[Xmca-l] Re: "Which one question . . .?"

[Anthony Barra]

Helpful responses, thank you.

On Sun, Jan 17, 2021 at 8:50 AM Anthony Barra <anthonymbarra@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Recently I was asked: "In a room of experts, which question would you most
> like to hear a range of responses to?"
>
> On the spot, I had no answer, but I do have one now:
>
> *This question: "What do you think all this means? *(excerpted from
> Collected Works, Vol 4)
>
>    - ". . . the problem that confronts psychology is to detect the true
>    uniqueness of child behavior in all the fullness and richness of its actual
>    expression and to present a positive picture of the child personality. But
>    a positive picture is possible only if we radically change our
>    representation of child development and take into account that it is *a
>    complex dialectical process that is characterized by a complex periodicity,
>    disproportion in the development of separate functions, metamorphoses or
>    qualitative transformation of certain forms into others, a complex merging
>    of the processes of evolution and involution, a complex crossing of
>    external and internal factors, a complex process of overcoming difficulties
>    and adapting*" (Vygotsky 1997, Vol 4. pp. 98–99)
>
> It seems the question can only be answered in less than 2 minutes or more
> than 45 minutes. Is a middle range even possible?
>
> If you have any thoughts, please share.
>
> Thanks, and happy new year ~
>
> Anthony Barra
>
>
> P.S. For context, here are two preceding paragraphs to the excerpt above:
>
>    - "Should we want to characterize in a single general statement the
>    basic requisite that the problem of development raises for contemporary
>    research, we could say that this requisite consists in studying the
>    positive uniqueness of child behavior. This requires some explanation.
>    - All psychological methods used thus far for studying the behavior of
>    the normal and the abnormal child, regardless of the great variety and
>    differences that exist between them, have one common characteristic that
>    links them in a certain respect. This characteristic is the negative
>    description of the child that results from existing methods. All the
>    methods speak of what the child does not have, what the child lacks in
>    comparison with the adult, and what the abnormal child lacks as compared to
>    the normal child. We have before us always a negative picture of the child
>    personality. Such a picture tells us nothing about the positive uniqueness
>    that distinguishes the child from the adult and the abnormal child from the
>    normal child." (p. 98)
>
>
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