I've just finished reading the final chapter of Leontyev's book. In this
chapter he does come to a criticism of typology and various strands of
"differential psychology". I found his descriptions of the successive
crises of the formation of personality new and very stimulating, as well as
many other aspects of the rich and complex chapter.
However, despite his insistent opposition to anthropological positions, I
find his elaboration of differential psychology quite unsatisfactory. Of
course, he does not claim such an 'elaboration', but only to sketch its
basis.
But still. He points to three parameters of personality: "the extent of the
connections of man with the world, the degree to which they are arranged in
hierarchies, and their general structure". Hierarchy refers to hierarchies
of motives from biological up to aesthetic etc., and the transformation
between goals and motives, etc. In terms of general structure it appears
that here we deal with more or less balanced or complete internalisations
of the social locality, and the degree of development of motivational
lines. All is qualified by "the process of development of personality
always remains deeply individual, unique", but this still to me is
tantamount to relegating differential personality or typology to the
function of "noise", "eccentricity" or "completeness".
Leontyev consistently argues against that "anthropologist (or
cultural-anthropologistic) approach" and never fails to point out the
activity of the subject as the former of personality, but I still fail to
see any indication of the possible *general structures or types* of this
activity.
In her book Isabel Briggs Myer says that "the four processes ... are gifts
that all people are born with" and goes on to say that full personal
development requires the development of all the processes, which would of
course the disappearance of type. Isn't this situation a bit like the
position of modern society? The specific ways in which people "fall short"
of "Socialist Man" (to use a 19th century term) are in fact not all
'short-comings' but indications of the component parts of development.
A practical example: the most frequent criticism of the opponents of the
those who advocate teaching methods based on Activity Theory here is that
they say, "But don't you realise that there are different methods of
learning, that kids have preferences about how they learn and not all of
them get on with the style of collaborative learning you are advocating
based on your particular theory of psychology". This is a fair criticism in
fact. There are different preferred methods of learning, but that does not
cause me to draw sceptical, post-modern conclusions as some others here do.
That is, a basic Activity Theory of Psychology still leaves room for
different methods of learning and preferences for ways of learning, and
teaching for that matter. So one of the things teachers have to learn is to
recognise and be sensitive to differences and preferences among their
students and be prepared to engage in quite different activity accordingly.
I would like an indication of the approach of CHAT to understanding these
kind of problems.
It frequently happens that the coexistence of opposites constitutes just a
phase in the development of a process from a state of undisclosed unity to
one of mature unity and complete development and interpenetration; the
opposites and the struggle of opposites then is "just" a passing phase, and
"illusion" - but its transcendance, its completion, is the only way of
abolishing itself.
Andy
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| - Andy Blunden - Home Page - http://home.mira.net/~andy/index.htm - |
| All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational |
| solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.|
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