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Vygotsky, Lev Semenovich (1896-1934)
Soviet psychologist who developed Genetic approach to the development of concepts in early childhood and youth, tracing the transition through a series of stages of human development, based on the development of the child's social practice. His works were published after his death in 1934 and suppressed in 1936 and were not known in the West until 1958.
In his student days at the University of Moscow, he read widely in linguistics, sociology, psychology, philosophy and the arts. His systematic work in psychology did not begin until 1924. Ten years later he died of tuberculosis at the age of only 38. In that period, with the collaboration of Aleksandre Luria and A N Leontiev, he launched a series of investigations in developmental psychology, pedagogy and psychopathology. Vygotsky ran a medical practice in his native Byelorussia, actively participating in the development of the Revolution under atrocious conditions and almost total isolation from the West.
His most famous work is Thought and Language, published shortly after his death, developed for the first time a theory of language development which both anticipated Piaget's genetic psychology - describing the development of language and logical thinking in young children in the course of their interactions with adults and the world around them, interiorising the practical activity expressed in semsori-motor activity, via vocialisations, inner-speech and finally thought - and the development of theoretical, or conceptual knowledge in school-age children as their intuitive knowledge, acquired in their immediate life experiences, comes into active contact with socially transmitted knowledge of the teacher.
Equally renowned is The Crisis in Psychology, in which Vygotsky makes a systematic critique of all the currents and trends in European psychology of the day, including the dominant so-called Marxist psychology. In the Soviet Union of his times, Stalin fostered pseudo-scientific trends, such as Lysenko's theory of Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics, which used quotations from Marx and Engels or Lenin to support theoretical lines in science as if these were party-political questions which can resolved by reference to political doctrine.
Vygotsky was strongly influenced by Pavlov, the discoverer of the conditional reflex and leaned towards behaviourism, emphasising the requirement for science to adopt objective methods of investigation, in opposition to the introspective methods of Husserl, for example. Vygotsky did not live long enough to resolve the contradictions into which behaviourism is lead in coming to grips with the manifest reality of subjective consciousness.
His works were published after his death in 1934 and suppressed in 1936 and were not known in the West until 1958. More recently, linguists and educationalists influenced by Piaget's Genetic Psychology have been drawn towards Vygotsky's work, seeing in it a superior understanding of the relationship between the educator and the educated, in which the educator must "negotiate" with the child or student who is credited with an active role in the learning process. Especially in the United States, Vygotsky has found a following among Community Development workers who value his concept of a "Zone of Proximal Development", in which leadership is able to facilitate intellectual and social development in struggles by communities to change their circumstances, leading to a subsequent benefit in an all-round development of conceptual ability.
See Lev Vygotsky Archive and Marxism and Psychology Archive.