Lev Semenovich Vygotsky biography. Works by L.S.

Biography

Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky (in 1917 and 1924 he changed his patronymic and surname) was born on November 5 (17), 1896 in the city of Orsha, the second of eight children in the family of a bank employee, a graduate of the Kharkov Commercial Institute Semyon Yakovlevich Vygotsky and his wife Tsili (Cecilia) Moiseevna Vygotskaya . His education was carried out by a private teacher, Solomon Ashpitz, known for using the so-called method of Socratic dialogue. His cousin, later the famous literary critic David Isaakovich Vygotsky, also had a significant influence on the future psychologist in his childhood.

The daughter of L. S. Vygotsky, Gita Lvovna Vygodskaya, is a Soviet psychologist and defectologist, candidate of psychological sciences, co-author of the biography “L. S. Vygotsky. Touches to the portrait" (1996).

Chronology of the most important life events

• 1924 - report at a psychoneurological congress, moving from Gomel to Moscow
• 1925 - dissertation defense Psychology of art(On November 5, 1925, due to illness and without protection, Vygotsky was awarded the title of senior researcher, equivalent to the modern degree of Candidate of Sciences, publication agreement Psychology of art was signed on November 9, 1925, but the book was never published during Vygotsky’s lifetime)
• 1925 - first and only trip abroad: sent to London for a defectology conference; On the way to England, I passed through Germany and France, where I met with local psychologists
• 1925 - 1930 - member of the Russian Psychoanalytic Society (RPSAO)
• November 21, 1925 to May 22, 1926 - tuberculosis, hospitalization in the sanatorium-type hospital "Zakharyino", in the hospital writes notes, later published under the title Historical meaning of the psychological crisis
• 1927 - employee of the Institute of Psychology in Moscow, works with such prominent scientists as Luria, Bernstein, Artemov, Dobrynin, Leontyev
• 1929 - International Psychological Congress at Yale University; Luria presented two reports, one of which was co-authored with Vygotsky; Vygotsky himself did not go to the congress
• 1929, spring - Vygotsky lectures in Tashkent
• 1930 - At the VI International Conference on Psychotechnics in Barcelona (April 23-27, 1930), a report by L. S. Vygotsky was read on the study of higher psychological functions in psychotechnical research
• 1930, October - report on psychological systems: the beginning of a new research program
• 1931 - entered the Faculty of Medicine at the Ukrainian Psychoneurological Academy in Kharkov, where he studied in absentia together with Luria
• 1932, December - report on consciousness, formal divergence from Leontiev’s group in Kharkov
• 1933, February-May - Kurt Lewin stops in Moscow while passing from the USA (via Japan), meeting with Vygotsky
• 1934, May 9 - Vygotsky was placed on bed rest
• 1934, June 11 - death

Scientific contribution

Vygotsky's emergence as a scientist coincided with the period of restructuring of Soviet psychology based on the methodology of Marxism, in which he took an active part. In search of methods for objectively studying complex forms of mental activity and personal behavior, Vygotsky subjected to critical analysis a number of philosophical and most of his contemporary psychological concepts (“The Meaning of a Psychological Crisis,” manuscript), showing the futility of attempts to explain human behavior by reducing higher forms of behavior to lower elements.

Exploring verbal thinking, Vygotsky solves in a new way the problem of localizing higher mental functions as structural units of brain activity. Studying the development and decay of higher mental functions using the material of child psychology, defectology and psychiatry, Vygotsky comes to the conclusion that the structure of consciousness is a dynamic semantic system of affective, volitional and intellectual processes that are in unity.

Cultural-historical theory

The book “History of the Development of Higher Mental Functions” (, publ.) provides a detailed presentation of the cultural-historical theory of mental development: according to Vygotsky, it is necessary to distinguish between lower and higher mental functions, and, accordingly, two plans of behavior - natural, natural (the result of the biological evolution of the animal world ) and cultural, socio-historical (the result of the historical development of society), merged in the development of the psyche.

The hypothesis put forward by Vygotsky offered a new solution to the problem of the relationship between lower (elementary) and higher mental functions. The main difference between them is the level of voluntariness, that is, natural mental processes cannot be regulated by humans, but people can consciously control higher mental functions. Vygotsky came to the conclusion that conscious regulation is associated with the indirect nature of higher mental functions. An additional connection arises between the influencing stimulus and a person’s reaction (both behavioral and mental) through a mediating link - a stimulus-means, or sign.

