Articles

Background. The relevance of the work is connected with the significance of L.S. Vygotsky’s early studies both for the formation of the foundations of the cultural-historical approach in psychology and theoretical and methodological principles of modern research on the psychology of art.

Objectives. The aim is to determine the peculiarities of the approach to the study of aesthetic response in Vygotsky’s work “The Psychology of Art”. Identification of substantive aspects concerning Vygotsky’s research “method” is important for studying the psychological uniqueness of artistic experience. The theoretical and ideological contexts that determine the ambiguity of assessments of “The Psychology of Art” by Russian psychologists are established.

Study Participants. The original text of Vygotsky’s dissertation “The Psychology of Art. Analysis of Aesthetic Reaction” (archive of the Vygodsky family), subsequent editions of “The Psychology of Art”, critical articles by leading Russian psychologists on the “The Psychology of Art”.

Methods. Critical historical theoretical analysis, comparative textual analysis of the original text of Vygotsky’s dissertation “The Psychology of Art. Analysis of Aesthetic Response” (archive of the Vygotsky family), subsequent editions of “The Psychology of Art”, critical articles by leading Russian psychologists regarding “The Psychology of Art”.

Results. It is shown that in “The Psychology of Art” when studying the peculiarities of aesthetic reaction and cathartic experience Vygotsky uses not only the principles of structural, functional and genetic analysis of the artwork, but also a wide range of psychotechnical techniques aimed at interpreting the meaning of the artwork. At the same time, the peculiarity of his use of methodological principles of reactological and psychoanalytical approaches, models of mental experiment in analyzing psychological features of the artwork impact are revealed. It is revealed that the subsequent critical evaluations of “The Psychology of Art” were clearly influenced not only by the theoretical attitudes of various authors, but also by ideological connotations (“ideological filters”, “mechanisms of social protection of the text”, etc.). A shift in the substantive critical assessments of the work was recorded: from the dynamic analysis of artistic experience (“waste of energy”, “explosive reaction”) to the tasks of personal meaning to resolve affective contradictions arising in the perception of different levels of the organization of the artwork. It is shown that it is the attitude to the socio-biological type of human development that determines the pathos of the study of “The Psychology of Art” as a “social technique of feelings”.

Conclusions. In “The Psychology of Art” the main range of questions about the mechanisms of sign mediation of emotional mental processes and meaning-making is fundamentally worked out.

Background. The current publication presents the text of three previously unknown letters from L.S. Vygotsky to E.I. Heifetz, which were written by him in 1918, 1920 and 1921. A psychological analysis of the letters was carried out in the context of the author’s life at the time of their writing.

Objectives. The goal is to disclose previously unknown aspects regarding the personal and professional development of L.S. Vygotsky.

Methods. Analysis of archival documents in comparison with biographical materials from the period of Vygotsky’s life under study.

Results. The letters represent a unique source for understanding the experiences and moral and ethical views of the young Vygotsky: in them he provides reflections on his “Life’s Work”, the personal choices and social “sacrifices” required for its realisation and talks about the mystery of personal feelings. The analysis shows how these feelings and Vygotsky’s life views changed over time.

Conclusions. The analysed letters, along with characteristics of relationships within the family and in the microsocial environment, reveal the uniqueness of Vygotsky’s self-perception and personal self-determination in his youth.

Background. Currently, different versions of Russian and foreign concepts are being developed in a single scientific field. In this context, the high heuristic potential of L.S. Vygotsky’s concept is revealed as his ideas are in tune with the challenges of information culture.

Objectives. The goal of the current work is to present the integrity of L.S. Vygotsky’s concept of culture and the variability of his ideas about emotional experience, sign and tools, the social situation of development, crises at different periods and in different situations in the development of science. The connection between continuity and change over time makes Vygotsky’s concept flexible and productive for a digital society.

Methods. The historical-genetic approach, historical hermeneutics and categorical analysis are used to trace the internal logic and stages of the formation of L.S. Vygotsky’s scientific views, as well as to outline his opponents and the origins of his methodology and discoveries.

