Reading :: The History of the Development of Higher Mental Functions

The Collected Works of L. S. Vygotsky: The History of the Development of Higher Mental Functions (Cognition and Language: A Series in Psycholinguistics) (Volume 4)
By L.S. Vygotsky

A little background. Although some of Vygotsky's works had been translated into English, including an over-edited 1963 version of Thought and Language, the publication that set off the boom in US-based Vygotsky studies was 1978's Mind in Society. I read this book in graduate school and loved it. Only later did I understand the import of the editors' introduction: The book was a collection of Vygotsky's works, curated by Michael Cole's mentor A.R. Luria and supplemented by illustrative studies by Luria, Leontiev, and other Vygotsky associates. Those works included the unpublished "Tool and Symbol"; section 3 of The History of the Development of Higher Psychological Functions; and two essays from the 1934 collection Mental Development of Children and the Process of Learning. Some of the illustrative material came from other sections of The History of the Development of Higher Psychological Functions.

Since The History of the Development of Higher Psychological Functions was such a big part of this intriguing book, and since it was referenced repeatedly elsewhere by Luria, I was very interested in reading the actual text. But that was easier said than done, since the book had not been published as a standalone text. I could get parts of it. For instance, a condensed version of Ch.1, 2, 4, and 4 takes up about 35pp of Leontyev, Luriya, and Smirnov's (1966) Psychological Research in the USSR under the title "Development of the Higher Psychological Functions." The chapter "The Genesis of Higher Mental Functions" is in Wertsch's 1981 collection The Concept of Activity in Soviet Psychology. But if you want to read the entire book (and then some), you have to go to the 1997 Collected Works, which is translated from the Russian Collected Works. (For a while, I didn't think the UT library had the CW, but apparently I wasn't using the right search terms.)

The Collected Works version includes the originally published chapters (Ch.1-5), published in 1931 [but see note in comments below: August 6, 2019]. But it also includes Ch.6-15, "which are being published for the first time," according to the footnotes from the Russian edition (p.279). Of course, this footnote does not provide much context, so I'm unclear whether Vygotsky actually saw these as part of the same work or wrote them at the same time.

In this review, I'll only cover the original book. I may take up the rest in a future review. [Edit: I did review the rest on Sept 25, 2019]

Ch.1. The problem of the development of higher mental functions
Here, Vygotsky begins by urging a new point of view on the development of higher mental functions. Previously, the questions had been formulated in a one-sided, erroneous fashion, primarily because investigators had seen higher mental functions "as natural processes and formations," failing to distinguish the natural from the cultural (p.2). "Higher mental functions and complex cultural forms of behavior with all their specific features of functioning and structure, with all the uniqueness of their genetic path from inception to full maturity and death, with all the special laws to which they are subject usually remained outside the field of vision of the researcher" and thus "complex formations and processes were partitioned into component elements and no longer existed as wholes, as structures" (p.2). That is, traditionally, analysis chopped up the system of a higher mental function (HMF) and consequently could only study its components, lower mental functions (LMF).

Consequently, psychology tells us when children learn abstract concepts, but not why or how. Psychology had not yet distinguished between two lines of development, the natural and the cultural, and the two different sets of laws that each follow (p.3). Vygotsky's solution is to introduce the dialectical method into psychology (p.3). Here, he notes that American behaviorism and Russian reflexology are both reductive, decomposing forms without regard to quality—a nondialectical approach that, he says, results in "an enormous mosaic of mental life" rather than a unified whole (p.4). In contrast, Vygotsky's dialectical approach viewed mental functions as interoperating in a system that is qualitatively different from its parts (p.4). He adds:

The history of the development of higher mental functions is impossible without a study of the prehistory of these functions, their biological roots, their organic properties. The genetic roots of two basic cultural forms of behavior are established in the infantile age: using tools and human speech; this circumstance in itself places the infantile age at the center of the prehistory of cultural development. (p.6)

Vygotsky notes a rupture between general psychology and child psychology, which he credits to a rift between the study of lower and higher mental functions (p.7). He lists three basic concepts of his research in the present volume:

• higher mental functions
• the cultural development of behavior
• the mastery of one's own behavior through internal processes (p.7)

He argues that there are two branches in the development of HMF:

• "the processes of mastering external materials of cultural development and thinking" such as language and arithmetic;
• the processes of development of special HMFs such as attention and logical memory (p.14)

Vygotsky argues that cultural development in man is preceded by, but separate from, his biological development. "In a wholly different type of adaptation in man, the development of his artificial organs, tools, and not a change in the organs and structure of his body, is of primary importance" (p.16). Indeed, primitive and cultured man are biologically equal (p.17; recall that this claim is at the root of the Uzbek expedition that went on in 1931-1932). (Vygotsky does not say it here, but his concept of the New Man relied on cultural development; as he implied in his 1930 essay on the subject, the Soviet alteration of man was cultural, not genetic, and anyone from any genetic background could acquire the cultural tools to reach new heights.)

Here, Vygotsky lists some of the HMFs: verbal thinking, logical memory, concept formation, voluntary attention, will; these are all thoroughly changed in cultured man (p.17). "In the process of historical development, social man changes the methods and devices of his behavior, transforms natural instincts and functions, and develops and creates new forms of behavior—specifically cultural" (p.18). And in a cultural environment, organic development yields "a historically conditioned biological process" in which cultural development is merged with organic maturation. One example: "the development of speech in the child" (p.20). 

Citing Jennings, Vygotsky notes that, like animals, "Man also has his system of activity that keeps his methods of behavior within limits. In his system, for example, flying is impossible. But man surpasses all animals because he can extend the radius of his activity limitlessly by using tools. His brain and hand made his system of activity, that is, the sphere of available and possible forms of behavior, infinitely broad." Thus the decisive moment in a child's development is when s/he independently finds and uses tools (p.20).  Here, the child transitions from animal to human activity; but this transition does not mean leaving one for the other. Rather, the two systems (animal/organic and human/cultural) develop together (p.21). (Compare Engestrom's account of the evolution of mediators in the transition from animal to man in Learning by Expanding.)

Animals, Vygotsky argues, do not have the biological platform that we do, "a certain degree of biological maturity" that is required for underpinning HMFs (p.23). Vygotsky proposes understanding the seams between biological and cultural systems of activity by examining "deviations from the normal type," including "the so-called defective," in which natural-cultural merging does not occur normally (p.23). (Vygotsky later became interested in other, higher-achieving edge cases such as that of a mnemonist, and planned to write a book about them; Luria eventually wrote a book about the mnemonist, which was very much in the same vein as the current book, but less broad in its implications.) Specifically discussing "child primitiveness," Vygotsky warns us against understanding "primitivism of the child's mentality" as "feebleness": "The child-primitive is a child who has not gone through cultural development or, more precisely, who is at the lowest step of cultural development" (cf. Luria's 1930s twin research). 

Ch.2. Research method

In this chapter, Vygotsky lays down his methodological principles. Although it's been a while since I read his Historical Meaning of the Crisis in Psychology, the chapter seems in line with it. "Our main idea" is that in making the transition from animal to human, we made 

a dialectical leap that leads to a qualitative change in the relationship itself between the stimulus and the response. We might formulate our basic conclusion thus: human behavior differs by the same kind of qualitative uniqueness in comparison with the behavior of animals as the whole type of adaptation and historical development of man differs from the adaptation and development of animals because the process of mental development in man is part of the total process of the historical development of humanity. (p.39)

Man acts upon nature—including himself—and creates new conditions for self, conditions that allow him to shape himself (p.38).

Vygotsky and colleagues

began our research with a psychological analysis of several forms of behavior that are found, not frequently it is true, in everyday, common life and are thus known to everyone, but are also to a high degree complex, historical formations of the earliest epochs in the mental development of man. These techniques of methods of behavior, arising stereotypically in given situations, represent virtual solidified, petrified, crystallized psychological forms that arose in remote times at the most primitive stages of cultural development of man and in a remarkable way were preserved in the form of historical survivors in a petrified and in a living state in the behavior of modern man. (p.39) 

 One is the dilemma of Buridan's ass, which humans solve via artificially introduced auxiliary stimuli (ex: you can make a decision by flipping a coin; p.46). In fact, humans frequently determine their own behavior "with the help of artificially created stimuli-devices" such as tying a knot to remember or throwing dice (p.50). He adds, without evidence: "Tying a knot for remembering was one of the very first forms of the written word. This form played an enormous role in the history of culture, in the history of the development of writing" (p.50; but evidence suggests that Vygotsky was wrong in this example.)

Here, Vygotsky discusses signs, defined as "artificial stimuli-devices introduced by man into a psychological situation where they fulfill the function of autostimulation" (p.54). Signification is the creation and use of signs, and it distinguishes human behavior (p.55). "In the process of social life, man created and developed more complex systems of psychological connections without which work activity and all social life would be impossible." Signs are "devices of psychological connection in their very nature and in their essential function" (p.56). (Here, we see signs take center stage, as precursors to work activity—a formulation that Leontiev would later turn on its head.) One example of the use of signs is in memory: the knot "remembers" the errand for the man who ties it, in the sense that the knot is an active form of adaptation or external process of remembering. That is, memory is converted to external activity, whether in knots or in monuments (p.59).

