The cultural-historical theory of the development of the psyche and the development of the personality was developed by Vygotsky and his school (Leontiev, Luria, and others) in the 20s and 30s. XX century (one of the first publications was the article «The problem of the cultural development of the child» in the journal «Pedology» in 1928).
In this approach, L.S. Vygotsky proposes to consider the social environment not as one of the factors, but as the development of the individual. In the development of the child, he notes, there are, as it were, two intertwined lines. The first follows the path of natural maturation, the second consists in mastering the culture, ways of behaving and thinking. According to Vygotsky’s theory, the development of thinking and other mental functions occurs primarily not through their self-development, but through the use of «psychological tools» by the child, by mastering a system of signs-symbols, such as language, writing, counting system.
The development of thinking, perception, memory and other mental functions occurs through the stage (form) of external activity, where cultural means have a completely objective form and mental functions act quite externally, interpsychically. Only as the process is worked out, the activity of mental functions is curtailed, internalized, rotated, passes from the external plane to the internal, becomes intrapsychic.
In the process of their development and turning inward, mental functions acquire automation, awareness and arbitrariness. If there is a difficulty in thinking and other mental processes, exteriorization is always possible — bringing the mental function outside and clarifying its work in external-objective activity. An idea on the inner plane can always be worked out by actions on the outer plane.
As a rule, at this first stage of external activity, everything that the child does, he does in cooperation, together with adults.
As Vygotsky writes, each mental function appears on the stage twice — first as a collective, social activity, and then as the child’s internal way of thinking.
It is cooperation with other people that is the main source of development of the child’s personality, and the most important feature of consciousness is dialogue.
Consciousness develops through dialogue: a dialogue between a child and an adult or a dialogue between an adult and an adult. Even turning into internal mental processes, higher mental functions retain their social nature — «a person retains the functions of communication alone with himself.» According to Vygotsky, the word is related to consciousness as a small world is to a large one, as a living cell is to an organism, as an atom is to the cosmos. «A meaningful word is a microcosm of human consciousness.»
L.S. Vygotsky introduces the concept of «zone of proximal development» — this is the space of actions that the child cannot yet perform on his own, but can carry out together with adults and thanks to them. According to Vygotsky, only that training is good, which forestalls development.
For Vygotsky, personality is a social concept, that which is brought into it by culture. Personality «is not innate, but arises as a result of cultural development» and «in this sense, the correlate of personality will be the ratio of primitive and higher reactions.»
Another aspect of L.S. Vygotsky’s idea of development is not as an evenly gradual, but as a staged, stepwise process, where periods of even accumulation of new opportunities are replaced by stages of crisis. Crisis, for Vygotsky, is a stormy, sometimes dramatic stage in the breaking (or rethinking) of old baggage and the formation of a new way of life. Crises can be painful, but, according to Vygotsky, they are inevitable. On the other hand, a child’s apparent trouble during a crisis is not at all a pattern, but only a consequence of the illiterate behavior of parents and other adults raising a child.
And one more important moment, where L.S. Vygotsky seems to be the discoverer, this is the thesis about the activity of the child. What is this about? Usually the child was regarded as some object subject to the activity of an adult — the influence of suggestions, positive or negative reinforcements. And even if in the works of B. Skinner operant conditioning seems to speak of the activity of someone whose behavior is reinforced in one way or another, Skinner never considered the child as someone who actively influences the adult, often controlling him to a greater extent than the adult controls the child. .