Results. Personal and sociocultural (temporary) factors in the emergence and development of the concept of L.S. Vygotsky were analysed. The role of the initial works on the psychology of culture and theatre in the formation of psychological concepts of emotional experience and personality was shown. A holistic picture of the dynamics of the scientist’s views on the development of psyche, the role of the tool-sign, the social situation of development and crises, as factors that determine the boundaries of possible personality changes, the connection between affect and intelligence throughout ontogenesis was presented. The transformation of the concept of interiorisation, which becomes one of the central ones for the development of the psyche in a digital society, was revealed.

Conclusions. Variability over time and, simultaneously, the fundamental integrity of L.S. Vygotsky’s approach to culture in its various forms (word, sign, emotional experience, theatre, society) are the basis for the high productivity and creative potential of his ideas, which make it possible to transform them in different social situations of the development of science. The personality of the creator in the context of his life and the life of his ideas gives possibility to interpret it in terms of the psychology of drama, expanding the boundaries of analysis and incorporation of the scientific worldview and concepts of L.S. Vygotsky in modern psychology.

Background. The identification of key periods of development in cultural-historical theory is not just a task of historical interest. It may help to reconstruct the logics and the moving forces in the development of Vygotsky’s theoretical approaches at different periods and may thereby help to improve understanding of key concepts and principles. The area of dialogue to which this article contributes is contemporary perception of cultural-historical theory.

Objective. The aim is to analyse and reconstruct the evolution of theoretical thought of L.S. Vygotsky.

Methods. The research involved analysis of texts by L.S. Vygotsky, relating to different stages of his scientific path, biographical materials, analytical publications of authors studying the works of L.S. Vygotsky.

Results. As literature shows, there is a tendency to highlight some periods of Vygotsky’s theoretical path while underestimating others. In some cases, this limits the development of a holistic evolutionary approach to cultural-historical theory. The article begins with a description of the key stages of Vygotsky’s theoretical evolution with an emphasis on continuity and discontinuity. Then it presents and critically discusses two examples of perception of Vygotsky’s legacy, which are Gonzales Rey’s (2011) identification of “defining moments in Vygotsky’s work”, and Engeström’s (1987, 1990) account of “three generations of CHAT”.

Conclusions. Cultural-historical theory is a powerful living and developing theory which provides rich and strong theoretical and experimental tools for contemporary generations of researchers. New dialogues are required: however, a holistic evolutionary approach to the history of cultural-historical theory should remain on the agenda.

Background. There are very few modern studies on the psychology of the actor and they are mainly based on the study of individual personality traits of actors. The current article discusses L.S. Vygotsky’s approach to the psychology of the actor and presents the results of a comprehensive study of the personal characteristics of student actors. Peculiarities of professional activity and the modern socio-cultural situation was taken into account in the interpretation.

Objectives. The research is a complex analysis of personal characteristics of actors during the early stage of mastering their professional activity.

Study Participants. The study involved second and third year students of the acting faculty of the Institute of Contemporary Art (Moscow); a total of 76 people (39 girls, 37 boys), with an average age of 20.2 years.

Methods. R.B. Cattell 16 PF personality questionnaire, Eysenck EPI personality questionnaire adapted by A.G. Shmelev, short Big Five portrait questionnaire “B5-10” (authors M.S. Egorova and O.V. Parshikova), short Dark Triad questionnaire (adapted by M.S. Egorova, M.A. Sitnikova, O.V. Parshikova), A.A. Megrabyan empathy questionnaire, and the integral indicator “expert assessment of abilities” were used in the study.

Results. As a result of a factor analysis of the respondents’ indicators for all the methods used, the following 10 factors describing 69.9% of the total cumulative dispersion were identified: F1 “emotional excitability, plasticity”, F2 “sensitivity to moral constraints”, F3 “empathy”, F4 “openness to experience, trying oneself out”, F5 “publicity”, F6 “frankness, sincerity”, F7 “emotional joining the group”, F8 “insightfulness”, F9 “individualism”, F10 “free-thinking”. The identified factors are interpreted as specific personal formations involved in the realisation of acting.

