Lev Vygotsky

Despite his claim for a "new psychology" that he foresaw as a "science of the Superman" of the Communist future,[1][2][3][4] Vygotsky's main work was in developmental psychology. In order to fully understand the human mind, he believed one must understand its genesis. Consequently, the majority of his work involved the study of infant and child behavior, as well as the development of language acquisition (such as the importance of pointing and inner speech[5]) and the development of concepts; now often referred to as schemas or schemata.[6][7][8]

Early in the psychological research period of his career (1920s), which focused upon mechanistic and reductionist "instrumental psychology" in many ways inspired by the work of Ivan Pavlov (his theory of "higher nervous activity") and Vladimir Bekhterev (and his "reflexologist" followers), Vygotsky argued that human psychological development could be formed through the use of meaningless (i.e., virtually random) signs that he viewed as the psychological equivalent of instrument use in human labor and industry.[9] It was later during the "holistic" period of his career (the first half of the 1930s) that Vygotsky rejected this earlier reductionist views on signs.

While Vygotsky never met Jean Piaget, he had read a number of his works and agreed on some of his perspectives on learning.[10] At some point (around 1929-30), Vygotsky came to disagree with Piaget's understanding of learning and development, and held a different theoretical position from Piaget on the topic of inner speech; Piaget asserted that egocentric speech in children "dissolved away" as they matured, while Vygotsky maintained that egocentric speech became internalized, what we now call "inner speech".[11] However, in the early 1930s he radically changed his mind on Piaget's theory and openly praised him for his discovery of the social origin of children's speech, reasoning, and moral judgements. Piaget only read Vygotsky's work after his death.[10]

Nearing the end of his life, Vygotsky's later work involved adolescent development.[12] However, his most important and widely known contribution is his theory for the development of "higher psychological functions," which considers human psychological development as emerging through unification of interpersonal connections and actions taken within a given socio-cultural environment (i.e., language, culture, society, and tool-use). Vygotsky eventually came to dialogue with the mainstream Gestalt line of thought and adopted a more holistic approach to understanding development. Under the increasing influence of the holistic thinking of the scholars primarily associated with the German-American Gestalt psychology movement, Vygotsky adopted their views on "psychological systems" and—inspired by Kurt Lewin's "Topological (and vector) psychology"—introduced the enigmatic construct of the "zone of proximal development". It was during this period that he identified the play of young children as their "leading activity", which he understood to be the main source of preschoolers' psychological development, and which he viewed as an expression of an inseparable unity of emotional, volitional, and cognitive development. At this time, Vygotsky fully revealed his long-time interest in the philosophy of Spinoza, who would remain one of his favorite thinkers throughout his life. A fervent Spinozist in many respects, Vygotsky was profoundly influenced by Spinoza's thought, largely in response to Spinoza's examinations concerning human emotion.[13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] As his work matured, Spinoza's thought became a more central visitation in Vygotsky's later work, increasingly focused on the issue of human emotion and its role in higher psychological functions and development that he largely omitted in his earlier work and utterly needed for creating a holistic psychological theory.

As early as the mid-1920s, Vygotsky's ideas were introduced in the West, but he remained virtually unknown until the early 1980s when the popularity among educators of the constructivist developmental psychology and educational theory of Jean Piaget (1896-1980) started to decline and, in contrast, Vygotsky's notion of the "zone of proximal development" became a central component of the development of the so-called "social constructivist" turn in developmental and, primarily, educational psychology and practice. A Review of General Psychology study, published in 2002, ranked Vygotsky as the 83rd top psychologist of the twentieth century and the third (and the last) Russian on the top-100 list after Ivan Pavlov and Vygotsky's longtime collaborator Alexander Luria.[21]

Lev Semionovich Vygotsky (Russian: Лев Семёнович Выго́тский, IPA: [vɨˈɡotskʲɪj]; November 17 [O.S. November 5] 1896 – June 11, 1934) was born to the Vygodskii family in the town of Orsha, Belarus (then belonging to Russian Empire) into a non-religious middle-class family of Russian Jewish extraction.[22] His father Simkha Vygodskii was a banker.

Lev Vygodskii was raised in the city of Gomel, where he was homeschooled until 1911 and then obtained formal degree (with distinction) in a private Jewish Gimnasium, which allowed him entrance to a university. In 1913 Lev Vygodskii was admitted to the Moscow University by mere ballot through a "Jewish Lottery": at the time a three percent Jewish student quota was administered for entry in Moscow and Saint Petersburg universities. He had interest in humanities and social sciences, but at the insistence of his parents he applied to the medical school in Moscow University. During the first semester of study he transferred to the law school. There he studied law and, in parallel, he attended lectures at Shaniavskii University.