Vygotsky warns that although we can speak of signs as tools, it's an analogy that can't be carried through to the bitter end, and "we must not anticipate finding much similarity to working tools in these devices that we call signs" (see his very similar discussion from 1930). What he calls the "instrumental function of the sign" is "the function of stimulus-device fulfilled by the sign with respect to any psychological operation, that it is a tool of human activity" (p.60). We can't collapse the distinction between tool and sign: "tools as devices for work, devices for mastering the processes of nature, and language as a device for social contact and communication, dissolve in the general concept of artifacts of artificial devices" (p.61). Rather, Vygotsky argues that we should understand the difference in this way:

• the use of signs is a "mediating activity" in which humans control behavior
• the use of tools is a mediating activity in which humans subjugate nature (pp.61-62)

These are "diverging lines of mediating activity" (p.62). Again, Leontiev later turns this formulation on its head by considering labor activity as the origination point for human psychology, thus collapsing the distinction between tool/sign and external nature/self-regulatory behavior.

Ch.3. Analysis of higher mental functions

Vygotsky opens this chapter by briefly discussing Lewin's systemic approach to psychology. Characteristically, Vygotsky does not provide a cite, but the thinking is quite similar to the linked book. However, Vygotsky didn't buy Gestalt psychology, which (he argued) rejects analysis of the whole and remains descriptive (p.66, 67)—despite Lewin's own argument that the sciences must move from a descriptive to an explanatory approach (p.69). Vygotsky proposes the experimental-genetic method (p.68). Whereas classic psychological experiments are set up to analyze complex reactions in automatized form—a sort of "post mortem" (p.75)—Vygotsky aimed to convert an automatized process to a living reaction (p.76; compare Bodker's focus on breakdowns, which I continued in my own methodology). 

A little later in the chapter, Vygotsky presents his famous triangle diagram showing a stimulus, response, and mediational means (p.79; this diagram also shows up in "Tool and Sign," and was introduced to the US readership through Mind in Society). Vygotsky argues that this mediated structure is what all higher forms of behavior consist of (p.80). 

Ch.4. The structure of higher mental functions

Here, Vygotsky distinguishes between primitive structures (natural, mainly dependent on "biological features of the mind") and higher structures ("a genetically more complex and higher form of behavior") (p.83). Critically, traditional psychology did not investigate "this phenomenon which we call mastery of one's own behavior"—and even, in James' case, explained HMFs such as will in terms of miracles (p.86)! Vygotsky examines self-mastery, again using the distinction between tool (which is directed outward) and sign (which is directed inward, reconstructing one's mental operations) (p.89). Everything in higher behavior—that is, everything that is uniquely human—is connected with artificial means of thinking (p.90). Yet higher behavior is an aggregate of lower, elementary, natural processes; culture creates nothing (p.92). 

Ch.5. Genesis of higher mental functions

Here, Vygotsky first reviews the work of Kohler and Koffka (who he characterizes as Lamarckian) and Buhler (who tries to unite Lamarck and Darwin; p.100). Via Janet, he argues that everything that is internal in HMFs was formerly external; the relations between HMFs were once relations between people (p.103). This leads us to the general genetic law of cultural development: that every function appears twice, first interpsychologically, then intrapsychologically. This is the sociogenesis of higher forms of behavior. All HMFs are the essence of internalized relations of a social order (p.106). Development is seen as taking place, not in steady accumulations of small changes, but as qualitative leaps (p.110; note the quant->qual argument based on dialectics).

And that's the original book. This volume of the Collected Works has many more chapters, which apparently remained unpublished until the CW came out. I may review these in the future. But my main focus was this hard-to-find translation on HMFs. After reading it, I have a much clearer idea of what Vygotsky was trying to do in 1931 and how it influenced (and diverged from) his colleagues. If you're interested in Vygotsky, especially the Vygotsky you thought you first encountered in Mind in Society, I highly recommend it.

Reading :: A Handbook of Contemporary Soviet Psychology

A handbook of contemporary Soviet psychology
Edited by Michael Cole and Irving Maltzman

This 1969 collection is 856 pages without the indexes. I didn't read all of it, since my specific interests are cultural-historical theory and activity theory. Instead, I selected chapters with the following characteristics:

• I recognized the authors as belonging to one or both of these schools.
• I saw Vygotsky, Luria, or Leontiev in a chapter's references. 

That methodology yielded 15 of the 30 chapters. I won't cover all of the 15. 

Editors' Introduction

In Cole and Maltzman's Editors' Introduction, they cover the historical background of the volume. They note that in the mid-1930s, psychological testing was outlawed and psychological journals were discontinued, so "psychologists who wanted to publish their work had to turn to educational journals for an outlet." And the conventional wisdom was that "the discipline went into a deep decline during the period 1935-1950" (p.6). But, the editors argue, important work was being done, just not published. That situation changed in 1959-1960 with a "two-volume handbook of Soviet psychology" referencing "work done during the 1930's and 1940's which was unpublished at the time or appeared only in the form of zapiski (notes) of the institution where the research was done" (p.6). That handbook "forms the backbone of the present volume" (p.7).

The editors note something that I mention in recent reviews, that in 1950—the 100th anniversary of Pavlov's birth—"Pavlov was elevated to the position of a demigod of Soviet biological science" due to Stalin's political involvement (p.7). "The 1950 Joint Session was convened with the explicit purpose of forcing deviant physiologists back into the fold and effecting total Pavlovianization of psychology" (p.7). But Stalin's death in 1953 resulted in sudden changes, including a decrease in dogmatism (p.9). The editors also note that the 1950 Joint Session was not as severe as the 1948 genetics purge (p.9). In fact, one result was to encourage empirical research rather than philosophical declarations (p.9). 

Importantly, Pavlov argued shortly before he died that "language acts as a 'second signal system'" (p.10); this endorsement was a boon to psychologists working on "verbal behavior and language learning" (p.10). (Look through the recent reviews on this blog and you'll see that Luria uses this Pavlovian term liberally to validate his work with language, work that proceeds theoretically and methodologically from Vygotsky.)

At the 23rd Congress of the Communist Party in 1964, "there was a re-emphasis of the Leninist principle of objective scientific examination of reality" and "no reference to Pavlovian principles" (p.11). 

Zaporozhets, A.V. "Some of the psychological problems of sensory training in early childhood and the preschool period."

The editors note that this chapter comes from a 1963 book he edited with Usova. For this chapter, I want to highlight only one thing: "interiorization," which he characterizes as being proposed by Vygotsky, then developed by Leontiev in Problems of the development of mind (pp.115-116). This theory is "of cardinal import" (p.116).

Luria, A.R. "Speech development and the formation of mental processes."

The editors call Luria "perhaps the best known of the psychologists represented in this volume" and note his friendship and work with Vygotsky (p.121). They also note his "prolonged 'vacation' from neuropsychological research" in the early 1950s—he "was required to leave his position at the Institute of Neurosurgery for work at the Institute of Defectology" (p.122). 

Luria overviews the history of research in speech development in the USSR, starting with Rybnikov, Kornilov, Ivanov-Smolenskii, and his own early work (p.123). He emphasizes Vygotsky's "significant contribution in the materialistic solution" of the question of "the role of speech in the formation of consciousness and thinking": the child was seen "from the very beginning[] a social being" (p.127). Luria discusses the work of Vygotsky and his students at some length, then concludes that "Vygotskii proceeded to a new and most important branch of psychology—the basic regularities of conscious forms of human thinking" (p.137). 

Vygotsky also shows up in Luria's discussion of children's written speech: his and El'konin's work "indicated that written speech represents an entirely new psychological phenomenon, different from oral speech in its origin and in its structural and functional features" (p.141). Whereas oral speech is "insufficiently conscious, unseparated by the child from general speech activity," written speech is "always the product of special training" (p.141). Indeed, "the functional and structural features of written speech ... inevitably lead to a significant development of inner speech" because it "delays the direct appearance of speech connections, inhibits them, and increases requirements for the preliminary, internal preparation for the speech act" (p.142). 

In the subsection "The role of speech in the development of higher psychological functions," Luria argues that in the view of Soviet psychology, the mind is the "product of social life" and is treated "as a form of activity which was earlier shared by two people (that is, originated in communication) and which only later, as a result of mental development, became a form of behavior within one person" (p.143). Luria portrays dyadic relation as an adult-child relation (p.143). "Complex forms of conscious activity ('higher psychological functions') are least of all initial 'properties' of mental life or inherent qualities of the brain. They are functional systems formed by the social experience of the child" (p.143). Luria goes on to discuss his twin study coauthored with Yudovich, and dates the study to 1935-1936 (p.145). 

In the subsection "complex functional systems mediated by speech: Voluntary attention," Luria defines the phenomenon: "By 'voluntary attention' we should understand a reflex act, social in origin and mediated in its structure, in the presence of which the subject begins to guide himself by the very changes which he has produced in the environment; and in this way he masters his own behavior" (p.149). Here, he credits Vygotsky's and Leontiev's earlier works (p.149). 

In the subsection "The role of speech in imagination and thinking," Luria refers to Pavlov's claim that "the word is a 'signal of signals' which constitutes the foundation of the second signal system. Close interaction between the first and second signal systems is a distinctive feature of human higher nervous activity" (p.151). Specifically, humans use speech to self-regulate; animals do not self-regulate but must be constantly reinforced (p.152). 

El'konin, D.B. "Some results of the study of psychological development of preschool-age children."

