Lev vygotsky

Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky ( Orsha , 17 of November of 1896 – Moscow , November to June of 1934 ) was a Belarusian psychologist of Jewish origin.

He was one of the most prominent theorists of developmental psychology, founder of cultural-historical psychology. The main part of his work, naturally, takes place in the context of revolutionary Russia. It is key in understanding Vygotsky’s work, his effort to use the principles of Marxism when addressing the different psychological problems and even dealing with some practical problems that revolutionary Russia faced, such as, for example, the extension of schooling to marginal sectors. His ideals were clearly Marxist, but he advocated revisionist thinking. In the field of intellectual preparation, he studied the subjects of Psychology , Philosophy and Literature .

In Cyrillic letter :

• Леў Сямёнавіч Выго́цкі (in Belarusian)
• Лев Семёнович Выго́тский (in Russian)

Summary

[ hide ]

• 1 Biographical synthesis
  • 1 Childhood
  • 2 Youth
  • 3 Studies
  • 4 Disease
• 2 Working life
  • 1 Influences
  • 2 Last years
  • 3 Death
• 3 Legacy
• 4 Main postulates
• 5 See also
• 6 Sources
• 7 External links

Biographical synthesis

Lev Výgotsky

Childhood

He was born in Orsha , a city near Vitebsk and relatively close to Minsk – in Belarus , which at that time was part of the Russian Empire – to a prosperous Jewish family. He was the second in a family of eight children. Before completing his first year, his family moved to the city of Gomel , where he grew up. In his teens, he was a theater fanatic and decided to rewrite his surname Vygotsky, instead of Vígodsky ( Vígoda means ‘benefit’ in Russian). In 1915 he wrote an essay on Hamlet .

His early years are described as a happy life full of intellectual stimuli, despite the fact that – like other members of the family – he was excluded from the enjoyment of different opportunities, due to the fact that he was Jewish . In Tsarist Russia , being Jewish meant living in restricted territories, being subject to strict quotas for college access, being excluded from certain professions, and many other forms of discrimination. Instead of attending public school, Vygotsky studied under a private tutor for twenty years, finishing his secondary studies at a Jewish gymnasium (college).

Youth

At the age of fifteen Lev had become known as the “little professor”, since he always guided the discussions between students on intellectual matters, these debates were a manifestation of one of his main interests: Philosophy . While still a child and living in Gomel , Lev began to show a fervent interest in theater and literature. Like the rest of the Russian children, Lev Semenovich read large amounts of Pushkin’s poetry , although he preferred the more serious, even tragic passages by the same author. He also admired Blok’s poetryespecially the “Italian poems” which have a tragic air. When he recited poetry, he was in the habit of selecting only the verses that he considered captured the essence of the poem, disregarding the rest, this notion of elevated significance in an abbreviated linguistic form it would be destined to play a fundamental role in his conception of language and mind.

Studies

Vygotsky graduated with a gold medal in 1913 from his gymnasium , although he had been widely recognized as an outstanding student, he had enormous difficulties accessing the university of his choice, basically because he was Jewish. Thus, Lev enrolled in medicine at Moscow State University , but barely a month passed before he moved to the law department, he had decided to become a lawyer, one of the few professions that would allow him to live outside the system. In 1914, while living in Moscow as a student, Vygotsky began attending classes at the Shanyavskii People’s University , an unofficial center that had emerged in 1911 after the Ministry of Educationit would have expelled most of the students and more than a hundred members of the faculties after the crushing of an anti-Zarista revolt. Most of them better Gomel as a professor of literature and psychology. He also led classes in aesthetics and art history at a conservatory, alternating with lectures on literature and science. He later founded a psychology laboratory at the Gomel Teachers’ School where he gave a series of lectures that later became his 1926 work, Pedagogical Psychology .

In 1917, due to the October Revolution , all discrimination against Jews was abolished. From this fact, he begins to link to political activity.

Its various activities make it the center of intellectual and cultural activity in Gomel. He teaches language and literature at the Labor School for the workers; teaches psychology and logic at the Pedagogical Institute; Aesthetics and Art History at the Conservatory, directs the theater section of a newspaper and founds a literary magazine. It is at this time that he dedicates himself to reading Marx and Engels , Spinoza and Hegel , Freud , Pavlov and Potebnia (linguist in Kharkov).

In 1918, together with his cousin David Dobkin , he began to publish cheap editions of famous works of literature, the company was called Years and Days, which, when publishing two volumes, had to close due to the shortage of paper that affected the country , so he moved to Petrograd in search of work.

