9
Conclusion.. 12
Bibliographic List.. 13
Like
the humanities and other social sciences, psychology is supposed to tell us
something about what it means to be human.
However,
many critics, including such eminent members of the discipline as J.S. Bruner
(1976), have questioned whether academic psychology has succeeded in this
endeavor. One of the major stumbling, blocks that has diverted psychology from
this goal is that psychologists have too often isolated and studied phenomena
in such a way that they cannot communicate with one another, let alone with
members of other disciplines. They have tended to lose sign of the fact that
their untimate goal is to contribute to some integrated, holistic picture of
human nature.
This
intellectual isolation is nowhere more evident than in the division that
separates studies of individual psychology from studies of the sociocultural
environment in which individuals live. In psychology we tend to view culture of
society as a variable to be incorporated into models of individual functioning.
This represents a kind of reductionism which assumes that sociocultural
phenomena can ultimately be explained on the basis of psychological processes.
Conversely, sociologists and social problems because the derive
straightforwardly from social phenomena. This view may not involve the kind of
reductionism found in the work of psychologists, but it is no less naïve.
Many aspects of psychological functioning cannot be explained by assuming that
they derive solely and simply from the sociocultural milieu.
This
disciplinary isolation is not attributable simply to a lack of cooperation
among various scholars. Rather, those interested in social phenomena and those
interested in psychological phenomena have defined their objects of inquiry in
such different ways that they have almost guaranteed the impossibility of
mutual understanding. For decades this problem has been of concern to those
seeking to construct a unified social science. Critical theorists such as T.
Adorno and J. Habermas (1979) have struggled with it since the 19405. According
to Adorno, “the separation of sociology and psychology is both correct and
false” (1967, p. 78). It is correct because it recognizes different levels of
phenomena that exist in reality; that is, it helps us avoid the pitfalls of
reductionism. It is false, however, because it too readily “encourages the
specialists to relinquish the attempt to know the totality”.
Vygotsky,
of course, did not make his proposals in order to deal with today's
disciplinary fragmentation, but many of his ideas are relevant to the
quandaries we face. To harness these ideas, they must first be interpreted in
light of the milieu in which they were developed. Hence I shall explicate the
cultural and historical setting in which Vygotsky worked and then extend his
ideas in light of theoretical — advances made during the half-century since his
death.
Vygotsky
is usually considered to be a developmental or educational psychologist. Much
of what I shall have to say, however, is based on the assumption that it is
incorrect to categorize him too readily as a psychologist, at least in today's
restricted sense. It is precisely because he was not only a psychologist
that he was able to approach this discipline with a fresh eye and make it part
of a more unified social science. In fact the Soviet philosopher and
psychologist G. P. Shchedrovitskii has argued that one of the main reasons for
Vygotsky’s success in reformulating psychology in the USSR is that he was not trained as a professional psychologist.
Under
normal circumstances an outsider is not given the opportunity to reformulate a
discipline such as psychology in a major country. Vygotsky, however, did not
live in normal circumstances: he entered adulthood just as his country was
experiencing one of the greatest social upheavals of the twentieth century—the
Russian Revolution of 1917. This event provided two decades or so of what is
perhaps the most exciting intellectual and cultural setting of our time. It was
largely because of this setting that Vygotsky was able to develop his ingenious
ideas and that these ideas could have a significant impact.
Vygotsky’s
biography can be divided into two basic periods: the first, from his birth in
1896 until 1924, the year in which he made his initial appearance as a major
intellectual figure in the USSR; the second, from 1924 until his death from
tuberculosis in 1934.
Vygotsky was born on
November 17, 1896, in Orsha, a town not far from Minsk in Belorussia. Vygotsky changed his name from Vygodsky in the early 1920s because he believed
that it derived from the name Vygotovo, where his family had its origins. Other
members of his family, such as his daughters retained the “d” in the spelling
of their name.
The picture that emerges
from information about Vygotsky’s early years is one of a happy, intellectually
stimulating life — in spite of the fact that, like other members of his family,
he was excluded from several avenues of opportunity because he was Jewish.
Instead
of attending public schools, Vygotsky studied with a private tutor for several
years and then finished his secondary education in a Jewish gymnasium. He
profited enormously from his early years of study with his tutor, Solomon
Ashpiz. Ashpiz’s pedagogical technique was apparently grounded in a form of
ingenious Socratic dialogue, which left his students, especially one as gifted
as Lev Semenovich, with well-developed, inquisitive minds.
By
the age of fifteen Vygotsky had become known as the “little professor”, because
he often led student discussions on intellectual matters. For example, he examined
the historical context of thought by arranging debates and mock trials in which
his peers played the role of figures such as Aristotle and Napoleon. These
debates were a manifestation of one of Vygotsky’s main interests during that
period of his life — philosophy.
While still a child in Gomel, Lev Semenovich also began to show fervent interest in the theater and in
literature.
Vygotsky graduated from his
gymnasium in 1913 with a gold medal. Though widely recognized as an outstanding
student, he had great difficulty entering the university of his choice — largely
because he was Jewish.