The most convincing model of indirect activity, characterizing the manifestation and implementation of higher mental functions, is the “Buridan's donkey situation”. This classic situation of uncertainty, or problematic situation (a choice between two equal opportunities), interests Vygotsky primarily from the point of view of the means that make it possible to transform (solve) the situation that has arisen. By casting lots, a person “artificially introduces into the situation, changing it, new auxiliary stimuli that are not connected with it in any way.” Thus, the cast of lots becomes, according to Vygotsky, a means of transforming and resolving the situation.

Thinking and speech

In the last years of his life, Vygotsky devoted his main attention to studying the relationship between thought and words in the structure of consciousness. His work “Thinking and Speech” (1934), devoted to the study of this problem, is fundamental for Russian psycholinguistics.

Genetic roots of thinking and speech

According to Vygotsky, the genetic roots of thinking and speech are different.

For example, Köhler's experiments, which revealed the ability of chimpanzees to solve complex problems, showed that human-like intelligence and expressive speech (absent in monkeys) function independently.

The relationship between thinking and speech, both in phylo- and ontogenesis, is a variable value. There is a pre-speech stage in the development of intelligence and a pre-intellectual stage in the development of speech. Only then do thinking and speech intersect and merge.

Speech thinking that arises as a result of such a merger is not a natural, but a socio-historical form of behavior. It has specific (compared to natural forms of thinking and speech) properties. With the emergence of verbal thinking, the biological type of development is replaced by a socio-historical one.

Research method

An adequate method for studying the relationship between thought and word, says Vygotsky, should be an analysis that divides the object under study - verbal thinking - not into elements, but into units. A unit is a minimal part of a whole that has all its basic properties. Such a unit of speech thinking is the meaning of a word.

Levels of formation of thought in a word

The relation of thought to word is not constant; This process, movement from thought to word and back, formation of thought in the word:

1. Motivation of thought.
2. Thought.
3. Inner speech.
4. External speech.

Egocentric speech: against Piaget

Vygotsky came to the conclusion that egocentric speech is not an expression of intellectual egocentrism, as Piaget argued, but a transitional stage from external to internal speech. Egocentric speech initially accompanies practical activity.

Vygotsky-Sakharov Study

In a classic experimental study, Vygotsky and his collaborator L. S. Sakharov, using their own methodology, which is a modification of N. Ach’s methodology, established types (they are also age stages of development) of concepts.

Everyday and scientific concepts

Exploring the development of concepts in childhood, L. S. Vygotsky wrote about everyday (spontaneous) And scientific concepts (“Thinking and Speech”, Chapter 6).

Everyday concepts are words acquired and used in everyday life, in everyday communication, such as “table”, “cat”, “house”. Scientific concepts are words that a child learns at school, terms built into a system of knowledge, associated with other terms.

When using spontaneous concepts, a child for a long time (up to 11-12 years) is aware only of the object to which they point, but not the concepts themselves, not their meaning. This is expressed in the absence of the ability “to verbally define a concept, to be able to give its verbal formulation in other words, to arbitrarily use this concept in establishing complex logical relationships between concepts.”

Vygotsky suggested that the development of spontaneous and scientific concepts goes in opposite directions: spontaneous - towards a gradual awareness of their meaning, scientific - in the opposite direction, because “precisely in the sphere where the concept of “brother” turns out to be a strong concept, that is, in the sphere of spontaneous use, its application to countless specific situations, the richness of its empirical content and connection with personal experience, the student’s scientific concept reveals its weakness. Analysis of the child’s spontaneous concept convinces us that the child has become much more aware of the object than the concept itself. Analysis of a scientific concept convinces us that the child at the very beginning is much better aware of the concept itself than the object represented in it.”

The awareness of meanings that comes with age is deeply connected with the emerging systematicity of concepts, that is, with the emergence, with the emergence of logical relationships between them. A spontaneous concept is associated only with the object to which it points. On the contrary, a mature concept is immersed in a hierarchical system, where logical relations connect it (already as a carrier of meaning) with many other concepts of different levels of generality in relation to the given one. This completely changes the possibilities of the word as a cognitive tool. Outside the system, Vygotsky writes, only empirical connections, that is, relationships between objects, can be expressed in concepts (in sentences). “Together with the system, relations of concepts to concepts arise, an indirect relation of concepts to objects through their relation to other concepts, a generally different relation of concepts to an object arises: supra-empirical connections become possible in concepts.” This is expressed, in particular, in the fact that the concept is defined not through the connections of the defined object with other objects (“the dog guards the house”), but through the relationship of the defined concept to other concepts (“a dog is an animal”).

