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Lev Vygotsky

The Historical Meaning of the Crisis in Psychology: A Methodological Investigation


Written: 1927
Source: The Collected Works of Vygotsky.
Publisher: Plenum Press, 1987
Translated: translated Rene Van Der Veer.
Transcribed: Andy Blunden and Nate Schmolze
HTML Markup: Andy Blunden and Nate Schmolze


Table of Contents:

 1 — The Nature of the Crisis

 2 — Our Approach

 3 — The Development of Sciences

 4 — Current Trends in Psychology

 5 — 

 6 —

 7 —

 8 —

 9 —

10 —

11 —

12 — The Driving Forces of the Crisis

13 — Two Psychologies

14 — Conclusion


When one mixes up the epistemological problem with the ontological one by introducing into psychology not the whole argumentation but its final results, this leads to the distortion of both. In Russia the subjective is identified with the mental and later it is proved that the mental cannot be objective. Epistemological consciousness as part of the antinomy “subject-object” is confused with empirical, psychological consciousness and then it is asserted that consciousness cannot be material, that to assume this would be Machism. And as a result one ends up with neoplatonism, in the sense of infallible essences for which being and phenomenon coincide. They flee from idealism only to plunge into it headlong.” Two Psychologies



Glossary References:

Brentano | Wundt | Dilthey | Pavlov | Freud | Adler | Koffka | Jung

Further reading:

The Work of the Cerebral Hemispheres, Pavlov 1924
The Origins of Cognitive Thought, B F Skinner 1989
Genetic Epistemology, Jean Piaget 1968