Vygodskii's early interests were in the arts and, primarily, in the topics of the history of the Jewish people, the tradition, culture and Jewish identity. In contrast, during this period he was highly critical of the ideas of both socialism and Zionism, and proposed the solution of the "Jewish question" by return to the traditional Jewish Orthodoxy. His own academics, however, included a wide field of studies including linguistics, psychology, and philosophy.

Lev Vygotsky never completed his formal studies at the Imperial Moscow University and, thus, he never obtained a university degree: his studies were interrupted by the October Bolshevik uprising in 1917 in the country's capital Petrograd and the second largest city Moscow. Following these events, he left Moscow and eventually returned to Gomel, where he lived after the October Socialist Revolution of 1917 occurred. There is virtually no information about his life during the years in Gomel (that administratively belonged to the Ukrainian State at the time) after the German occupation during the WWI, until the Bolsheviks captured the town in 1919. After that, he was an active participant of major social transformation under the Bolshevik (Communist) rule and a fairly prominent representative of the Bolshevik government in Gomel from 1919 to 1923. By the early 1920s, as reflected in his journalistic publications of the time, he informally changed his Jewish-sounding birth name, 'Lev Símkhovich Výgodskii' (Russian: Лев Си́мхович Вы́годский), with the surname becoming Vygótskii and the patronymic 'Símkhovich' becoming the Slavic 'Semiónovich'. It was under this pen-name that the fame subsequently came to him. His daughters (subsequently born in 1925 and 1930) and other relatives, though, preserved their original family name 'Vygodskii'. The traditional English spelling of his last name nowadays is 'Vygotsky'.[23]

In January 1924, Vygotsky took part in the Second All-Russian Psychoneurological Congress in Petrograd (soon thereafter renamed Leningrad). After the Congress, Vygotsky received an invitation to become a research fellow at the Psychological Institute in Moscow. Vygotsky moved to Moscow with his new wife, Roza Smekhova. He began his career at the Psychological Institute as a "staff scientist, second class".[24] He also became a secondary teacher, covering a period marked by his interest in the processes of learning and the role of language in learning.[25]

By the end of 1925, Vygotsky completed his dissertation in 1925 entitled, "The Psychology of Art", that was not published until the 1960s and a book entitled, "Pedagogical Psychology", that apparently was created on the basis of lecture notes that he prepared in Gomel while he was a psychology instructor at local educational establishments. In the summer of 1925 he made his first and only trip abroad to a London congress on the education of the deaf.[26] Upon return to the Soviet Union, he was hospitalized due to relapse of tuberculosis and, having miraculously survived, would remain an invalid and out of work until the end of 1926.[27][28] His dissertation was accepted as the prerequisite of scholarly degree, which was awarded to Vygotsky in fall 1925 in absentia.

After his release from the hospital, Vygotsky did theoretical and methodological work on the crisis in psychology, but never finished the draft of the manuscript and interrupted his work on it around mid-1927. The manuscript was published later with notable editorial interventions and distortions in 1982 and was presented by the editors as one of the most important of Vygotsky's works.[29][30][31][32][33] In this early manuscript, Vygotsky argued for the formation of a general psychology that could unite the naturalist objectivist strands of psychological science with the more philosophical approaches of Marxist orientation. However, he also harshly criticized those of his colleagues who attempted to build a "Marxist Psychology" as an alternative to the naturalist and philosophical schools. He argued that if one wanted to build a truly Marxist Psychology, there were no shortcuts to be found by merely looking for applicable quotes in the writings of Marx. Rather one should look for a methodology that was in accordance with the Marxian spirit.[34]

From 1926–30, Vygotsky worked on a research program investigating the development of higher cognitive functions of logical memory, selective attention, decision making, and language comprehension, from early forms of primal psychological functions. During this period he gathered a group of collaborators including Alexander Luria, Boris Varshava, Alexei Leontiev, Leonid Zankov, and several others. Vygotsky guided his students in researching this phenomenon from three different perspectives:

• The instrumental approach, which aimed to understand the ways humans use objects as mediation aids in memory and reasoning.
• A developmental approach, focused on how children acquire higher cognitive functions during development
• A culture-historical approach, studying how social and cultural patterns of interaction shape forms of mediation and developmental trajectories [34]

In the early 1930s, Vygotsky experienced deep crises, both personal and theoretical, and after a period of massive self-criticism he made an attempt at a radical revision of his theory. The work of the representatives of the Gestalt psychology and other holistic scholars was instrumental in this theoretical shift. In 1932–1934, Vygotsky aimed to establish a psychological theory of consciousness, but because of his death, this theory remained only unconfirmed and unfinished.