During
this period there was a quota on the number of Jews who could enter Moscow and Saint Petersburg universities: no more than 3 percent of the student bodies
could be Jewish. As Levitin points out, this meant that all the Jewish gold
medalists and about half the silver medalists would be admitted. Since Lev Semenovich
had every reason to expect a gold medal, his matriculation to the university of
his choice seemed assured.
Midway through Vygotsky's
deputy examinations, however, the tsarist minister of education decreed a
change in procedures by which Jews would be chosen for Moscow and Saint Petersburg universities. The 3 percent quota was maintained, but Jewish applicants
were now to be selected by casting lots, a change apparently designed to dilute
the quality of Jewish students at the best universities. But then the
incredible happened: late in August, the Vygodskys received a cable from their
friends in Moscow telling them that Lev had been enrolled at the University by
the draw.
In 1914, while in Moscow as a student, Vygotsky also began attending the Shanyavskii People's University,
an unofficial school that sprang up in 1911 after a minister of education had
expelled most of the students and more than a hundred of the faculty from Moscow University in a crackdown on an antitsarist movement.
Vygotsky
graduated from Moscow University in 1917 with a degree in law. Although he
received no official degree from Shanyavskii University, he profited greatly
from his studies in psychology, philosophy, and literature. He returned to Gomel after his graduation to teach literature and psychology.
Very
little information is available about the impact of the 1917 Revolution on Lev
Semenovich. Lev Semenovich continued living in Gomel's relatively peaceful setting
for seven years after his return in 1917. With his cousin David Vygodsky he
taught literature at a school in Gomel. He also conducted classes on aesthetics
and the history of art in a conservatory and gave many lectures on literature
and science. Furthermore, he organized a psychology laboratory at the Gomel
Teacher's College, where he delivered a series of lectures that provided the
groundwork for his 1926 volume, Pedagogical Psychology.
In
1920 Vygotsky was in poor health. The disease that was eventually to kill him,
tuberculosis, had begun to take its toll. It was already a serious enough
threat to Vygotsky’s life in 1920 that he spent a brief period in a sanatorium
and asked one of his former professors from Shanyavskii University to publish
his collected manuscripts in the event of his death. He recovered from this
bout of tuberculosis, however, and continued his projects in Gomel. In 1924 he
married Roza Smekhova. They had two daughters.
In
retrospect all this work seems to have been preparation for an event in 1924
that was to change Vygotsky’s life irrevocably. This turning point, which
separates the two major periods of Vygotsky’s biography, was his appearance on
January 6, 1924, at the Second All-Russian Psychoneurological Congress in Leningrad. There he made a presentation, "Methods of Reflexological and Psychological
Investigations."
Vygotsky’s
brilliant, performance so impressed the director of the Psychological Institute
in Moscow, K. N. Kornilov, that he immediately invited this "Mozart of
psychology" to join himself and others in restructuring the institution.
Lev Semenovich accepted and later that year left Gomel to begin his new career.
In
1925 Lev Semenovich completed his dissertation, “The Psychology of Art.” During
the fall of that year he received permission to have a public defense, but a
renewed and serious bout of tuberculosis made that impossible. Recognizing this
fact, the qualifying commission excused him from a public defense, and he was
passed.
The
excitement that Vygotsky generated among his students and colleagues is perhaps
impossible to appreciate in today’s setting.
In
1925 he produced the written version of his 1924 presentation at the Second All-Russian
Psychoneurology Congress; between November of 1925 and the spring of 1926,
while in the hospital with another attack of tuberculosis, he wrote a major
philosophical critique of the theoretical foundations of psychology, “The
Historical Significance of the Crisis in Psychology”.
Between
1931 and 1934 Vygotsky produced manuscripts for reviews, articles, and books
at an ever accelerating pace. He edited and wrote a long introduction for the
1932 Russian translation of Piaget's volume Le langage et la pensée
chez l’enfant (1923). His introduction was later to serve as the second
chapter of his posthumous volume Thinking and Speech (1934). During
Vygotsky’s last few years of life, he lectured and wrote at an almost frenetic
pace.
Throughout
this period Vygotsky’s bouts of tuberculosis became increasingly frequent and
severe. His protracted, terrifying spells of coughing led to exhaustion for
several days, but instead of resting, he tried to reach as many of his goals as
possible. In the spring of 1934 his health grew much worse. His doctors
insisted that he enter the hospital, but he refused because of work he needed
to complete by the end of the school year. One May 9 he had a very severe
attack at work and was brought home. At the end of May his bleeding began
again, and on June 2 he was hospitalized in Serebryanii Bor Sanatorium. Shortly
after midnight on June 11 he died. He was buried in Novodevechii Cemetery in Moscow.
In
all, Vygotsky produced approximately 180 works.
The
three themes that form the core of Vygotsky's theoretical framework are (1) a
reliance on a genetic or developmental method; (2) the claim that higher mental
processes in the individual have their origin in social processes; and (3) the
claim that mental processes can be understood only if we understand the tools
and signs that mediate them.
Each of these
themes can be fully understood only by taking into account its
interrelationships with the others.