Well, since the scientific concepts that a child acquires during the learning process are fundamentally different from everyday concepts precisely in that by their very nature they must be organized into a system, then, Vygotsky believes, their meanings are realized first. Awareness of the meanings of scientific concepts gradually extends to everyday ones.

Developmental and educational psychology

Vygotsky’s works examined in detail the problem of the relationship between the roles of maturation and learning in the development of a child’s higher mental functions. Thus, he formulated the most important principle, according to which the preservation and timely maturation of brain structures is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for the development of higher mental functions. The main source for this development is the changing social environment, to describe which Vygotsky introduced the term social development situation, defined as “a peculiar, age-specific, exclusive, unique and inimitable relationship between a child and the reality around him, primarily social.” It is this relationship that determines the course of development of the child’s psyche at a certain age stage.

Vygotsky proposed a new periodization of the human life cycle, which is based on the alternation of stable periods of development and crises. Crises are characterized by revolutionary changes, the criterion of which is the emergence neoplasms. The reason for the psychological crisis, according to Vygotsky, lies in the growing discrepancy between the developing psyche of the child and the unchanged social situation of development, and it is precisely at the restructuring of this situation that a normal crisis is aimed.

Thus, each stage of life opens with a crisis (accompanied by the appearance of certain neoplasms), followed by a period of stable development, when the development of new formations occurs.

• Newborn crisis (0-2 months).

• Infancy (2 months - 1 year).

• Crisis of one year.

• Early childhood (1-3 years).

• Crisis of three years.

• Preschool age (3-7 years).

• Crisis of seven years.

• School age (8-12 years).

• Thirteen Years Crisis.

• Adolescence (puberty) period (14-17 years).

• Seventeen year crisis.

• Youth period (17-21 years).

Later, a slightly different version of this periodization appeared, developed within the framework of the activity approach by Vygotsky’s student D. B. Elkonin. It was based on the concept of leading activity and the idea of ​​a change in leading activity during the transition to a new age stage. At the same time, Elkonin identified the same periods and crises as in Vygotsky’s periodization, but with a more detailed examination of the mechanisms operating at each stage.

Vygotsky, apparently, was the first in psychology to approach the consideration of the psychological crisis as a necessary stage in the development of the human psyche, revealing its positive meaning.

In the 1970s, Vygotsky's theories began to attract interest in American psychology. In the following decade, all of Vygotsky's major works were translated and formed, along with Piaget, the basis of modern educational psychology in the United States.

Notes

Bibliography L.S. Vygotsky

• Psychology of Art ( idem) (1922)
• Tool and sign in child development
• (1930) (co-authored with A. R. Luria)
• Lectures on psychology (1. Perception; 2. Memory; 3. Thinking; 4. Emotions; 5. Imagination; 6. Problem of will) (1932)
• The problem of development and decay of higher mental functions (1934)
• Thinking and speech ( idem) (1934)
  • The bibliographic index of works by L. S. Vygotsky includes 275 titles

Publications on the Internet

• Lev Vygotsky, Alexander Luria Studies on the history of behavior: Monkey. Primitive. Child (monograph)
• Course of lectures on psychology; Thinking and speech; Works from different years
• Vygotsky Lev Semenovich(1896-1934) - outstanding Russian psychologist

About Vygotsky

• Book section Lauren Graham“Natural science, philosophy and the sciences of human behavior in the Soviet Union”, dedicated to L. S. Vygotsky
• Etkind A. M. More about L. S. Vygotsky: Forgotten texts and unfound contexts // Questions of psychology. 1993. No. 4. P. 37-55.
• Garai L., Kecki M. Another crisis in psychology! A possible reason for the resounding success of L. S. Vygotsky’s ideas // Questions of Philosophy. 1997. No. 4. P. 86-96.
• Garai L. On meaning and the brain: Is Vygotsky compatible with Vygotsky? // Subject, cognition, activity: To the seventieth birthday of V. A. Lektorsky. M.: Kanon+, 2002. P. 590-612.
• Tulviste P. E.-J. Discussion of the works of L. S. Vygotsky in the USA // Questions of Philosophy. 1986. No. 6.

Translations

• Vygotsky @ http://www.marxists.org (English)
• Some translations into German: @ http://th-hoffmann.eu
• Denken und Sprechen: psychologische Untersuchungen / Lev Semënovic Vygotskij. Hrsg. und aus dem Russ. Ubers. vom Joachim Lompscher und Georg Rückriem. Mit einem Nachw. von Alexandre Métraux (German)

Vygotsky Lev Semyonovich (1896-1934), Russian psychologist.