The editors' note does not date this entry, which perhaps comes from the two-volume handbook they referenced in the introduction. They do note El'konin's long discussion of the 1936 pedology decree and his use of "testing" as an epithet (p.163). El'konin does indeed discuss pedology at length, approving of the Decree and claiming that pedology "deprived" psychology of "an outlet into pedagogical practice and of the use of genetic analysis of the developmental process" (p.165). He claims that "Vygotskii, one of the Soviet Union's most able psychologists, was in the vanguard of the fight against mechanism and behaviorism and produced many valuable works. In the last years of Vygotskii's life (he died in 1934), in his work on the development of the infant's psychological processes, he was drawn into the stream of pedology. In spite of this, Vygotskii produced a number of studies of the utmost value for child psychology" (p.167).

El'konin goes on to praise Vygotsky's work on thinking and speaking (specifically the 1934 Thinking and speaking) and adds that "Vygotskii was the first in Soviet child psychology to direct attention to the problem of instruction and development and to emphasize the leading role of instruction in the development of the child" (pp.167-168; note that El'konin is more or less defending Vygotsky from Rudneva's charge that he embraced the withering away of school). Yet "he had an erroneous conception of the origin of various aspects of the child's development, which he considered to be the result of a change in the structure of consciousness. On the contrary, the change in the structure of the mind, which occurs during preschool age, is the consequence of the new relations which are coming into being, of a new type of activity on the part of the preschool-age child" (p.168). 

He adds that "during the last years of his life (when he had been drawn into the current of pseudoscientific pedology), Vygotskii was distinguished from the pedologists by his psychological orientation; for him the problem of the concrete psychological characteristics of consciousness and of its development remained the central problem, on which he worked until the last days of his life" (p.168). Meanwhile, other psychologists "had been working on the question of the relation between the development of consciousness and activity, of thought and practice" (p.168), specifically Rubinshtein (p.169). And "about the time Rubinshtein was doing his work, another group of psychologists under the direction of Leont'ev in Kharkov, was carrying out an experimental project aimed at explaining the role of practical 'object' activity in the development of generalization and of other aspects of mental development. This work, begun in the 1930's, sought to extend Vygotskii's research on the development of children's thought, more specifically, the development of generalization. These projects were also directed against Vygotskii's tendency to overestimate the role of speech and communication in this development" (p.169). He quotes Leont'ev's 1935 unpublished manuscript "The mastery of scientific concepts as a problem for educational psychology," which characterized changes in word meaning as following changes in activity (p.170). 

Later, he notes Gal'perin's work in emphasizing "the fundamental difference between tools as used by man and auxiliary instruments used by animals" (p.191). Under the heading of personality, he notes that "Leont'ev (1945, 1948) was the first after Vygotskii to propose a general theory of preschool personality development," based on changes in the structuring of activity (p.201). 

Some brief commentary. In Rehabilitation of hand function, Leont'ev and Zaporozhets argue that after trauma (such as a gunshot wound), a person's functional system reorganizes around protecting the affected limb, and that reorganization can impede rehabilitation. Analogically speaking, Soviet psychology experienced severe trauma with the 1936 Pedology Decree and related events during the Stalinist crackdown, and 20 years later, El'konin is still protecting the affected limb: defending Vygotsky's work while keeping a clear separation. Really, when you delve into the critique of Vygotsky here, it comes down to Vygotsky's focus on word meaning and his refusal to view it as a result of practical activity. This move allows El'konin to draw freely from Vygotsky's works while cutting out some of the later (post-instrumental, holistic) work coinciding with his pedological writings. We can see similar moves going on in other works written around the same time by Soviet psychologists in the cultural-historical and activity theory traditions (including Luria's continued focus on higher psychological functions, as seen earlier in this collection).

Bozhovich, L.I. "The personality of schoolchildren and problems of education."

The editors identify Bozhovich's work as an outgrowth of Vygotsky's work on personality development (pp.209-210). According to Bozhovich, "life conditions per se do not directly and immediately determine a child's personality," but rather "the child's interaction with these external conditions," a principle first expressed by Vygotsky (1934) (p.211). But, Bozhovich says, Vygotsky's main factor—"the level of development of generalization"—is just one of the factors involved (p.213). 

After some discussion, Bozhovich concludes by noting the tendency of Soviet psychologists to "overlook Freud's 'unconscious' and, in general, 'depth psychology'"—understandable (p.242)—but Bozhovich argues that the unconscious does exist: "the child's social needs are the major incentives for study" and "generally the child is not consciously aware of this motivation" (p.243). 

Luria, A.R. "The neuropsychological study of brain lesions and restoration of damaged brain functions"

Those who have read recent reviews of Luria's books on this blog will find this chapter familiar, so I'll just hit the highlights. Luria credits Vygotsky for showing that higher mental processes develop from "the child's interaction with adults"; "Vygotskii brought the problem of instruments which organize psychological processes into the foreground of psychological research," especially speech (p.282). Specifically, Luria overviews Vygotsky's method of double stimulation and highlights the changes in word meaning over a person's life, where it "plays a different role both in the reflection of reality and in the mediation of mental activity at various stages of development" (p.282). Luria states that Vygotsky's theoretical position "made the objective study of human consciousness feasible and placed it at the center of Soviet clinical and general psychology" (p.283). Furthermore (as Luria demonstrates elsewhere), in some cases of neuropsychological damage, speech becomes the basic instrument of compensation (p.284). 

Leont'ev, A.N. "On the biological and social aspects of human development: The training of auditory ability."

"This chapter was taken from A.N. Leont'ev's speech at the 16th International Congress of Psychology in Bonn, Germany, in 1960," the editors tell us (p.423). Leontiev reports on the training of auditory ability, but the interesting thing (for me) was how he positioned the subject vis-a-vis activity theory. He begins by arguing that the development of psychological functions could be passed along, not just biologically, but culturally: once society developed, "progress in the sphere of man's psychological abilities was established and transmitted from one generation to another in a unique form, one that was esoteric, that expressed itself through the phenomena of objective reality. The new form of accumulating and transmitting phylogenetic or, more precisely, historical experience emerged because of certain features which are typical of human activity—namely, its productive, creative aspect, which is most apparent in the basic human activity that work represents" (p.425). "By effecting the process of production, both material and cultural, work is crystallized or assumes final form in its product" and thus "the conversion of human activity into its product appears to be a process whereby man's activity, the activity of human qualities, is embodied in the product produced. The history of material and cultural development thus appears to be a process which, in its external objective form, gives expression to the growth of human abilities" (p.425). The use of tools and instruments "can be thought of as expressing and consolidating the gains man has made with respect to the motor functions of the hand" (p.425; cf. Engels' origin story of humanity). The cultural heritage transcends individuals. The world of objects, developed over the course of history through human activity, must be discovered by the individual in the course of relating them to the activity for which they have been developed (p.425). 

Side note: Vygotsky saw psychological tools as giving new abilities of individuals; Leontiev saw psychological and physical tools as objectifications of human ability, passed down as a heritage and activated by using them in the appropriate activity.

The "individual's relationships to the world of human objects [must] be mediated by his relationships with people, so that these relationships are included in the process of exchange. ... The child is not simply thrown into the human world; he is introduced and guided in this world by people in his environment" (p.426). Through this process, "the individual reproduces abilities which the species Homo sapiens acquired in its social and historical evolution"—what animals acquire through biological inheritance, humans acquire through learning (p.426). 

After discussing his experiments with auditory training, Leontiev concludes that the human cortex is "an organ which is capable of forming organs" (p.438, his emphasis; I'm reminded of Vygotsky's early formulation of consciousness as a reflex of reflexes). Such functional organs, once they form, "appear to manifest elementary innate abilities" such as "spatial, quantitative, or logical structures (gestalts)" (p.438—notice the interaction with Lewin and the gestalt school here). Functional organs function as a single organ; are stable; develop differently from simple chains of reflexes; and can differ even if they perform the same task (pp.438-439). Like Vygotsky in his 1931 book on higher mental functions, Leontiev argues that higher psychological functions are socially determined, but built on lower mental functions which are biologically determined (p.440). "The process of mastering or learning the world of objects and phenomena created by people during the history of society is one in which the individual develops distinctly human abilities and functions," he concludes (p.440). 

Solokov, A.N. "Studies of the speech mechanisms of thinking." 

Solokov based his studies on Vygotsky, Blonskii, and Rubinshtein, arguing that "thought is not only expressed in speech but is formed and carried out in it" (pp.531-532). In fact, abstract thinking is impossible without language—but language is not the same as thought (p.532). Drawing (again) on Pavlov's notion of the second signal system (p.533), Solokov sets up his discussion of Vygotsky's work. In mild criticism, he says that Vygotsky did not always adhere to his own materialist position, but did understand that speech is not simply a mirror reflection of thought (p.534). Blonskii, Solokov reports, criticized Vygotsky's 1934 Thinking and speaking in his own 1935 book Memory and thought, arguing that "thought and speech originate from one source"—work (p.536). Anan'ev later criticized both Vygotsky and Blonskii for not considering "the entire systems of speech activity"—including reading and writing (p.537). 

Solokov then gets into more recent investigations, noting that one can detect differences in electrical potentials of the muscles of the tongue and lower lip when silently reading; of finger extensors and the tongue when recalling events and chess figures; and of the lip and tongue when silently counting and solving math problems (pp.547-551). In fact, "when the motor aphasic clamps his tongue between his teeth, his writing instantly deteriorates" (p.563). Solokov discusses implications for rehabilitation.

In all, this book was a fascinating (and massive) overview of different parts of Soviet psychology, and more directly relevant to my current project, an overview of how Soviet psychologists framed and justified work in the cultural-historical and activity theory traditions between 1959 and 1969. If you're interested in this history, definitely pick up this book. 