Conclusions. The personal characteristics discovered in the study are considered from the point of view of the content and organisation of the actors’ training process. They can act as an alternative to the traditional approach aimed at the development of actors’ individual mental functions. Consideration of specific psychological vectors of personal development of student-actors as a basis for the proposed in training etudes and exercises shifts the focus of training on the image of character as a semantic unit of psychotechnical training.

Background. The term “family pain” is used in family system psychotherapy to refer to the emotional state of members in a dysfunctional family. Despite the widespread use of this term in practical psychology, the structure of the phenomenon of “family pain” has not yet been described and introduced into clinical and family psychology. This study provides a scientific substantiation of the psychological construct “family pain” in the etiology and functioning of codependent behaviour based on the cultural-historical approach of L.S. Vygotsky.

Objectives. The aim is to characterize the concept of experiencing “family pain” based on a cultural-historical approach, and also to analyse the characteristics of experiencing “family pain” among people whose parents were alcoholics.

Study Participants. The sample included adults who were conditionally mentally healthy (N=52; 11 men and 41 women; Mage=24.5 years, SD=4.4), who grew up in alcoholic families and regularly attended the 12-step rehabilitation programme “Adult Children of Alcoholics”.

Methods. A phenomenological analysis of the motives for people applying to the 12-step rehabilitation programme “Adult children of alcoholics”.

Results. Individuals who grew up in alcoholic families describe “family pain” as a constant experience that accompanies them throughout their lives, due to traumatic childhood experiences in the past. Six motives for applying to the self-help rehabilitation programme “Adult Children of Alcoholics” for people who grew up in alcoholic families and experienced “family pain” were identified. They included: to overcome difficulties in communication, to cope with the death of parents, to find support and approval, to find people with similar experiences, to justify one’s own failures through the illness of a parent, to cope with current negative states connected to childhood experiences. It has been shown that attending rehabilitation programmes can both help a person to cope with the experience of “family pain” and strengthen fixation on the negative experiences of childhood.

Conclusions. The process of experiencing a common family problem by people whose parents were alcoholics can be presented and described as a special systemic psychological construct “family pain”.

Background. Vygotsky’s idea of the affect and intellect unity continues to be developed empirically. Much attention is paid to the child’s emotional development, which affects social and academic effectiveness. Knowledge regarding the relationship between language and emotional development within the social situation helps to better understand the developmental characteristics of preschool children in general and create the necessary corrective programs.

Objectives. The aim is to study the characteristics of the relationship between language and emotional development (based on the general and emotional vocabulary size) and the level of emotion understanding at preschool age.

Study Participants. The study involved 341 children aged 57 to 90 months (M = 75.42 months; SD = 7.65 months). 170 children were from the senior groups of the preschool educational institution (M = 69.09 months; SD = 4.4 months), and 171 children were from the preparatory groups of the preschool educational institution (M = 81.67 months; SD = 4.2 months).

Methods. To assess the general vocabulary size the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test was used. To assess the volume of active and passive emotional vocabulary, the Roepstorff “Emotional Vocabulary” test was used. To assess ability to understand emotions in preschoolers, F. Pons’s “Test for Emotions Comprehension” method was used.

Results. It was found that age is significantly associated with indicators of general and emotional vocabulary size, as well as with the understanding of emotions in all identified aspects. Different levels of emotion understanding have different relationships with vocabulary, both general and emotional. An important result is the identification of the significance of the contribution of active rather than passive emotional vocabulary to emotion understanding, suggesting a significant role of verbalisation of the emotional state, helping preschoolers to better understand emotion.

Conclusions. The study showed that language development influenced the understanding of emotions in preschool age. At the same time, with age there is an increase in the size of children’s general and emotional vocabulary, as well as their ability to understand emotions.