Born on November 17, 1896 in Orsha. The second son in a large family (eight brothers and sisters). His father, a bank employee, a year after Lev’s birth moved his family to Gomel, where he founded a public library. The Vygodsky family (the original spelling of the surname) produced famous philologists, the psychologist’s cousin, David Vygodsky, was one of the prominent representatives of “Russian formalism.”

In 1914, Lev entered the Faculty of Medicine at Moscow University, from which he later transferred to law; At the same time, he studied at the Faculty of History and Philology of the People's University named after A. L. Shanyavsky. During his student years, he published reviews of books by symbolist writers - A. Bely, V. I. Ivanov, D. S. Merezhkovsky. At the same time, he wrote his first major work, “The Tragedy of William Shakespeare’s Danish Hamlet” (it was published only 50 years later in Vygotsky’s collection of articles “Psychology of Art”).

In 1917 he returned to Gomel; took an active part in the creation of a new type of school, began conducting research in the psychological office he organized at the pedagogical college. Became a delegate to the II All-Russian Congress on Psychoneurology in Petrograd (1924). where he spoke about the reflexological techniques he used to study the mechanisms of consciousness. After speaking at the congress, Vygotsky, at the insistence of the famous psychologist A.R. Luria, was invited to work by the director of the Moscow Institute of Experimental Psychology, N.K. Kornilov. Two years later, under the leadership of Vygotsky, an experimental defectology institute was created (now the Institute of Correctional Pedagogy of the Russian Academy of Education) and thus laid the foundations of defectology in the USSR.

In 1926, Vygotsky’s “Pedagogical Psychology” was published, defending the individuality of the child.

Since 1927, the scientist published articles analyzing trends in world psychology, and at the same time developed a new psychological concept, called cultural-historical. In it, human behavior regulated by consciousness is correlated with forms of culture, in particular with language and art. This comparison is made on the basis of the concept developed by the author about a sign (symbol) as a special psychological tool that serves as a means of transforming the psyche from natural (biological) to cultural (historical). The work “History of the Development of Higher Mental Functions” (1930-1931) was published only in 1960.

Vygotsky’s last monograph, “Thinking and Speech” (1936), is devoted to problems of the structure of consciousness. In the early 30s. Attacks against Vygotsky became more frequent; he was accused of retreating from Marxism. Persecution, along with incessant exhaustion work, exhausted the scientist’s strength. He did not survive another exacerbation of tuberculosis and died on the night of June 11, 1934.

VYGOTSKY LEV SEMENOVICH.

Lev Semenovich Vygotsky is called the “Mozart of psychology,” and yet we can say that this man came to psychology “from the outside.” Lev Semenovich did not have a special psychological education, and it is quite possible that it was this fact that allowed him to take a fresh look, from a different point of view, at the problems facing psychological science. His innovative approach is largely due to the fact that he was not burdened by the traditions of empirical “academic” psychology.

Lev Semenovich Vygotsky was born on November 5, 1896 in the city of Orsha. A year later, the Vygotsky family traveled to Gomel. It was in this city that Lev graduated from school and took his first steps in science. Even in his gymnasium years, Vygotsky read the book by A.A. Potebny's "Thought and Language", which aroused his interest in psychology - a field in which he was to become an outstanding researcher.

After graduating from school in 1913, he went to Moscow and entered two educational institutions at once - the People's University, Faculty of History and Philosophy, at his own request, and the Moscow Imperial Institute, Faculty of Law, at the insistence of his parents.

Vygotsky was a passionate admirer of the theater and did not miss a single theater premiere. In his youth, he wrote literary-critical sketches and articles for various literary magazines about the novels of A. Bely and D. Merezhkovsky.

After the revolution of 1917, which he accepted, Lev Semenovich left the capital back to his native Gomel, where he worked as a literature teacher at school. Later he was invited to teach philosophy and logic at the Pedagogical College. Soon, within the walls of this technical school, Vygotsky created an experimental psychology office, on the basis of which he was actively engaged in scientific research work.

In 1924, at the II All-Russian Congress on Psychoneurology, which was held in Leningrad, a young, unknown educator from a provincial town presented his first scientific work. His report contained sharp criticism of reflexology. This report was called “Methodology of reflexological and psychological research.”

It pointed out the striking discrepancy between the classical method of training a conditioned reflex and the task of scientifically determined explanation of human behavior as a whole. Contemporaries noted that the content of Vygotsky’s report was innovative, and it was presented simply brilliantly, which, in fact, attracted the attention of the most famous psychologists of that time, A.N. Leontyev and A.R. Luria.