Reading :: A Dynamic Theory of Personality

A Dynamic Theory of Personality
By Kurt Lewin

Yes, I actually read a book that wasn't written by a Soviet psychologist. But don't worry, there's a direct connection: Lewin and Vygotsky were familiar with each other's work, Vygotsky quoted Lewin, and some of Lewin's students worked with Vygotsky and Leontiev. Yasnitsky even claims that activity theory is a mutant or hybrid of Vygotsky's and Lewin's works, although Lewin was not credited for political reasons (although Yasnitsky only sketches this thesis rather than substantiating it).

In any case, this book is a collection of articles by Lewin, published in 1935, the year after Vygotsky's death. The source material had been published during Vygotsky's life, including the lead essay, "The conflict between Aristotelian and Galileian modes of thought in contemporary psychology" (1931). Commentators have said that this essay impacted Vygotsky. (Currently I'm reading Vygotsky's Development of Higher Mental Functions, which mentions Lewin, but characteristically does not provide a cite, and the mention is brief enough that I can't tell whether this lead essay is the one being discussed.)

I'll spend most of my time on this lead essay, which is essentially a manifesto for the development of psychology. Lewin uses the analogy of physics. Aristotelian physics, he says, was anthropocentric, inexact, and normative. It classified phenomena in terms of values: perfect and imperfect. Similarly, he argues, psychology currently draws a value distinction between "normal" and "pathological"; thus it "separated the phenomena which are fundamentally most nearly related" (p.3).

In contrast, Galileian physics changed the interpretation of classification. Whereas Aristotelian physics differentiated dichotomously by class, Galileian physics used continuous gradations and functional rather than substantive concepts (p.5).

Similarly, Aristotelian physics expected things to have a "tendency": it looked for regularity, and peculiarity was understood entirely in historical terms (p.7). It has a notion of "lawfulness," which has a historical or temporal significance set against the sweep of eternity (pp.8-9). In contrast, Galileian physics tends toward quantification, not just because of clocks, but because of a new concept of the physical world (p.10). It relies on the homogenization of the world (p.10)—treating all things with the same laws rather than assuming that things of specific classes had specific tendencies.

Lewin charges that psychology is currently more Aristotelian than Galileian in this sense as well. In terms of lawfulness, it divides cases into common and unusual (p.13). It understands lawfulness in terms of frequency (p.14). It overrelies on class and essence: "Whatever is common to children of a given age is set up as the fundamental character of that age" (p.15; cf. Vygotsky, Leontiev re the same argument). Psychology's use of statistics is Aristotelian, intensifying the tendency to classify cases as common vs. unusual (p.17). Psychology doesn't regard exceptions as counterarguments if they're infrequent (p.19).

This state of affairs does not please Lewin, who wants a Galileian revolution for psychology. "Even psychological law must hold without exception," he argues (p.23). Specifically, he notes that dynamic problems are foreign to Aristotelian physics (and psychology), while they are central to Galileian physics (and psychology) (p.27). Aristotelian physics is teleological, with vectors determined by the object; Galileian physics recognizes that a vector depends on mutual relations of physical facts (p.28). That is, like Vygotsky, Lewin wants to understand the mutual interaction of the object and environment; we can see Leontiev's turn to labor as a general explanatory principle for such a system.

Also like Vygotsky, Lewin believes that a Galileian psychology should not try to control all factors in a series of experiments, but rather it should "comprehend the whole situation involved, with all its characteristics, as precisely as possible" (p.31; compare the bare sketches of experiments that Vygotsky conducted and his discussion of method). And "Instead of a reference to the abstract average of as many historically given cases as possible, there is a reference to the full concreteness of the particular situations" (p.31). (Compare Luria's detailed case studies and his "Romantic science.")

In fact, Lewin argues that it's fine to rely on historically unusual, rare, and transitory events, just as a Galileian physics does (p.35). Indeed, in what Lewin calls a Galileian psychology, you can't validate a case by repetition; you have to refer to "the totality of the concrete whole situation" (p.42). This proposition, frankly, would seem quite counterintuitive to me without the examples from the Vygotsky school!

This lead essay was the most accessible and directly applicable for me, so I'll stop here. It's well worth reading, but I'm separate enough from psychology that I can't evaluate it well. I can, however, see strong resonance with the Vygotsky school. And now I have to read more Lewin.

Reading :: Human Brain and Psychological Processes

Human Brain and Psychological Processes
By A.R. Luria

I just reviewed Luria's Higher Cortical Functions in Man, and if you read that review, this book will sound familiar. Luria published this present book in Russian in 1963, the year after Higher Cortical Functions; both books were published in English in 1966. We see many of the same themes, and Luria notes that the present book was also based on his work from 1938-1963.

In the introduction, Luria notes that interrupted higher mental functions such as writing, reading, and speech can be reconstructed along different paths (p.16). Drawing on Anoshkin, he uses the word "function" to "denote a complex adaptive activity of a whole system, and sometimes of a whole organism" (p.17). Again, he credits Vygotsky and Leontiev for their insights into the social-historical origin of human mental activity (p.21). He argues that an animal's behavior is a result of (a) inborn tendencies and (b) direct, individual experience; but humans can also tap into (c) the experience of mankind in general (p.21). This general experience is incorporated into activity, language, work products, and forms of social life. In fact, mediation—and Luria once again uses the example of the knot in the handkerchief—involves changing one's environment to control one's behavior from the outside, deliberately and socially. "All complex forms of voluntary attention and logical memory, conceptual perception and abstract intellectual activity are the result of the assimilation of socially-formulated activity and have a similar, complex structure. ... all these processes must be interpreted as products of social life, passing through a complex period of historical evolution, organized at different levels and carried out by means of highly involved forms of reflex activity, and all established through the conditions of existence of human society" (p.22).

Indeed, he quotes Vygotsky's Development of the Higher Mental Functions to argue that a function, initially social and shared by two people, gradually crystallizes to become a way to organize the individual's mental life (p.23). "The social-historical conditions of life do not abrogate the laws of reflex processes" developed during biological evolution, "but enrich and reorganize these processes, converting them into more complex functional systems, formed under the influence of objective activity, and with the close participation of language" (p.24).

A bit later in the book, Luria discusses functional location, drawing on Vygotsky, Leontiev, and Zaporozhets to argue "that individual behavioral processes are consistently interconnected during development and that in the process of ontogenesis, not only the structure of individual mental processes, but also their relationship to each other may change" (p.56). Interestingly, here he evokes the idea of "the concrete reflection of the outside world," arguing that this "reflection" "serves as the basis for the construction of new and more complex behavioral processes" (p.56). This interests me in that Soviet psychologists incorporated Lenin's theory of reflection, but understood it differently; Luria is using the term "reflection" here to denote senses, but keeping it separate from the construction of higher mental functions. See also p.3, in which Luria seems to say that direct senses are not psychological processes.

In discussing voluntary memory, Luria cites Vygotsky and Leontiev, noting that memory is compensated by the organizational role of the intellect (p.58).

And that's it for this review. The book becomes more complex here and delves into specific disturbances in thinking, which are fascinating but a bit far afield for my purposes. Like Higher Cortical Functions of Man, this book provides us with a good sense of how Luria applied Vygotsky's insights in his development of a new field, and for that reason, I recommend it.

Reading :: Higher Cortical Functions in Man

Higher Cortical Functions in Man
By A. R. Luria

I'm not actually going to review this entire book—the version I read, the 1966 Basic Books version, is massive—but I do want to touch on the framing. The book is based on Luria's neuropsychological work from the 1930s to the time of writing, and it was a landmark book for the neurosciences, exploding the myth that higher mental functions were associated with specific parts of the brain (the reading center, the writing center, etc.). Rather, Luria argues that these higher functions result from the networking together of different parts of the brain. A disruption of that network—say, a gunshot wound in a specific part of the brain—can interrupt that higher mental function, not because it has destroyed the function's brain center, but because that part of the brain is part of a larger chain. Excitingly, that meant that patients could learn to route around the affected area, reconstructing the chain with a substituted brain area. (If you've read The Man with a Shattered World, you have a concrete example of how such rehabilitation might work.)

Of specific interest to me at present: Luria lavishly credits Vygotsky for the basic insights on which his work is built (and dedicates the book to him). In the Foreword, Luria ties "higher cortical processes" to the "higher mental functions" that Vygotsky described (p.1). Luria bases the generalizations on observations over "the past 25 years" (which would be 1937-1962, since the Russian version was published in 1962, a date range beginning with Luria's internship at Burdenko Institute of Neurosurgery. Luria notes that he "first began his clinicopsychological investigations of local brain lesions more than 30 years ago under the guidance of his friend and teacher L.S. Vygotskii. Much of what is written in the following pages may therefore be looked upon as a continuation of Vygotskii's ideas" (p.2).