Disease

In 1919 he contracted tuberculosis and in 1920 he was admitted to a sanatorium. However, sensing that his life will be short, this situation allows him to intensify his work spirit. The tuberculosis , the disease that eventually would kill him, and represented in 1920, such a threat to the life of Vygotsky that this decided to retire for a short period at a sanatorium and instructed one of his former professors of Gomel the publication of his manuscripts in the case of his death.

Laboral life

At the Pedagogical Institute, he created a Psychology laboratory to study children in kindergartens. From here he obtains material for his book “Pedagogical Psychology” which appeared in 1926.

In 1924, Vygotsky married Rosa N. Sméjova (who died in 1979), from whose union two children will be born: Gita L. and AL Vígodskaya.

Vygotsky presented in 1924, at the Second All-Russian Congress of Psychoneurology in Leningrad , an essay on reflexological and psychological research methods, a subject that he later delved into “Consciousness as a problem in Behavioral Psychology”. These investigations made a strong impression on Kornilov, leader of the Marxist current in psychology and director of the Institute of Psychology at the University of Moscow.

He recovered from this tuberculosis attack and continued his projects in Gomel. In 1924 he married Rosa Smekhova with whom he had two daughters.

Influences

Among the authors who stood out in Lev’s readings were Tyuchev , Blok , Mandel’shtam and Pushkin , Tolstoy , Bely and Bunin , philosophers like William James (1842-1910), and especially Baruch Spinoza . He also read the works of Freud , Marx , Engels , Hegel , Pavlov and the Russian philologist Potebnya. In 1924, the turning point, separating two distinct periods of Vygotsky’s life, was his presentation, on January 6, 1924, at the II Pan-Russian Congress of Psychoneurology in Leningrad . There he presented a communication, Methods in reflexological and psychological research . Some of Vygotsky’s future disciples were present and later vividly recalled the electrifying effect this unknown young man had on those in attendance. Lev’s brilliant address so impressed the director of the Moscow institute, KN Kornilov , that he immediately invited this ” Mozartpsychology “to join himself and other colleagues in the restructuring of the institution. In 1925, he finished his thesis The Psychology of Art . Towards the end of this year he obtained permission to access a position by opposition, but a new Access to tuberculosis was prevented, and recognizing this fact, the qualification commission exempted him from the opposition, with which he was approved.

In 1916 Lev had produced an extensive manuscript on Hamlet , according to Dobkin, he had begun the work in his school days, when the vision of Hamlet had made a deep impression on him. Its early versions were Vygotsky’s “best kept secret” during that time in his life. The years between 1924 and 1934 were highly dense and productive for Vygotsky, after his arrival in Moscow Aleksadr Romanovich Luria and Alexei Nikolaevich Leontiev joined him as disciples and colleagues Together the three became known as the “troika” of the Vygotskian School.

Many other disciples and followers of Vygotsky were part of the School, but it was Luria and Leontiev who, after their death, were destined to be the main followers of Vygotsky’s ideas. The excitement that Lev generated among his students and colleagues is perhaps impossible to appreciate from the perspective of today, when he went on a trip, his students composed poems in his honor. When he gave a lecture in Moscow, the whole world would hear him.

Later, Vygotsky worked at the Moscow Institute of Psychology together with Lúriya and Leontiev , who were slightly younger than him and who, later, would also acquire worldwide recognition. They sought to reformulate psychological theory on the basis of the Marxist perspective, inventing pedagogical strategies that would make it possible to fight against illiteracy and defectology , a condition attributed, at that time, to those children considered as “abnormal” or “difficult”, within which included situations such as being left-handed or mentally retarded.

In 1925, Vygotsky created a psychology laboratory for abnormal childhood, later transformed into the Institute of Experimental Defectology of the People’s Commissariat for Education, which he will have the mission of presiding.

In the spring of 1925, he is the delegate at the International Congress on the Education of the Deaf-mute held in England . Take the opportunity to visit Germany , the Netherlands , and France .

Back in the Soviet Union , he entered the hospital for a serious relapse of tuberculosis, at which point he finished his thesis Psychology of Art , which is defended in the fall, but which he will not be able to edit. Again he is admitted to the hospital in 1926, where he will write an essay on “The historical significance of the crisis in psychology”, which he will not be able to publish either.

Later, his health improves and he takes up a long research activity with his students, arising from a new cultural-historical conception of Psychism and the teaching of Psychology, Social Sciences, Education and Defectology. However, these works are only partially published.