Background. L.S. Vygotsky’s vision of teaching and learning, which enables child development, remains useful for problems face by the modern-day school. Today, one of the central duties of education is, from the beginning of schooling, to lay the foundations for obtaining the ability to learn. Ability to learn is demonstrated when a person is faced with meaningful task, understands what is needed to solve it and knows how to compensate for their own limitations. Ability to learn is one of the aspects of human agency i.e., the ability to have and the self-perception of the ownership over one’s behaviour. This ability is manifested in children at a very early age and education can both strengthen and weaken, or even totally preclude its development. Agency in learning, which is the basis for future ability to learn, can enter the zone of proximal development (ZPD) as early as primary school age, but only in certain educational environments.

Objective. The current research is focused on the relationship between the teaching, learning, and development of the child as a subject of learning activity in the scientific school of D.B. El’konin and V.V. Davydov, who advanced the culturalhistorical theory.

Methods. Clinical studies of setting and solving learning tasks in primary and secondary schools.

Results. This article describes the most significant characteristics of the educational environment, through which the ability to learn can be developed for the majority of students: the content and form of learning activity in the strict, original meaning of this concept, which does not correspond to its everyday use. We highlight the discrepancies between the scientific and everyday meanings of the concepts “learning activity” and “learning task” and clarify the relationship between the structure of the learning task and the structure of the ability to learn. We also describe the characteristic actions of an adult at the stage of designing the learning task and then at the stage of interpsychological interaction with children when setting a learning task and searching for the means to solve it.

Conclusion. Children’s initiative in constructing general methods of action and sensitivity to conceptual contradictions manifest themselves systematically, as an age-related tendency, only when students set and solve learning tasks aimed at discovering and mastering theoretical concepts. Education that provides readymade answers to unasked questions minimizes the opportunity for students to become self-learning agents.

Practical application of the results. The identified discrepancies between the scientific and everyday meanings of the concepts “learning activity” and “learning task” can protect these fruitful concepts from profanation and save their creative potential.

Background. The problem of translating scientific articles into other languages affects not only translators but also psychologists, since the accuracy of translation determines the adequacy of understanding and transferring of scientific concepts.

Objectives. The article focuses on the critical discussion of different variants in translating some concepts of L.S. Vygotsky’s cultural-historical theory into Portuguese.

Study Materials. This article discusses the concepts of the “zona blijaichego razvitia”, “learning”, and “speech”.

Results. The paper considers variations in the translations of L.S. Vygotsky’s concept of the cultural-historical theory into Portuguese. Insufficient attention of translators to the theoretical and methodological foundations of the original scientific text, which generates substantive errors in translation and distorts (simplifies) the content of the original approach, is critically discussed.

Conclusions. Both literary and scientific translation should be understood as an unfinished process that requires constant revision and improvement. The philosophical, ethical and historical ideas of the translated author should be the basis for this. Only in this case will translation contribute to the communication and connection of people speaking different languages.

Background. L.S. Vygotsky’s cultural-historical approach toward children’s psychological development was first developed around one hundred years ago. It now requires re-evaluation in light of new experimental studies that have shown complexity and diversity of the innate psychological abilities of new-borns and infants, as well as other theoretical approaches towards understanding the role of culture and learning in cognitive development. Such a re-evaluation aims to draw our attention to those aspects of human psychology that L.S. Vygotsky, due to the limited empirical knowledge available to him and his early death, was unable or did not have time to illuminate.

Objectives. The aim is to consider L.S. Vygotsky’s concept of natural psychological functions in a new perspective, as a forerunner of the ‘heart’ of human psychology — the living consciousness.

Methods. The research method is a comparative and logical analysis of concepts, illustrated by the results of the author’s and his colleagues’ long-term experimental research.

Results. A distinction between living consciousness, which includes subjective experiences (for example, perceptions, emotions, and creative thinking) and functions according to the laws of magic, and objectified consciousness, into which living consciousness is transformed for consumption by society and culture (for example, scientific concepts, logical thinking, and human artifacts) and which conforms to the laws of nature and formal logic, is proposed. It has been hypothesized that both living consciousness and higher mental functions are genetically related to natural mental functions. Differences between the structure, functions and methods of studying living and objectified consciousness are considered.

Conclusions. Natural mental functions are the psychological basis for two relatively independent but interconnected branches of mental development: living consciousness and higher mental functions. Living consciousness does not obey the laws of formal logic and is the primary source of creative ideas and truly selfless morality.