Luria continues that line in Section I, "The problem of localization of functions in the cerebral cortex." After reviewing early conceptions of brain localization (e.g., brain centers), he argues that "no formation of the central nervous system is responsible for solely a single function"—rather, there are networked functional systems (p.27). In fact, as was well known, a brain lesion can disturb voluntary performance while leaving involuntary performance intact; Luria argues that the result of such a brain lesion is not loss but disorganization (cf. Leontiev and Zaporozhets). Indeed, Luria argues that

The principal achievement of modern psychology may be considered to be the rejection of both the idealistic notion that higher mental functions are manifestations of a certain 'mind' principle, distinct from all other natural phenomena, and the naturalistic assumption that these functions are natural properties bestowed by nature upon the human brain. One of the major advances in modern materialistic psychology has been the introduction of the historical method by means of which higher mental functions are regarded as complex products of sociohistorical development. (p.31)

He goes on to cite Vygotsky—specifically his book Development of the Higher Psychological Functions, of course—and Leontiev, and "to a certain extent" Janet and Wallon (p.31). Specifically, he notes Vygotsky's argument that "social contaact between the child and adults always lies at the root of such forms of activity as paying attention or voluntary movement" (p.33). This social genesis "determines the second fundamental characteristic of these functions, their mediate structure"; here, Luria uses the example of an external sign such as a knot or note to organize a mental process. Speech, he notes, "plays a decisive role in the mediation of mental processes," a claim that he supplements with a quote by Lenin (p.33). Indeed, he praises Pavlov for recognizing "the 'second signal system,' which is based on speech" (p.34). And:

The fact that systems of speech connections are necessary components of the higher mental functions makes the cerebral organization of these functions an extremely complex matter. We therefore suggest that the material basis of the higher nervous process is the brain as a whole but that the brain is a highly differentiated system whose parts are responsible for different aspects of the unified whole. (p.35)

He goes on to endorse Leontiev's "functional brain organs," which are "formed in the process of social contact and objective activity by the child" (p.35). The "upper associative layers of the cerebral cortex, the vertical connections arising in the secondary associative nuclei of the thalamus, and the overlapping zones uniting different boundaries of cortical analyzers evidently constitute the apparatus that performs this highly complex task. It is in man that this apparatus of the brain has attained its highest development, sharply distinguishing the human brain from that of animals. We, therefore, agree with the view that evolution, under the influence of social conditions, accomplishes the task of conversion of the cortex into an organ capable of forming functional organs (Leont'ev, 1961, p.38)" (p.35).

Luria again credits Vygotsky's insight that "higher mental functions may exist only as a result of interaction between the highly differentiated brain structures and that individually these structures make their own specific contributions to the dynamic whole and play their own roles in the functional system. This hypothesis ... is a thread running through the whole of the book" (p.36). In their early stages, higher mental functions "depend on the use of external evocative signs" (here he cites Leont'ev and Vygotsky), and "Only when this is complete do they gradually consolidate, so that the whole process is converted into a concise action, based initially on external and then on internal speech" (p.36). In fact, we can conclude that higher mental functions's structure "does not remain constant but that they perform the same task by means of different, regularly interchanging systems of connections" (p.36).

The foundations of higher mental functions are in simple sensory processes, so disturbing these senses or their integration will cause underdevelopment. In fact, Vygotsky formulated a rule: in early stages of ontogenesis, a brain lesion will primarily affect a higher center, i.e., a function that is developmentally dependent on the area where the lesion is located. But in the stage of fully formed functional systems, a lesion in the same area will primarily affect a lower center, one regulated by that function (p.37).

We'll stop here. Luria goes on to discuss agnosia, apraxia, and various other issues associated with brain lesions as well as his diagnostic methods. But for we humble non-neurologists, the central insights of the book are in the review above. Luria clearly took Vygotsky's book on the higher mental functions as his starting point, he is unstinting with his praise for Vygotsky's work, and he used it to illuminate a new field. If you are even marginally interested in these issues, or in Soviet psychology, I highly recommend the book.

Reading :: Rehabilitation of Hand Function

Rehabilitation of hand function
By A.N. Leont'ev and A.V. Zaporozhet͡s

What does hand rehabilitation have to do with psychology? More than I expected. In this book (published in Russian in 1945 and in English in 1960), the authors recount experiments in hand rehabilitation from the perspective of Soviet psychology. And in the process, they lay down markers for what would become the dominant framework for Soviet psychology, activity theory.

Let's put this book in context. Leontiev had worked under Vygotsky in the early 1930s, but then took a job at Kharkov along with other members of the Vygotsky-Luria network. Throughout the early 1930s, Leontiev and Vygotsky differed in their ideas of how Soviet psychology should develop: Vygotsky thought that the root phenomenon to study was word meaning or sense, while Leontiev argued that the root phenomenon was actually labor. Vygotsky died in 1934, and the Vygotsky-Luria network (the "cultural-historical school") came under Stalinist attack in 1936-1937 for being insufficiently adherent to the party line. Leontiev's angle of focusing on labor was easier to defend. In 1940, Leontiev defended his dissertation and in his article "The Genesis of Activity," he laid the tenets for activity theory. (He has been accused of lifting these tenets from Rubinshtein, who sat on his committee.)

When Nazi Germany violated its nonaggression pact with the USSR in June 1941, the Soviet Union moved to a war footing. On February 5, 1943, the USSR established a system of rehabilitation hospitals—and, according to the foreword of this book, by Col.-General E. Smirnov, "it was forbidden to discharge officers and men who were capable of rehabilitation" (p.ix). Luria and Leontiev were assigned to head two of these rehabilitation hospitals.

The book at hand was written based on two research cycles, in 1943 and 1944, focusing on rehabilitation of hand function. Both involved Zaporozhets directly, while Leontiev supervised as scientific director; others were involved, including Gal'perin (first cycle) and Rubinshtein (second cycle) (p.xiii). Zaporozhets wrote Ch.4-9, while Leontiev wrote Ch.1-3 and 10.

In Ch.1, Leontiev sets out the task at hand (no pun intended). He begins by noting that people with restricted movements will perform differently depending on the conditions: telling them to "raise your arm as high as you can" gives poorer results when their eyes are closed compared to when they have their eyes open and are against a ruled screen—and the results are even better when they are asked to "take this object" (p.5). Beginning with the basics of activity theory—actions, motives, object, and activity—Leontiev argues that the differences in performance have to do with the meaning of the action. That is, the "same" action will be invested with a different attitude and orientation depending on the framing activity (p.14). Specifically, the person being rehabilitated may integrate the action into an "activity of self-defence" or "an activity with a difficult motive" (p.14). (In a footnote: "The term 'object' is used here, of course, in its widest sense meaning everything towards which the action is directed" (p.14)).

And this is why hand rehabilitation comes under the heading of psychology. "The character of a movement is determined not by its own motor task and not by the original orientation of the patients' own personality but by the concrete relationship of the one to the other in the given action" (p.16, his emphasis). This insight leads Leontiev to developing occupational therapy. OT already existed before the Soviets got to it, of course, but it had two virtues. First, it got results. Second, it fit the Soviet focus—and specifically Leontiev's focus—on labor. In later chapters, we'll see how this focus on labor plays out.

In Ch.2, Leontiev examines "the co-ordination of deranged movement" (p.17). He argues, following Anokhin and Sherrington, that in trauma such as gunshot wounds, the motor experience is disorganized, and "even when there is complete anatomical preservation of the central and peripheral system, the co-ordination of the movement may be disturbed to some degree" (p.18). Thus rehabilitation should first focus on restoring coordination (p.18). To improve coordination, the researchers used a kymograph (crediting Luria's work with the combined motor method) to provide feedback to patients as they undertook tasks with the uninjured and injured limbs (p.19; the method is quite vague). When patients had this visual feedback, they were able to smooth out their movements in moments (p.21). The task had been reorganized around different stimuli. (I was reminded of the work Leontiev later published in Problems of the Development of Mind in which he supposedly trained people to detect light with their hands—work that A.A. Leontiev later characterized as parapsychology.) The researchers found that the degree of discoordination was not directly correlated to the range of movement (p.26).

Just a note here. Leontiev's experiments (well, the ones he supervised) were not as elegant and clean as Vygotsky's or Luria's. They involved elaborate mechanisms, sketchy statistics, and in places, endless case studies.

Also in this chapter, Leontiev reports on rehabilitation after Krukenberg's operation — an operation for someone whose hand has to be amputated. Essentially, the radius and ulna are separated and the Pronator teres muscle is wrapped around both, allowing the patient to use the two bones as an elongated pincer. Obviously, this operation requires the patient to substantially reconstruct both motor and sensory impulses. In their experiments, the research team concluded that this reconstruction does not simply involve elementary sensation — untrained patients couldn't tell if they were feeling a cube or a cylinder, while trained patients could. (Notice the implications for applying Lenin's reflection theory—you can see them in Leontiev's application.)

Moving on. In Ch.4, Zaporohets discusses "the problem of motor organization and the restoration of movement" (p.63). Here, he argues that trauma leads to a new functional system to protect the injured organ. This functional system should be temporary, but can become fixed.

Interestingly, Zaporozhets emphasizes the practical importance of the work, especially in its aims of putting people back to work (p.64)—the theme of labor as well as the practicality that characterized Stalinist science. In a later chapter, Zaporozhets lauds "the general tonic and encouraging power of rational work activity" in comparison to gymnastic movements and occupational therapy meant to rehabilitate limbs, but without a framing activity (p.146). He quotes Luria along these lines as well (p.148), and he notes that the motivation of activity has a large impact on outcomes—"casual and meaningless orders" can have a "chilling effect" on recovery, while "more consequential and complicated tasks" can accelerate it (p.149).

Leontiev and Zaporozhets, then, wanted to put the occupation back into occupational therapy. One can see how this line of research would be welcome to the overtaxed war leadership of the USSR: not only can the wounded be put back to work, it was good for them! They even give the example of dispirited patients reviving when they were given the meaningful task of manufacturing "window frames and furniture to replace that destroyed by the Germans at Stalingrad" (p.150). Labor, which had created humanity, could also rehabilitate it.