Vygotsky was a pioneering psychologist and his major works span six separate volumes, written over roughly ten years, from Psychology of Art (1925) to Thought and Language [or Thinking and Speech] (1934). Vygotsky's interests in the fields of developmental psychology, child development, and education were extremely diverse. His philosophical framework includes interpretations of the cognitive role of mediation tools, as well as the re-interpretation of well-known concepts in psychology such as internalization of knowledge. Vygotsky introduced the notion of zone of proximal development, a metaphor capable of describing the potential of human cognitive development. His work covered topics such as the origin and the psychology of art, development of higher mental functions, philosophy of science and the methodology of psychological research, the relation between learning and human development, concept formation, interrelation between language and thought development, play as a psychological phenomenon, learning disabilities, and abnormal human development (aka defectology). His scientific thinking underwent several major transformations throughout his career, but generally Vygotsky's legacy may be divided into two fairly distinct periods, and the transitional phase between the two during which Vygotsky experienced the crisis in his theory and personal life. These are the mechanistic "instrumental" period of the 1920s, integrative "holistic" period of the 1930s, and the transitional years of, roughly, 1929–1931. Each of these periods is characterized by its distinct themes and theoretical innovations.

A critique of the North American interpretation of Vygotsky's ideas and, somewhat later, its global spread and dissemination appeared in the 1980s.[49] The early 1980s criticism of Russian and Western "Vygotskian" scholars [50] continued throughout the 1990s. Van der Veer & Valsiner (1991) called these strands of Vygotskian thought "neo-Vygotskian fashions in contemporary psychology"[51] and Cazden (1996) called them "selective traditions" in Vygotskian scholarship.[52] Palincsar (1998) said that the zone of proximal development was "one of the most used and least understood constructs to appear in contemporary educational literature",[53] and Fischer & Mercer (1992) said that the construct was "used as little more than a fashionable alternative to Piagetian terminology or the concept of IQ for describing individual differences in attainment or potential".[54]

Van der Veer and Valsiner also suggest clearly distinguishing between Vygotsky's original notion of "zona blizhaishego razvitiia" (ZBR) and what they think of as its "superficial interpretations" collectively known as "zone of proximal development" (ZPD).[55][56] Valsiner and Van der Veer also identify certain statements in Vygotskian literature as mere "declarations of faith", i.e. hollow statements often repeated.[57] Whereas Gillen (2000) talks of different "versions of Vygotsky"[58] and Van der Veer (2008) speaks of "multiple readings of Vygotsky",[59] Gradler (2007) simply speaks of "concepts and inferences curiously attributed to Lev Vygotsky".[60] Toomela (2000) calls the strand known as "activity theory" a "dead end” for cultural-historical psychology [46] and, moreover, for methodological thinking in cultural psychology.[47]

Gredler & Schields (2004) question "if anyone actually reads Vygotsky’s words"[61] and Gredler (2012) asks whether it is "too late to understand Vygotsky for the classroom",[62] while Rowlands (2000) suggests "turning Vygotsky on his head".[63] According to Miller (2011), inconsistencies, contradictions, and at times fundamental flaws in "Vygotskian" literature were revealed in critical publications on this subject and are typically associated with - but certainly not limited to - the North American legacy of Michael Cole and James Wertsch and their associates.[64] Smagorinsky (2011) speaks of "challenges of claiming a Vygotskian perspective".[65]

Lambert (2000) claims that Vygotsky's writings on play were too brief to be called a theory and furthermore were hardly relevant anymore.[66] According to Zhang (2013), Vygotsky's theories are fundamentally flawed from a contemporary linguistic standpoint[67][68] and Newman (2018) claims that "the support claimed from Vygotsky in accounts of second language acquisition is misplaced, first because of those difficulties and, second, because many who claim support from Vygotsky, do not need or even use his theory but instead focus their attention on his empirical observations and assume incorrectly that if their own empirical observations match Vygotsky's, then Vygotsky's theory can be accepted".[69]

During the early twenty-first century, several scholarly reevaluations of the popular version (sometimes disparagingly termed "Vygotsky cult", "the cult of Vygotsky", or even "the cult of personality around Vygotsky") of Vygotsky's legacy have been undertaken and are referred to as the "revisionist revolution in Vygotsky Studies".[9][70][71] Vygotsky studies conducted within the framework of the "revisionist turn" during the 2010s revealed systematic and massive falsifications and distortions of Vygotsky's legacy., but also demonstrated a rapid and dramatic decrease of this author's popularity in international scholarship that began in 2017. The reasons of this crisis are not entirely clear yet and are being discussed in scholarly circles.[1][72]