Background. The study of L.S. Vygotsky’s scientific heritage enables the clarification of the theoretical basis for the role of the social environment in children’s mental development and the key regularities of children’s mental development at varying ages and stages of development in the context of transitivity and the social uncertainty of modern society.

Objectives. The currently article analyses the significance of the social situation of development as an alternative to the understanding of the environment as a factor of development in L.S. Vygotsky’s doctrine of the structure and dynamics of psychological age.

Results. Experience is the indivisible “unit” of the social situation of development as a dynamic unity of personality and environment in the form of age-specific attitude. The experience acts as an integration of affective and intellectual components and acquires features of awareness and meaningfulness as the child’s thinking develops. The social environment contains ideal forms as a standard of historically developed human properties and abilities, determining the greatest originality of the child’s developmental path — the future is already represented in the present and sets the vector for development. The ideal form embodies the age-specific normative content of the developmental potential of higher mental functions at each age stage, being appropriated in the course of cooperation. Experience determines the individual trajectory and the result of development. A comparative analysis of the crises of three and seven years convincingly proves the change in the type of experience: from the child’s singling out of relations and himself as the subject of these relations to the singling out of experiences, their differentiation and realisation of the attitude to Self. The social situation of development determines the boundaries for the zone of the child’s proximal development (ZPD).

Conclusions. Experience realises the child’s active position in relation to the world through the prism of age characteristics. Transformation of the social situation of development, according to L.S. Vygotsky, occurs in the form of changes in the types and methods of experiencing in connection with the development of the motivation and need during the period of age-related developmental crises.

Background. The cultural-historical theory of the development of higher mental functions by L.S. Vygotsky remains relevant and continues to be discussed by specialists from various countries. Its usefulness is largely due to its employment of the dialectical method, the analysis of which is the focus of this article.

Objectives. The aim is to reveal the essence of the dialectical method which allowed L.S. Vygotsky to analyse mental development processes. The first task was to define units of analysis as well as to describe their role when applied to a method. The second task was to show two types of analysis: substantive and structural.

Methods. The dialectical method of analysis was applied in the process of solving theoretical problems. The current article systematically raises questions about the characteristics of the method, the requirements for units of analysis and their properties. Several difficulties with analysing units were summarized.

Results. Dialectical analysis as a method of cognition, as applied by L.S. Vygotsky, was based on an invariant structural representation of the processes of mental development. At the same time, the task of meaningful interpretation of the development of the child’s psyche remained. The solution to this problem was based on the search for units of content analysis that simultaneously had two possibilities: to be invariant to any content and to be included into any content. An analysis of the works of L.S. Vygotsky showed that he considered the relations of opposition as such units.

Conclusions. The use of dialectical analysis by L.S. Vygotsky was associated with the consideration of the studied material on two levels: structural and substantive, as well as in transitions from one level to another. To make such transitions, L.S. Vygotsky identified opposites in the content that interested him. Opposites had both substantive properties and represented formal invariant units independent of specific content, which made it possible to carry out transformations at the invariant (structural) level before returning to the substantive level. As soon as the content of the problem under study was transmitted into a structural plan, it was subjected to dialectical transformations, through the sequential implementation of various operations using opposites. These operations corresponded to the elementary dialectical structures, characteristic of both mental transformations and the processes of various entities in development. Content analysis, which included operating with opposites, allowed L.S. Vygotsky to describe the processes of development of complex structural systems of human consciousness.

Background. The relevance of the stated topic is determined by two circumstances: the need to determine the main directions of the theoretical and methodological reflection of modern social psychology and the task of explaining the socio-psychological aspects of cultural-historical theory.

Objective. Consideration of the relationship between the main ideas of the cultural-historical theory of L.S. Vygotsky and the subject field of social psychology.

Methods. The article uses methods of deductive (axiomatic and hypothetico-deductive) and comparative analyses.