Interestingly, some occupational therapists have also explored this link, although I haven't had the chance to read that literature.

In any case, I found the book interesting in terms of understanding what Leontiev was up to during the war years and how that experience bore on his development of activity theory. For activity theorists not working in OT, I think the book is primarily interesting for historical purposes, but it's still interesting!

Reading :: Soviet Psychology: Philosophical, Theoretical, and Experimental Issues

Soviet Psychology; Philosophical, Theoretical, and Experimental Issues
By Levy Rahmani

I mentioned Levy Rahmani in my recent review of a 1972 collection by Soviet psychologists—he was thanked by the authors for helping to select materials for the collection. In this 1973 book, he demonstrates why he was well positioned to make these selections—although, as Joravsky points out in his own review of the book, Rahmani has trouble articulating what makes Soviet psychology unique apart from its ideological commitments.

Rahmani does fill in some of the contextualizing history. In Chapter 1, he characterizes the changes that had happened shortly before he wrote the book: "The narrow, conformistic approach arising from the conference held in 1950 on the development of Pavlovian theory has gradually been replaced in the 1960's by a diversity of empirically tested theories. Deeply rooted beliefs in such theories as Pavlov's reflexology have been challenged while concepts like Vygotsky's cultural-historical view, not long ago rejected by the official psychology, are now widely discussed" (p.5).

Chapter 1 largely chronicles the beginning of Soviet psychology post-Revolution. I've covered some of this history elsewhere on this blog, so let's just hit some of the interesting highlights. On p.23, the author describes the "sociogenetic approach":

A great deal of effort was expended by Russian psychologists after the 1917 revolution to formulate a theory compatible with the Marxist [Leninist] tenet that the human psyche is a reflection of an objective reality, in particular the social environment. They had also to cope with the task of building a theory of education applicable to the "new" man. The problem of relationships between collective psychology and individual psychology was a major concern of the psychologists of the 1920's. They faced the following dilemma: is social psychology a legitimate branch of psychology, or should all the manifestations of the individual's psychology be regarded in terms of his social and, particularly, class position. In the light of the theory of historical materialism, they were inclined to the second solution. (p.23)

Kornilov's reactology "was the first attempt in Soviet psychology to bring together the biological and social factors determining the human psychology" — a two-factor theory (p.25). Readers of this blog will recall that in 1923 Kornilov replaced Chelpanov as director of the Institute of Experimental Psychology at Moscow University; but reactology fell out of favor around 1930, and Kornilov was replaced by Kolbanovskii. In 1939, Kornilov was reappointed director, and in 1943, he was appointed Vice-President of the newly founded RSFSR Academy of Pedagogical Sciences (p.30).

Meanwhile, the author characterizes the 1930s as the "battle for consciousness," featuring Vygotsky and Rubinshtein's separate attempts to develop a Soviet theory of consciousness (p.38). Vygotsky incorporated Engels' account of evolution into his theory, using Engels' discussion of tool use to back up his theory of mediation, and emphasized the role of signs as external (social) before becoming internal (individual) (p.41). Citing Brushlinskii, the author argues that Vygotsky's theory of signs developed in three stages:

1. Signs as self-stimulation
2. The meaning of signs
3. The concept of meaning itself, including the question of the development of concepts (p.43)

Rubinshtein criticized Vygotsky's theory in various ways. First, since "Vygotsky conceived of the social factor as an interaction between the adult and the child ... consciousness appeared then to be a direct expression of the individual's inner experiences, and not to be contingent upon 'material practice,' i.e., on the objects of people's actions"—leaving the door open for idealism. Second, Rubinshtein argued (1946) that Vygotsky elevated speech to the role of ultimate cause of thought—thought was not "'a reflection of the objective world in unity with speech on the basis of social practice, but rather as a derivative function of verbal signs'" (p.45). 

A.N. Leontiev was a colleague and student of Vygotsky's, but by the time he completed his doctoral dissertation in 1940, Vygotsky was dead; Rubinshtein sat on his dissertation committee.

His major thesis was that psychical processes represent a particular form of activity and derive from people's concern with external objects. Psyche is a result of the transformation of the external, material activity, into an internal activity during the course of man's historical development. In this, Leontiev, while following Vygotskii's thinking, was at variance with his teacher's approach—which was regarded as intellectualistic—when he postulated that the child's meaningful activity was determined by the level of his mental growth and not by the interaction between his consciousness and that of the adult. Leontiev also disagreed with Vygotskii's view of the role played by the development of concepts for the child's mental growth. (p.47)

Leontiev developed these ideas in his 1940 doctoral dissertation, a 1945 article on children's mental growth, and his 1947 monograph (perhaps his An Outline of Mental Development, though Rahmani does not specify) (p.47). He believed that Soviet psychology had two major tasks: "to define the structure of man's activity through an analysis of the relationships between activity as a whole, actions and operations" and "to clarify the concept of meaning" (p.47). (Notice that the first task implies a sociology, not just a psychology.) In terms of the second task, Leontiev argued that historically "meaning and significance became separated with the disintegration of the homogeneous primitive society and the occurrence of social classes" (p.48).

In 1948, Leontiev and Rubinshtein were both singled out for criticism, coinciding with Lysenko's 1948 "victory" (p.51). (The author is referring to the critiques reproduced in the appendix of Wortis' 1950 Soviet Psychiatry.) Specifically, Maslina (1948) criticizes Leontiev for being apolitical, vague, and overly focused on technical division of labor—and insufficiently appreciative of the high moral quality of Soviet man (p.52).

Now we get more context about Pavlov's elevation. Up to 1950, Pavlov's theory was revered but deviations were tolerated. But "In June 1950, the Joint Session of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR Dedicated to the Development of I.P. Pavlov's Teaching, put an end to this situation" (p.59). "Pavlov's theory was to become the only scientific approach" (p.60). Rahmani argues that the session was apparently inspired by Stalin himself, coinciding with his work on Marxism and linguistics published the same year. The session was anticosmopolitan, anti-Western, and aimed at developing "pure" Marxist science (p.60).

Chapter 2 gets into the nature of psyche. Rahmani notes that "Although Soviet psychologists had essentially accepted Lenin's proposition that the psyche is a reflection of external reality, they, naturally, disagreed when it came to elaborating specific definitions" (p.63). This concept of reflection comes from Lenin's 1908 proposition in Materialism and Empirio-criticism (p.64). Rahmani discusses how psychologists picked up this idea and applied it in different ways. Leontiev, for instance, regarded "the capacity to signal as the most relevant feature of the psyche. The psyche has a role in the organism's adaption, and this consists in the reflection of those objects and phenomena, acting as signals, which help the organism to deal with the vital phenomena, without participating directly in the metabolic process" (p.69).

Later in this chapter, we return to the fallout of the 1950 Pavlov conference. "Fortunately, the rigid approach imposed by the conference did not last for long." By the late 1950s, Pavlov's authority had weakened—Rahmani does not explicitly tie this change to Stalin's death in 1953—and by the time of a 1962 conference, a diversity of views was tolerated (p.95).

Let's skip to Ch.4, on thought and language. Rahmani notes that "the proposition that thoughts exist only in the form of language remains basic to Soviet psychology (p.208), grounded in Engels' "proposition that work and speech are the two main stimuli in the development of the human brain" (p.209). Interestingly, "Until 1950 the theory of the Georgian linguist Marr was considered the only Marxist theory of language" (p.209). Marr argued that "there was a stage in the development of man when he used a language of gestures which served not only as a means of communication but as an instrument of thought as well" (p.209). Readers of this blog may recall that in her January 1937 criticism of Vygotsky, Rudneva criticized him for not following the Japhetic theory of language; she is referring to Marr's work. Unfortunately for Marr, Rudneva et al., in 1950 Stalin published the article Marxism and Questions of Linguistics, declaring Marr's theory anti-Marxist: thinking was inconceivable without language, specifically sonic language (p.210). (See also Rosenthal.)

The book is much larger and more comprehensive than this review, covering Soviet work in sensory cognition, memory, emotions and feelings, will and voluntary activity, and the psychology of personality. But let's leave it there, since we have covered the topics that are currently most applicable to my current project. If you're interested in the history and development of Soviet psychology, as I am, this book features a solid overview up to the early 1970s. But it's also overly ecumenical; like Joravsky, I'd like to see it be more critically reflective. Nevertheless, see what you think.

Reading :: Psychology in the USSR: An Historical Perspective

Psychology in the USSR: an historical perspective
Edited by Josef Brozek and Dan I. Slobin

The link goes to a used version of this book for sale on Amazon. The version I read was from the UT library, where I found it by chance when looking for another book. The chapters in this 1972 collection are English translations of articles printed in Soviet journals in 1966, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Revolution. Each article is laid out in two columns, the formatting uses underlining rather than italics, and the page size looks about 9"x12". In other words, it looks more like a conference proceedings than a book—not much to look at.

But the contents, for someone like me (someone who wants to understand how the history of Soviet psychology was told by the Soviets in the mid 1960s), are a fascinating time capsule. The articles tend to be short, especially in Part I (a few pages each, nearly all written by Brozek, with a glossary by Bowden and Cole). Parts II and III have articles by Smirnov, Leontiev (here, Leont'yev), Bozhovich and Slavina, and Menchinskaya. Part IV is focused on Georgian psychology, which developed along a somewhat separate track.

