I have been reading Mihail Yaroshevsky's book on Vygotsky (Progress).
He has a very
interesting of "Psychology in terms of drama" which I had previously
overlooked. There he focuses on an article by Vygotsky that appeared
in the Russian version of Collected Works
that is not in the English version. - That table of contents came in
handy right away!
Here LSV has a long discussion of the relation of his ideas to those
of Politzer, who is
refenced in the English language edition, but not as fully. This
appears to be the source of
ideas about personality as a "special organization, the primary
concept of higher psychology."
"The specificity of this category lies in that, being different from
two other universal concepts, organism and society, it canonly be
understood in terms of these concepts. The individual
is "a SOCIAL UNIT." This unit does not exist outside a system of links
with other individuals. Vygotsky often quoted Marx's dictum: "Peter
only establishes his own identity as a man by first comparing himself
with Paul."
And later: "The individual is the highest form of sociality." (pp
218-291 in Yaroshevski)
Aside from identifying a unit of analysis for the study of the entire
individual/person-ality, this
discussion helps me understand for the first time why Luria, in his
x-cultural studies, had a chapter where he asked questions about
knowledge of the self in relation to culture.And, it
clearly links to the current almost-discussion of the dialogical
creation of the self.
But, is there no version of this in English? If so, I will ask the
editor of J of Russian and
East European psych to get it translated. Seems well worth while knowing better.
Translation anyone?
mike
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