A. Luria invited Vygotsky to the Moscow Institute of Experimental Psychology. From that moment on, Lev Semenovich became the leader and ideological inspirer of the legendary troika of psychologists: Vygotsky, Leontiev, Luria.

The greatest fame was brought to Vygotsky by the psychological theory he created, which became widely known under the name “Cultural-historical concept of the development of higher mental functions,” the theoretical and empirical potential of which has not yet been exhausted. The essence of this concept is the synthesis of the doctrine of nature and the doctrine of culture. This theory represents an alternative to existing behavioral theories, and above all behaviorism.

According to Vygotsky, all mental functions given by nature (“natural”) are transformed over time into functions of a higher level of development (“cultural”): mechanical memory becomes logical, the associative flow of ideas becomes goal-directed thinking or creative imagination, impulsive action becomes voluntary, etc. .d. All these internal processes originate in the child’s direct social contacts with adults, and then become fixed in his consciousness.

Vygotsky wrote: “... Every function in the cultural development of a child appears on the stage twice, on two levels, first social, as an interpsychic category, then inside the child, as an intrapsychic category.”

The importance of this formula for research in the field of child psychology was that the spiritual development of the child was made somewhat dependent on the organized influence of adults on him.

Vygotsky attempted to explain how the organism's relationship with the external world shapes its internal mental environment. He became convinced that the formation of a child’s personality and his full development are almost equally influenced by both hereditary inclinations (heredity) and social factors.

Lev Semenovich’s many works are devoted to the study of mental development and patterns of personality formation in childhood, problems of learning and teaching children at school. And not only for normally developing children, but also for children with various developmental anomalies.

It was Vygotsky who played the most outstanding role in the development of the science of defectology. He created a laboratory for the psychology of abnormal childhood in Moscow, which later became an integral part of the Experimental Defectology Institute. He was one of the first among Russian psychologists to not only theoretically substantiate, but also confirm in practice that any deficiency in both psychological and physical development can be corrected, i.e. it can be compensated for by retaining functions and by working for a long time.

When studying the psychological characteristics of abnormal children, Vygotsky placed the main emphasis on the mentally retarded and deaf-blind. He could not, like many of his other colleagues in the shop, pretend that such a problem did not exist. Since defective children live among us, every effort must be made to ensure that they become full members of society. Vygotsky considered it his duty to help such deprived children to the best of his ability.

Another fundamental work of Vygotsky is “The Psychology of Art.” In it, he put forward the position of a special “psychology of form”, that in art form “disembodies the material.” At the same time, the author rejected the formal method because of its inability to “reveal and explain the historically changing socio-psychological content of art.” Striving to stay on the basis of psychology, on the “position of a reader experiencing the influence of art,” Vygotsky argued that the latter is a means of transforming the personality, a tool that evokes in it “huge and suppressed and constrained forces.” According to Vygotsky, art radically changes the affective sphere, which plays a very important role in the organization of behavior, and socializes it.

At the last stage of his scientific activity, he took up the problems of thinking and speech and wrote the scientific work “Thinking and Speech.” In this fundamental scientific work, the main idea is the inextricable connection that exists between thinking and speech.

Vygotsky first made the assumption, which he himself soon confirmed, that the level of development of thinking depends on the formation and development of speech. He revealed the interdependence of these two processes.

For Vygotsky, his scientific past prepared one alternative. Instead of the “consciousness-behavior” dyad, around which the thoughts of other psychologists revolved, the triad “consciousness-culture-behavior” becomes the focus of his searches.

Unfortunately, the long-term and quite fruitful work of L.S. Vygotsky, his numerous scientific works and developments, as often happens with talented people, especially in our country, were not appreciated. During Lev Semenovich's lifetime, his works were not allowed for publication in the USSR.

Since the early 1930s. Real persecution began against him, the authorities accused him of ideological perversions.

On June 11, 1934, after a long illness, at the age of 37, Lev Semenovich Vygotsky died.

Legacy of L.S. Vygotsky includes about 200 scientific works, including Collected Works in 6 volumes, the scientific work “Psychology of Art,” works on the problems of psychological development of a person from birth (experiences, crises) and the patterns of personality formation, its basic properties and functions. He made a great contribution to uncovering the question of the influence of the collective and society on the individual.

Undoubtedly, Lev Vygotsky had a significant influence on domestic and world psychology, as well as on related sciences - pedagogy, defectology, linguistics, art history, philosophy. Lev Semenovich Vygotsky’s closest friend and student A. R. Luria called him a genius and a great humanist of the 20th century.