In the Praface, the editors also recommend other issues of Soviet Psychology, including a 1967 Vygotsky memorial issue (vol.V, n.3) (p.vii). As the editors note, the current volume contains a "self-portrait" of the development of Soviet psychology, and a "selective" one (p.vii; underlining in the original). n.b., the editors thank Levy Rahmani for helping to select materials for this volume (p.viii); I'll be reviewing his own book soon on this blog.

As mentioned, Part I is mostly Brozek's work. Especially useful is a timeline of Soviet psychology, "Some significant historical events in the development of Soviet psychology" (pp.11-13) and an unattributed set of biographies ("Noted figures in the history of Soviet psychology: Pictures and brief biographies," pp.22-29) translated from the 1960 Pedagogical Dictionary and 1964-1965 Pedagogical Encyclopedia. The entry on Vygotsky is generally laudatory:

He formulated the theory of the socio-historical origin of higher mental functions in man, and developed new methods for investigating various mental processes. Vygotskiy's [sic] greatest contribution lies in the fact that he was the first to attempt to demonstrate the Marxist thesis of the socio-historical nature of human consciousness in concrete psychological investigations. According to Vygotskiy, all higher, specifically human mental processes (logical memory, voluntary attention, conceptual thought, etc.)—in like manner to labor processes—arise with the help of tools of "mental production"; these tools are symbols, and above all, the symbols of language. These symbols are of social origin, originally being formed in joint activity of people, later becoming individual psychological means as well, used by the individual for thinking, voluntary direction of his behavior, etc. This form of mediation, according to Vygotskiy, is gradually internalized. The role of words in mental life depends on their meanings, which are generalized images of reality; words represent concepts which develop in the course of the individual's life. (p.28)

In Vygotskiy's works one finds, along with the correct positions, several incorrect positions—particularly those making errors of a pedological nature. Taking as a whole, however, the psychological works of Vygotskiy played an important and positive role in the development of Soviet psychological science. (p.29)

Overall, this bio is economical and of high fidelity. I'm sure that someone can find out for sure, but it reads like Luria to me. But note a few things: (1) The bio emphasizes Vygotsky's instrumental period, with its focus on mediation and higher psychological functions, rather than Vygotsky's later holistic period. The instrumental period provided the basis for Leontiev's activity theory and was arguably easier to reconcile with the ideological demands of the mid-1930s. (2) The bio analogizes the development of higher mental functions to labor processes. Vygotsky drew this connection, but only as an analogy, and insisted that psychological tools were not the same as physical ones; Leontiev conflated the two when building his theory around labor activity. (3) The author of the bio is still cautiously distancing him/herself from Vygotsky in terms of pedology, 30 years after the Pedology Decree of 1936.

Moving to Part II. Smirnov's "On the fiftieth anniversary of Soviet psychology" (pp.51-71, originally from Voprosy psikhologii, 1967, 13(5), 13-37) overviews psychology's development in the USSR. I'll focus particularly on events related to the cultural-historical school, of course. Again, the assessment of Vygotsky is generally laudatory: "As we know, L.S. Vygotsky played an outstanding role in the establishment and development of Soviet psychology as one of the first successors to the pioneers in the struggle for Marxist psychology" (p.53). And he quotes Leontiev:

In adopting this viewpoint, Vygotsky actually made consciousness a central problem in his scientific investigations. "The problem of consciousness," writes A.N. Leont'yev on this account, "is the alpha and omega of the creative pathway of L.S. Vygotsky." (p.53)

And Smirnov continues to filter Vygotsky through Leontiev as he concludes this section:

Consciousness (if we make use of the distinction made by Leont'yev between "signification" [znacheniye] and "meaning" [smysl]) is not only a system of significations, but also a system of meanings. (p.53)

Smirnov does return to Vygotsky later when discussing Gestalt psychology, emphasizing Vygotsky's criticism of the school and of Koffka in particular (p.57).

Smirnov covers the Pedology Decree and its results, noting its effects, including rejection of mental testing and a broad acceptance of "the unity of consciousness and activity." He notes that "several papers published as pedological works actually contained valuable psychological material that contributed to the development of psychological science" (p.58).

He also discusses an incident about which I have seen hints, but no solid history: In 1950, at a joint scientific session of the USSR Academy of Sciences and USSR Academy of Medical Sciences, participants reevaluated and repropagated Pavlov's theories—specifically "the fundamental significance of the principle of determinism and the reflex concept of the mind" (p.59).

But mention should also be made of certain incorrect views presented at the Session by some physiologists in their attempts to reject psychology as an independent science and to reduce it entirely to the physiology of higher nervous activity. This false notion of the interrelationship between these two fields, so harmful to the development of psychology, was later surmounted, and a very important role in its liquidation was played in the USSR Academy of Sciences' Conference on Philosophical Problems of the Physiology of Higher Nervous Activity and Psychology of 1962. (p.59)

Smirnov goes on to criticize investigators who applied "a vulgarization of Pavlov's teachings" and displayed "dogmatism" about those teachings (p.59). It's said that history is written by the victors, but histories are written today by today's victors, retelling what had been told yesterday by yesterday's victors. At the time of writing, the victory of 1962 was fresh enough to be discussed by other authors in this collection. (Now I have to reread writings from 1950-1962 to see how they told the incident earlier.)

A bit later, Smirnov gets to Leontiev's work, in which he emphasizes that "the historical development of consciousness as a higher form of reflection of objective reality is an object for special study" (p.64). This discussion leads him back to the investigation of signs in the Vygotsky school, which he characterizes thus:

In the very first decade of the founding and development of Soviet psychology, Vygotsky, in creative collaboration with Luriya and Leont'yev, presented and elaborated the widely known sociohistorical theory of the development of mind, namely, that natural and social evolution fuse into one in ontogenesis. Social evolution involves the formation of higher mental functions mediated by special, auxiliary, artificial, man-made stimuli (signs) that facilitate the fulfillment of actions and have a social character. Whereas initially they are the means whereby one man influences another, they later become the means with which an individual influences himself and regulates his behavior and mental processes, and moreover the sources of the 'voluntariness' of those processes. Originally external, these media later are replaced by internal forms that have no external manifestations. (p.65)

Note the "troika" account and the focus on Vygotsky's instrumental period. Smirnov continues:

At the beginning of the 1930s the sociohistorical theory of Vygotsky underwent extensive criticism. The chief objections were directed against the separation of two lines of evolution and the recognition of signs (including, especially, nominal signs) by an instrument that transforms a natural function into a cultural function, which was considered a deviation from the theory of reflection. The reproach was made that the development of human mental life was not studied in the context of social evolution, as a function both of the nature of social relations and of the material and intellectual life of society at various stages in its historical development. (p.65)

In Ye. D. Khomsaya's "Neuropsychology: A new branch of psychological science (pp.114-122, originally in Voprosy psikhologii 1967, 13(5), 103-113), the author claims that "the first neuropsychological investigations in our country were carried out as far back as the twenties by L.S. Vygotsky"—citing some of Vygotsky's work on brain lesions and acknowledging that "Vygotsky left no completed works" on this question (p.114). Khomsaya notes that Vygotsky's work on functional localization laid the foundations for Leontiev's "functional organs" as well as Luria's discussion of how motor disorders are "compensated through a semantic system of supports" (p.115). Later in the chapter, the author discusses the work conducted during WW2 by Leontiev, Zaporozhets, and others focused on the restoration of functions disturbed by local brain lesions (p.120).

In G.S. Kostyuk's "The problem of child development in Soviet psychology" (pp.123-143, originally  in Voprosy psikhologii 1967, 13(6), 24-45), the author offers a chronological history starting in the 1920s. In Vygotsky's (1926) Pedagogical psychology, he "endorsed the unity of the biological and the social, and the decisive role of social conditions in the child's psychological development" (p.124). As in Smirnov's chapter, Kostyuk asserts that Vygotsky's cultural-historical theory was "worked out in close cooperation with A.N. Leont'yev and A.R. Luriya" (p.126). Later, in 1945, Leontiev argued that changes in the child's activity "proceed in two directions: from the primary changes in the sphere of the child's life relationships in the sphere of his activity toward his development of actions, operations, and functions; from the secondary transformation of functions and operations toward the development of a given sphere of activities in the child and the appearance of the leading activity, i.e., the start of a new stage of development" (p.130; unfortunately the author does not provide a citation). Kostyuk also notes, based on the work of Volokitina et al., that "the pupil is never prompted by any single motive, but rather by an integrated system of motives that are interrelated in a complex manner and are sometimes even contradictory" (p.133; cf. David R. Russell's 1997 "Rethinking genre in school and society" for a similar take).

A.N. Leontyev's "Some prospective problems of Soviet psychology" (pp.144-157, originally in Voprosy psikhologii 1967, 13(6), 7-22) is a bit of a letdown. It overviews the tasks that psychology as a field must take on, including "problems created by the technological revolution and the ensuing modifications in the functions of human labor" (p.144) and the corresponding shift to managerial, organizational, and design issues (p.145). These are exciting topics, foreshadowing the applications to which activity theory was put in the mid-1980s when it was taken up by Bodker, Engestrom, and others. But Leontiev is speaking of psychology in general, not activity theory in particular, and the applications remain vague.

Leontiev does reference the 1950 "Pavlovian Session" in which psychology was too directly influenced by physiology—an influence that could be repudiated at the time Leontiev wrote this piece in 1967 (p.151).

