Re: RES: [xmca] Vygotskii-Lewin as gestaltists and the critics of gestaltism in '30s

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

notorious and shameful!! Wow.
mike

On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 6:35 PM, Anton Yasnitsky <the_yasya@yahoo.com>wrote:

> "The text" -- which one?
>
>
> If this is "The problem of consciousness", then its first appearance is in
> a volume "Psikhologiia grammatiki"
> (The psychology of grammar). Moscow: Izdatel'stvo MGU, 1968 (edited by
> A.A. Leontiev and T.V. Riabova).
>
> The second edition in the notiorous and shameful Collected Works of
> Vygotskii in 6 volumes,
> the one later translated into English (6 vols.) and Spanish (5 vols.).
>
> If you are asking about some other text, Joao, please, clarify which  one
> of those mentioned along the thread.
>
>
> AY
>
>
> ________________________________
>  From: Joao Martins <jbmartin@sercomtel.com.br>
> To: 'Anton Yasnitsky' <the_yasya@yahoo.com>; "'eXtended Mind, Culture,
> Activity'" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Sent: Wednesday, April 24, 2013 9:14:20 PM
> Subject: RES: [xmca] Vygotskii-Lewin as gestaltists and the critics of
> gestaltism       in '30s
>
>
> Where the text was published?
>
> Joao
>
> -----Mensagem original-----
> De: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] Em
> nome
> de Anton Yasnitsky
> Enviada em: quarta-feira, 24 de abril de 2013 21:23
> Para: Martin Packer; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Assunto: [xmca] Vygotskii-Lewin as gestaltists and the critics of
> gestaltism
> in '30s
>
> Oh, this one is pretty easy. Two points:
>
>
> Point 1. The source is fairly idiosyncratic and should be almost totally
> distrusted. Firstly, Vygotsky never wrote this text:
>
> Leontiev (A.N.) and Zaporozhets did. This text was generated on the basis
> of
> the notes the two guys were taking
>
> during Vygotskii's several hours long presentation, and only God knows what
> exactly the whole talk was about.
>
> Naturally, the title was invented by the publishers of these notes
> --Leontiev A.A. and Ryabova (Akhutina)--who
>
> released it for the first time in 1968. Then, the textological hybrid was
> republished in the Collected Works, with grave mistakes in chronology, but,
> quite  possibly, there are also other involuntary mistakes and deliberate
> censorship in the style of Yaroshevskii's usual brutal editing of
> Vygotskii's texts.
>
>
> Luckily, some notes that Vygotskii prepared BEFORE the talk have preserved
> and--
>
> hurray, hurray!--were published fairly recently by Zavershneva.
> I guess, furthermore, we also published the stuff in English some time ago.
> Quite a bonus, I would say.
> So, it might be pretty interesting to compare the two sources, whatever
> brief and fragmentary both are.
>
> Anyway, all this needs to be kept in mind as long as this publication is
> concerned.
>
>
>
>
>
> Point 2. To the matter: "cultural-historical gestalt psychology" as a
> synthesis of Soviet Luria-Vygotskian and, on the other hand,
> German-American
> gestalt psychology. Regardless of what Vygotskii--or, rather Leontiev,
> Zaporozhets and Yaroshevskii--say in this paper "The problem of
> consciousness", there is overwhelming evidence of most intensive
>
> and productive contacts between the two groups of scholars and, if not
> mutual convergence, then most enthusiastic attempts to integrate
> German-American gestaltist scholarship in the Soviet Union. I could
> probably
> try to relate this story here, but for the time being would refer to the
> work that has already been done.
>
> It took me several [already published] papers to provide arguments in
> support of this claim.
> Some of these are in Russian, but the just of one of these is available in
> English (and some other languages), too.
> All these are available here, right after Keiler's seminal work that shows
> that Vygotsky never spoke of "cultural-historical psychology" or, for that
> matter, "higher psychic functions" (vysshie psikhicheskie funktsii):
>
>
> http://www.psyanima.ru/journal/2012/1/index.php
>
>
> FYI, Russian paper provides numerous footnotes not in Russian that might
> give some idea of the contents of the paper.
>
> Also, there are a couple of nice original documents published as
> Illustrations within this Russian paper.
>
>
> Still, the paper does not deal directly with the issue of theoretical
> synthesis. Well, in fact, such paper is not written yet.
>
> In a couple of words, though, the idea is as follows, I guess: profoundly
> influenced by gestaltist holism from late 1929
>
> onwards, Vygotskii, however, moves closer to Kurt Lewin, who, in turn,
> started expressing his criticism of gestaltist
>
> preoccupation with holism in favour of more balanced view that would take
> into consideration the wholeness and,
>
> on the other hand, the life of organs and the processes in the sub-parts of
> the whole, including the processes of
>
> separation and fragmentation. This development looked too revisionist for
> the hardcore gestaltist, and fairly renegade.
> It is pretty much in this sense Vygotskii was--along with Lewin--a most
> devoted gestaltist and, at the same time,
> its staunch critic. This is how I would interpret  Lewin's and Vygotskii's
> both holism-gestaltism and its critic to the extent
>
> of the danger of excommunication from the ranks of faithful gestaltists.
> This is true of the decade of 1930s, but not earlier.
>
>
> AY
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>
> To: Anton Yasnitsky <the_yasya@yahoo.com>; "eXtended Mind, Culture,
> Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Sent: Wednesday, April 24, 2013 6:20:34 PM
> Subject: Re: [xmca] "semiotic/semantic [semicheskyj] analysis" (timeo
> Vygotskii et dona ferentem)
>
>
> Hi Anton,
>
> In "The problem of consciousness" (Collected Works, vol. 3), LSV writes
> that
> gestalt psychology makes the mistake of assuming that the psychological
> functions form a specific kind of unified structure. He says that he wants
> to treat this assumption as the problem: to explore the connections among
> the psychological functions, and how these connections change dynamically.
>
> Certainly one can read this as an influence of gestalt psychology on his
> work. But it doesn't seem much of a movement towards a synthesis, or to
> encourage such a synthesis. What's your take on this?
>
> Martin
>
> On Apr 23, 2013, at 7:54 PM, Anton Yasnitsky <the_yasya@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > As I mentioned this on several occasions, a synthesis of Vygotskian ideas
> with the solid system of gestaltist thought--
> >
> > the "cultural-historical gestalt psychology", if I may--looks like a very
> interesting and most promising option
> >
> > for the development of Vygotskiana in psychology today.
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