Last years

The last decade of Lev’s life was extraordinarily eventful and productive. He joined the Moscow University Psychological Institute in the modest position of assistant scientific staff. The year before his arrival in 1924, the leadership of the Institute had passed from G. I. Chelpanovto Kornilov. The main reason for the change was that Kornilov was considered a “materialist” dedicated to the development of psychology while Chelpanov had been labeled an “idealist.” The arrival of Kornilov signifies the seriousness and dedication with which his colleagues were trying to employ the principles. Marxists when dealing with the different problems of psychology (as in the other disciplines), Vygotsky was interested in children with hearing deficits, mental retardation or learning disabilities.

In 1925, he began organizing the Moscow Laboratory for Abnormal Childhood Psychology . In 1929, this became the Experimental Defectological Institute of Narkompros and, after his death, the Scientific Institute for Defectology Research of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences . At the beginning of 1931 at the request of the newly formed department of psychology of the Ukrainian Psychoneurological Institute , Vygotsky and several of his colleagues transferred many of their activities to Jarov . Vygotski taught at the Department of Social Sciences of Moscow State University , the Academy of Communist Education, at the Institute for Child and Adolescent Health , at the Department of Pedagogy of the Moscow Conservatory and at the Industrial Pedagogical Institute . He also traveled regularly to Leningrad to teach at the Leningrad Pedagogical Institute .

Between 1931 and 1934, Vygotsky wrote material for compilations, articles, and books at an increasingly rapid rate. He edited and wrote a long introduction for the 1932 Russian translation of Piaget’s work . His introduction would later serve as chapter II for his posthumous work Thought and Language (1934). and many other works, among which include diagnosis Evolutive , Clinical Education for Children with Difficulties , The Development of Higher Psychological Processes , Reading Psychology , The Problem of Instruction and Cognitive Development in School Age , Thinking and Schizophrenia, as well as endless critical notes and introductions to works by Bülhler, Kohler, Gesell, Koffka, and Freud.

Vygotsky was a regular reader of Freud, Piaget, Wolfgang Köhler , Stern, Gessel, and publishes the prefaces to the editions of these authors.

At the beginning of 1929, as his reputation spread throughout the USSR, he was invited to stay for several months in Tashkent , to train pedagogues and psychologists at the University of Central Asia . In 1930, he conducted a seminar in Moscow with Lúriya, Eisenstein and the linguist Marr.

In 1931, criticism against his cultural-historical theory began to appear and the group of researchers from the 1920s was divided. Lúriya, Galperin, Zaporozhets go to Kharkov and Vygotsky will go regularly to Leningrad with Elkonine and Josephine Schif .

Always active, in 1933, he undertakes a great synthesis of his work to respond to the various criticisms that have been made. This material ends up becoming Thought and Language .

Death

During his last years of life, he used to write after two in the morning, when he had a few quiet hours to himself, he would dictate his work to a stenographer ; thus the last chapter of Thought and Speech was elaborated . Throughout this period, tuberculosis attacks became more severe and frequent. His terrible and prolonged coughing spells carried him to exhaustion for several days, but instead of resting, Vygotsky tried, as far as possible, to achieve as many of the goals he had set for himself.

In the spring of 1934, his health worsened alarmingly. His doctors insisted that he enter the hospital, but Vygotsky refused given his desire to finish work for the academic year.

On May 9, 1934, he had another hemorrhage and on June 2, he was hospitalized at the Serebryanii Bor Sanatorium . Just after midnight on June 11 , 1934 , he passed away. He was buried in the Novodevechii Cemetery in Moscow .

Legacy

Its bibliography includes 180 titles, of which 80 are not published. His ideas play an important role in theoretical reflection in psychology and pedagogy. Despite this, they were the victims of censorship since 1936, since their texts were considered by the Stalinist authorities as anti-Marxist and anti-proletarian. Censorship also fell on texts dealing with pedology (the science of child development). His most important work is Thought and Language (1934).

The greatest specialist in Vygotsky is James V. Wertsch . In Spain , Ángel Riviere , has probably been the one who has worked the best on his work.

Main postulates

• The social origin of higher psychic functions.
• The mediated structure of higher psychic functions.
• The unity between the biological and the social.
• Fundamental genetic law of development.
• The zone of proximal development.
• The teaching-development relationship.
• Compensatory corrective work.
• Structure of the defect.
• The sensitive periods. Early detection and care.
• Unity of thought and language.
• Unity of the affective and the cognitive.