The revisionist movement in Vygotsky Studies was termed a "revisionist revolution"[9] to describe a relatively recent trend that emerged in the 1990s. This trend is typically associated with growing dissatisfaction with the quality and scholarly integrity of available texts of Vygotsky and members of Vygotsky Circle, including their English translations made from largely mistaken, distorted, and even in a few instances falsified Soviet editions,[73][74] which raises serious concerns about the reliability of Vygotsky's texts available in English.[75] However, unlike critical literature that discusses Western interpretations of Vygotsky's legacy, the target of criticism and the primary object of research in the studies of the revisionist strand are Vygotsky's texts proper: the manuscripts, original lifetime publications, and Vygotsky's posthumous Soviet editions that most often were subsequently uncritically translated into other languages. The revisionist strand is solidly grounded in a series of studies in Vygotsky's archives that uncovered previously unknown and unpublished Vygotsky materials.[29][76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83]

Thus, some studies of the revisionist strand show that certain phrases, terms, and expressions typically associated with Vygotskian legacy as its core notions and concepts—such as "cultural-historical psychology",[84][85][86][87] "cultural-historical theory", "cultural-historical school", "higher psychical/mental functions", "internalization", "zone of proximal development", etc. in fact, either occupy not more than just a few dozen pages within the six-volume collection of Vygotsky's works,[88][89] or never even occur in Vygotsky's own writings.[90] Another series of studies revealed the questionable quality of Vygotsky's published texts that, in fact, were never finished and intended for publication by their author,[30][31][91] but were nevertheless posthumously published without giving proper editorial acknowledgement of their unfinished, transitory nature,[32][92] and with numerous editorial interventions and distortions of Vygotsky's text.[93][94][95][96][97][98][99] Another series of publications reveals that another well-known Vygotsky's text that is often presented as the foundational work was back-translated into Russian from an English translation of a lost original and passed for the original Vygotsky's writing. This episode was referred to as "benign forgery".[100][101][102][103][104]

Scholars associated with the revisionist movement in Vygotsky Studies propose returning to Vygotsky's original uncensored works, critically revising the available discourse, and republishing them in both Russian and translation with a rigorous scholarly commentary.[75][105] Therefore, an essential part of this revisionist strand is the ongoing work on "PsyAnima Complete Vygotsky" project that for the first time ever exposes full collections of Vygotsky's texts, uncensored and cleared from numerous mistakes, omissions, insertions, and blatant distortions and falsifications of the author's text made in Soviet editions and uncritically transferred in virtually all foreign translated editions of Vygotsky's works. This project is carried out by an international team of volunteers—researchers, archival workers, and library staff—from Belarus, Brazil, Canada, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, and Switzerland, who joined their efforts and put together a collection of L. S. Vygotsky's texts. This publication work is supported by a stream of critical scholarly studies and publications on textology, history, theory and methodology of Vygotskian research that cumulatively contributes to the first ever edition of The Complete Works of L.S. Vygotsky.[106] Currently, this collection of Vygotsky's research is available and still in print in a series consisting of six total volumes of his work with added commentary/foreword.

• Van der Veer & Yasnitsky (2016). Vygotsky's published works: a(n almost) definitive bibliography. In: Yasnitsky, A. & van der Veer, R. (Eds.) (2016). Revisionist Revolution in Vygotsky Studies (pp. 243–260). London and New York: Routledge

• Consciousness as a problem in the Psychology of Behavior, 1925
• Educational Psychology, 1926
• Historical meaning of the crisis in Psychology, unfinished and aborted in 1927
• The Problem of the Cultural Development of the Child, 1929
• The Fundamental Problems of Defectology, 1929
• The Socialist alteration of Man, 1930
• Ape, Primitive Man, and Child: Essays in the History of Behaviour, A. R. Luria and L. S. Vygotsky, 1930
• Tool and symbol in child development, ~1930
• Paedology of the Adolescent, 1929-1931
• Play and its role in the Mental development of the Child, oral presentation 1933
• Thinking and Speech, 1934
• The Collected Works of L. S. Vygotsky, 1987

• Cognitivism (learning theory)
• Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT)
• Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition (LCHC)
• Leading Activity
• Organization Workshop
• PsyAnima, Dubna Psychological Journal
• Social constructivism
• Vygotsky Circle

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• Lev Vygotsky archive, marxists.org: all major works
• Garai, L. Another crisis in the psychology: A possible motive for the Vygotsky-boom
• Annotated bibliography of scholarly histories on Vygotsky, Advances in the History of Psychology, York University