Leontiev concludes by urging a "'vertical synthesis,' as it were, of the different levels on which processes underlying human mental activity take place" (p.153, emphasis in the original). This argument leads him to recall Vygotsky's work "on the mediated nature of higher mental functions," which understood the transition from elementary to higher mental functions not "as the result of a superimposition of higher functions onto more elementary functions, but as a result of a structural transformation of activity, corresponding to some task, mnestic, intellectual, or motor" (p.153, his emphasis). And "thus, as a result of mediation of the connection between the subject and the objective world by a tool, the action of the subject acquires a new structure that reflects the new objective relations: the properties of the tool, the object of labor, and the purpose of labor—its product" (p.153). Note, again, that Leontiev locates Vygotsky's contribution in his instrumental period and portrays Vygotsky as sharing Leontiev's understanding of mediation related to the object of labor activity.

Let's move on to L.I. Bozhovich and L.S. Slavina's "Fifty years of Soviet psychology on upbringing (pp.161-180, originally in Voprosy psikhologii 1967, 13(5), 51-70). Notably, the authors rely heavily on Vygotsky's Pedagogical Psychology (1926), which had just been republished that year. They argue that "Vygotsky was never an advocate of either permissive education or of ideas leading to atrophy of the school" (p.166—both charges that were leveled in the 1930s by critics such as Rudneva). Rather, they say, Vygotsky argued that although the child adapts to the environment, the environment is not rigid and responds reciprocally to the child (p.166). They characterize Vygotsky's work on mediation: "The primary instinctive drives, directed toward an action goal, from his point of view, convert to a method by means of which this goal is reached, thereby changing their character"—and they argue that Leontiev and others have confirmed this claim (p.166).

From A.V. Barabanshchikov, K.K. Platinov, and N.F. Federenko's On the history of Soviet military psychology (pp.222-231; originally in Voprosy psikhologii 1967, 13(6), 76-84) I learned that El'konin and Leontiev worked in the department of military psychology at the Military Pedagogical Institute immediately after WW2. In 1947, through this institute, Leontiev published An Outline of Mental Development; material from this publication was later included in Problems of the Development of Mind (p.228). 

And that's it. Other chapters exist, and an entire section (on Georgian psychology), but this review has covered most of what interested me. I hope it's interested you as well. If it has, this book is worth picking up as a historically situated "self-portrait" of Soviet psychology.

Reading :: New Myth, New World

New Myth, New World: From Nietzsche to Stalinism
By Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal

Let's start with some background to understand why I picked up this book in the first place. It was a revelation when I finally read "The Socialist Alteration of Man" in 2015—it completely changed my view of Vygotsky's project and I've spent the last couple of years trying to process it.

I began studying CHAT approaches in graduate school in the mid-1990s, when it was first being picked up in my field. In addition to Engestrom, Cole, Wertsch, etc. I read Vygotsky's Thought and Language and sorta-Vygotsky's Mind in Society, but both were of course framed by the Western readings I had been doing. In later years, I read a bit more of Vygotsky and became aware that there was a split between the cultural-historical and AT schools, but this split was usually portrayed as a "generational" difference in the literature I was reading. Reading Kozulin's introduction to Thought and Language 2ed suggested that this split was much deeper, so I began reading more of Vygotsky's works as well as bios and histories.

But it was "The Socialist Alteration of Man" that drew a line under the differences. Even allowing for the fact that the piece was a bit exaggerated, it became clear to me that Vygotsky was really focused on fundamentally transforming Man, in accordance with the ideas of the Revolution, and his focus on "psychological tools" really was a means to that end. We can see hints of that agenda in Luria's Uzbek expedition and his Mind of a Mnemonist, but also in Luria's defectological work such as his twin study Speech and the Development of Mental Processes in the Child and his account in The Man with a Shattered World, in which the "stack" (my term) of internalized psychological tools is reconstructed or alternately constructed for individuals. As Miller says, the focus is on the individual, albeit usually in a dyadic relationship, building new capabilities. And if one believes that individuals had been limited by obsolete structures that were in the process of withering away, as Vygotsky apparently did, it would be easy to see the individual's development as potentially limitless.

That's a sharp contrast with Western CHAT, which—as in so many other ways—is a funhouse-mirror reflection of Vygotsky's theory. Here, although the individual develops, s/he does not develop dramatically. Instead, what develops dramatically are the mediators (tools, rules, division of labor). The best example isn't in the CHAT tradition per se, but is often cited in CHAT literature: Hutchins' Cognition in the Wild. Studying a Navy ship, Hutchins explicitly argues that there is no way we can attribute the ship's success to the individuals, who are largely inexperienced and who cycle out after two years. Instead, he positions the individuals as part of a larger cognitive system that includes artifacts. We can see similar examples in Wertsch (who argues that pole vaulters don't improve dramatically, but they break records because the pole itself has changed) and Bodker (who applies Leontiev's AT to interface design). My own empirical research has followed this path, examining how people pick up, import, and innovate texts to collectively mediate their own organizational work. In this tradition, the individual is as limited as always, but her mediators can be redesigned and redeveloped limitlessly, and the resulting mediated activity takes the center stage in development. (Some researchers are even applying the notion of the zone of proximal development to organizations, which is a telling application of the concept.)

How did we get from superman to super-mediators?

Let's ask a smaller question. Where did Vygotsky's 1930 faith in the unlimited development potential of Man come from? I've already reviewed one strong influence, Trotsky's Literature and Revolution. But as Yasnitsky argues, Vygotsky didn't just draw from Trotsky, he drew from Trotsky's own source, Nietzsche. Yasnitsky heavily cites Rosenthal's New Myth, New World, so I picked it up as well. It's a good book, and unfortuately I won't do its details justice in this review, since I'm most interested in the Nietzsche-Vygotsky connection.

Rosenthal argues that Nietzsche was widely read in pre-Revolutionary Russia, and his ideas resonated with indigenous Russian ideas, enough so that they became part of the zeitgeist even without attribution (p.2). Specifically, "one idea remained constant: art can create a new consciousness, a new human being, a new culture, and a new world" (p.2). In fact, "Aspects of Nietzsche's thought were either surprisingly compatible with Marxism or treated issues that Marx and Engels had neglected" (pp.2-3). Indeed, Nietzschean Marxists emphasized issues that Marx had neglected: "ethics, epistemology, aesthetics, psychology, culture, and values" (p.68).

Yet, since Nietzsche was not in good odor during much of the Soviet period, his influence was rarely explicit—it was "buried"—so Rosenthal must be cautious about claiming Nietzsche's influence in many instances (p.3). (And sometimes, frankly, these arguments are rather tenuous.)

Nevertheless, Rosenthal traces the Soviet idea of the New Man—"a goal of Russian radicals since the 1860s"—to Nietzsche's "Superman, a being that would regard man as man now regards the ape" (p.9—explicitly referenced in Vygotsky). Over time, the Lenin cult appropriated the idea of the Nietszchean Superman and applied it to Lenin as an Apollonian image/icon (p.184). The New Man (cf. Bauer) was also developed in the USSR in two ways:

The idea that man can be remade, that human perfectionism is possible, has inspired generations of radicals, not only in Russia, but certain features of the new Soviet man—boundless energy, daring, hardness, physical vitality—derived from Nietzsche. (p.189)

And

Artists and writers offered two basic models of the new man—the super-functional machine-model of the avant-garde and the human or superhuman model of the realists—and some hybrid versions. (pp.189-190)

Rosenthal gives a number of examples. The super-functional man is a machine, with its body made for work (p.190). Indeed, "Some Bolsheviks wanted to breed the new man by means of eugenics" (including Trotsky; p.195), and neo-Lamarckians, like Nietzsche, wanted evolution to be in man's control (p.196). Unsurprisingly, Lysenko's campaign had such undertones of the conquest of nature (p.284). Other branches of science also did—for instance, the linguist Nikolai Marr (who died in 1934, the same year as Vygotsky) developed the Japhetic theory of linguistics, which was originally based on "Nietzsche's archaeological approach to language" before being reformulated in accordance with Marxism (p.286). Marr's myth-saturated theory appealed to Soviets in the 1930s, when the USSR struggled to assimilate non-Russian nationalities (p.287). (Recall that Rudneva upbraids Vygotsky for not following Japhetic linguistics.) Interestingly, Marr was in a study group with Eisenstein in the 1920s (p.287), so he was running in the same circles that Vygotsky and Luria were. Marr argued that the chief organ of speech was the hand, the agent of production, and all culture is based on material artifacts (p.288)—both assertions that resonate well with Engels and to some degree with Leontiev. (But, in June 1950, during resurgent chauvinism, Stalin himself wrote a series about linguistics whose effect was to dethrone Marr.)

The idea of the Superman became more generalized and harder to track at about this point. For instance, Rosenthal says that by 1936, the Stalin cult makes Stalin the superman (p.381). But also around this time, as fascists arose in Germany and Italy, the dictators kept an eye on each other and learned from each others' propaganda. Specifically, Soviet propagandists "constructed a Soviet Superman to counter the Nazi model" (p.235). Lysenko's biology "held out the promise of conquering nature and breeding the 'new man'" (p.395; cf. p.414). Makarenko, who directed "colonies for orphans and homeless children" from 1917-1936, believed in the unlimited power of education and aimed to turn his charges into New Men by molding their personalities (pp.396-397).

Eventually, of course, after Stalin's death, the new Soviet man became a joke (p.436).

Overall, this book was enlightening. I am also relieved that, based on it, I don't think I'll need to read Nietzsche directly—since most Soviets never did! If you're interested in the new Soviet man, or in Soviet culture more generally, consider picking it up.