Vygotsky
originated the cultural and historical concept in psychology which has received
further development in psychological theories of the activity worked out by A.
N. Leont’ev, A. R. Luria, P. Ya. Gal’perin, D. B. El’konin and others. The main
idea of Vygotsky’s creative work is thesis about the socio-historical nature of
human mentality, human consciousness as opposed to naturalism with its various
forms.
Following
the idea of the socio-historical nature of mentality, Vygotsky interpreted the
social environment not as “factor”, but as “source” of person’s development.
In child’s development, he said, there are two bound lines. The first is
natural maturing. The second consists in mastering the culture, ways of
behaviour and thinking. Systems of signs, symbols (for example, language,
script, notation, etc.) are auxiliary methods of organization of the behaviour
and thinking which the mankind has created during the historical development.
Vygotsky
introduced thesis about higher mental processes (thinking in concepts,
reasonable speech, logic memory, voluntary attention, etc.) as specifically
human form of mentality.
Child’s
mastering the connection between sign and value, use of speech by application
of instruments marks occurrence of new psychological functions, systems
underlying higher mental processes which distinguish person’s behaviour from
animal’s one.
Vygotsky made
his most important and unique contribution with the concept of mediation. The
notion of mediation (oposredovanie) became increasingly important and
well formulated in Vygotsky's theory of human mental functioning. Mediation of the
development of human mentality by means of “psychological instruments” is also
characterized that operation of the sign use, standing in the beginning of
development of each of higher mental processes, primordially has the form of
external activity, i.e. turns from interpsychic in intrapsychic.
This
transformation passes some stages. Initial one is connected with the other
person (adult) with the help of the certain means operates behaviour of the
child, directing realization of his any "natural", involuntary
function. At the second stage the child himself becomes the subject and, using
given psychological instrument, directs behaviour of another (believing him as
object). At the following stage the child starts to apply to himself (as to
object) those ways of management of behaviour which others applied to him, and
he - to the others. Thus, Vygotsky wrote, each mental function appears on the
stage twice - at first as collective, social activity, and then as an inner way
of child’s thinking. Between these two “appearances” is located the process of
interiorization, the function “taking roots” inside.
Back
process of interiorization is also possible – process of exteriorization -
removal outside the results of cerebration which are carried out all over again
as an intention in the internal plan.
Transition
from interpsychic to intrapsychic functions occurs in cooperation with other
children and in child’s dialogue with the adult. Vygotsky emphasized the
important role of relations between the child’s person and the social environment
surrounding him at each age step. These relations vary from age to age and make
“completely original, specific to the given age, exclusive and unique relation
between the child and the reality surrounding him, first of all social one. We
shall name this relation a social situation of development at the given age ».
From researches of child’s mental development appeared a new approach to
studying the relation between development and training.
Higher
mental processes have as the source cooperation and training. The conclusion
about the leading part of training in mental development has been made. It
means that training goes ahead of development. The area accessible to the child
in cooperation has received the name of a zone of the nearest development; area
self-administered is an area of actual development. “The zone of the nearest
development has more direct value for changes of intellectual development and
success of training, than an actual level of their development ».
Vygotsky
thought, these researches should be put in the basis of student teaching:
“the pedagogic should be guided not on yesterday, but tomorrow’s day of
children's development”, - wrote L. S. Vygotsky.
In
Vygotsky’s views the person has social character. It does not cover all
attributes of individuality, but puts an equal-sign between child’s person and
his cultural development. The person “is not congenital, but appears as the
result of cultural development”. Developing, person masters own behaviour.
However, the necessary precondition of this process is person’s education,
because development of this or that function is always derived from person’s
development as a whole and caused by it”.
In
person’s development passes a number of changes having the stage nature. Owing
to destruction of one social situation of development and occurrence another,
more or less stable developments are replaced by the critical periods in
person’s life during which there is a rough forming of new psychological
formation. Crises are characterized by unity of negative (destructive) and
positive (constructive) parties and play a role of steps on a way of further
child’s development.
Arisen
during this or that period new formations qualitatively change person’s
psychological functioning. For example, occurrence of teenager’s reflection
completely reconstructs his mental activity. New formation is the third level
of self-organizing: “Alongside with primary level of an individual mentality
(inclinations, heredity) and secondary level of his education (environment,
acquired characteristics) here (during puberty) act tertiary conditions
(reflection, self- mounting)”. Tertiary functions make a basis of consciousness.
Finally, they too represent the psychological relations that transferred in the
person, earlier it was relations between people. However, connection between
the socio-cultural environment and consciousness is more difficult and consists
not only in influence of environment on rates of consciousness development, but
also in conditionality of the type of consciousness, character of his
development.
1)
Fred
Newman, Lois Holzman. Lev Vygotsky: Revolutionary Scientist. – New York, USA: Psychology, 1993 – 192 p.
2)
James
V. Wertsch. Vygotsky and the social formation of mind. – London, England: Harvard University Press, 1985 – 262p.
3)
Ждан
А. Н. История психологии: от античности к современности: Учебник для студентов
психологических факультетов университетов. Изд. третье, исправленное. – М.:
Педагогическое общество России, 2003 – 512с.