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L.S. Vygotsky
Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky (November 17 (November 5 according to the old style) 1896 — June 11, 1934, Moscow) — Soviet psychologist, founder of the cultural-historical school in psychology.
Biography
Vygotsky was born on November 17 (November 5 according to the old style) 1896 in the Belarusian city of Orsha in the family of an employee. He was educated by a private teacher, Solomon Aspitz, known for his use of the so-called Socratic dialogue method. In 1917 he graduated from the Faculty of Law of Moscow University and at the same time the Faculty of History and Philosophy of the University. Shanyavsky. He taught in the city of Gomel. Since 1924, he worked at the Moscow State Institute of Experimental Psychology, then at the Experimental Defectological Institute founded by him; later he gave lecture courses at a number of universities in Moscow, Leningrad and Kharkov.
Professor at the Institute of Psychology in Moscow. The formation of Vygotsky 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 an objective study of complex forms of mental activity and personality behavior, Vygotsky subjected a number of philosophical and most contemporary psychological concepts to critical analysis (The Meaning of the Psychological Crisis, manuscript, 1926), showing the futility of attempts to explain human behavior by reducing higher forms of behavior to lower elements. . The book The History of the Development of Higher Mental Functions (1931, published in 1960) provides a detailed presentation of the cultural-historical theory of the development of the psyche: according to Vygotsky, it is necessary to distinguish between two plans of behavior — natural (the result of the biological evolution of the animal world) and cultural (the result of the historical development of society) , merged in the development of the psyche. The essence of cultural behavior lies in its mediation by tools and signs, with the former directed “outside”, to transform reality, and the latter “inside”, first to transform other people, then to control one’s own behavior.
In the last years of his life, Vygotsky focused on the study of the structure of consciousness (his work Thinking and Speech, 1934 is fundamental to Russian psycholinguistics). Investigating verbal thinking, Vygotsky solves the problem of localization of higher mental functions as structural units of brain activity in a new way. Studying the development and decay of higher mental functions on the basis 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.
Vygotsky died on June 11, 1934 in Moscow from tuberculosis. Followed in the USSR in the mid-1930s. reassessment of views on science and culture was expressed in the oblivion of Vygotsky’s works until the second half of the 1950s, when his works began to be published again.
Daughter L.S. Vygotsky — Gita Lvovna Vygotskaya — a well-known Soviet psychologist and defectologist.
Vygotsky’s influence
The cultural-historical theory of Vygotsky gave rise to the largest school in Soviet psychology, from which came A. N. Leontiev, A. R. Luria, A. V. Zaporozhets, L. I. Bozhovich, P. Ya. Galperin, D. B. Elkonin , P. I. Zinchenko, L. V. Zankov and others.
In the 1970s Vygotsky’s theories began to arouse interest in American psychology. In the following decade, all the main works of Vygotsky were translated and formed, along with Piaget, the basis of modern educational psychology in the United States.