Vygotsky explores the cognition/emotion relationship in The Psychology of
Art and his consideration of Hamlet. Mikhael Yaroshevsky covers this
aspect of Vygotsky's work in Lev Vygotsky (Moscow: Progress Publishers,
1989) in several chapters, principally:
University Years: The Riddle of Hamlet
Art: a Social Technique for the Emotions
Psychology in Terms of Drama
Vygotsky challenged the idea that art is ornamental, contending instead
that "art is the highest concentration of all the biological and social
processes in which the individual is involved in society, that it is a mode
of finding a balance between man and the world in the most critical and
responsible moments of life" (Yaroshevsky, p. 149; translated from V's
Psych. of Art). Art is "a social technique of emotions" (Y, p. 157).
Yaroshevsky further argues that "when Vygotsky posited personality--a
character of the drama of life on the social stage--as the highest unit of
psychological analysis, the picture of the transformation of the story line
of that drama, of external objective relations between men, into the
invisible psychical world, assumed a different coloring" (p. 219).
Yaroshevsky claims that V's view of the motive for the drama of human life
served as the basis for his development of his theory of the development of
higher mental functions.
Yaroshevsky also reviews V's work on defectology in the chapter "The
Abnormal Child in the World of Culture."
At 12:19 PM 2/10/98 -0800, you wrote:
>Thanks, Roberto, for the note on emotional attachments and learning.
>I know some of the sources you cite, like Friere, but had not thought
>of him in htis context. I was actually puzzling on the way to work
>about how this query seemed not to connect on xmca. I believe it
>(the question) is a reflection of the consequences of the habitual
>dualism between cognition and emotion. I noted the other day that the
>journal "Cognition" is now called "Cognition and Emotion." Sort of
>progress?
>mike
>