Results. The main theses of cultural-historical theory set the development and instantiation of the subject field of social psychology, starting with the well-known discussions of the 1920s. The main provisions can be identified as follows: the idea of the internalisation of social relations as a constructive mechanism of human socialisation; understanding the process of communication as instrumentally mediated by a system of signs which act as a means for a social subject to master his social behaviour; approval of the idea of human activity in interaction, the finite task of which is the formation of a common system of meanings. Using the example of similarities and differences in the historical views of L.S. Vygotsky and J.G. Mead, the authors analyse the possible range of understandings of interaction contextuality. It was the attention of cultural-historical theory to the analysis of interaction that largely determined the further interest of social psychology in the problem of “personality and/or situation”, the solution to which is still debatable.

Conclusions. The determining role of L.S. Vygotsky’s position for universal social psychology as well as for Russian is associated with the unremitting attention of researchers to one of the fundamental problems in the analysis of man and society, namely, to the problem of human interaction with the surrounding socio-cultural environment. The requirement to consider the social context as a methodological imperative of modern social psychology sets the main direction for the further development of theoretical and methodological reflection. This main direction is the analysis of possible relationships between the social context and social changes, leading to the need for empirical development of two problems: the individual psychological foundations of social choice and a person’s ability to resist the power of the situation.

Background. The editorial article reflects the main concept of the issue of the journal, dedicated to the 90th anniversary of the death of L.S. Vygotsky - an outstanding Russian scientist, whose works had a noticeable influence on the development of psychology and pedagogy in the world.

Objectives. The goal is to demonstrate the relevance of the principles of the cultural-historical approach of L.S. Vygotsky at the current stage of development in psychological and pedagogical science and practice.

Results. The article reveals the content of the publications of the journal issue devoted to the sources of the emergence of Vygotsky’s scientific school, his biography, empirical and theoretical and methodological research carried out in line with the cultural-historical approach. It also displays Vygotsky’s invaluable contribution to the development of education and science in Russia and abroad.

Conclusion. The articles presented in this issue discuss the fundamental principles and postulates of the cultural-historical approach, as well as outline ways of research concretization of the idea of the systemic and semantic structure of consciousness. The significant contribution of the Faculty of Psychology of Moscow State University to the development of research in the field of cultural-historical psychology is especially noted. The wide presentation of the results to the scientific community and their introduction into pedagogical practice are highlighted.

Background. The study of the psychological resources of a person experiencing a life-threatening disease is important due to the increased number of social requests related to improving the quality of a patient’s full-fledged adaptation to life. The effectiveness of coping with the psychological consequences of a serious illness is determined by the system of internal conditions of the individual as well as by the age characteristics, due to which a subjective assessment of the psychotraumatic situation, the nature of a person’s appeal to potential opportunities are specified.

Objective. The study focuses on human resources when coping with the psychological consequences of post-traumatic stress, depending on age and the characteristics of the life-threatening brain disease (local or vascular pathology of the brain).

Study Participants. 125 people showing no signs of cognitive deficits and who have given their informed consent were involved in the study. Of those, 64 people had a diagnosis of benign meningioma (30–70 years), and 61 people were diagnosed with cerebrovascular disease (31–69 years).

Methods. To assess the level of psychotraumatization in respondents, the “Impact of Event Scale” technique was used, emotional and personal characteristics were studied using the Freiburg Personality Inventory and the “World assumptions scale” technique.

Results. It has been established that, regardless of the type of disease, caused by local or vascular pathology of the brain, and the age of a person, a common resource for coping with psychotraumatic experiences is, on the one hand, accepting the situation of the disease and on the other, distancing oneself from experiences that mark it as hopeless, causing despair. For people with symptoms of cerebrovascular disease coping with stress, it is more important to regulate relationships with the outside world and maintain their functionality. While for people with meningioma, a positive self-attitude and the focus on unlocking inner potential, which becomes especially relevant in older age, are more important.

Conclusions. The resourcefulness of a person in a situation of severe illness is determined by the rational nature of emotional self-regulation, including through selective appeal to social support. Specific resources associated with the peculiarities of the stressful situation of brain disease become more significant with age and manifest themselves in the specifics of the personality orientation (outward or inward).