[Xmca-l] Re: useful psychology?

[David Kellogg]

But psychotechnics was really the Soviet version of human resource
management. The idea was to select particular "types" for particular jobs.
It wasn't really a Soviet idea--it started in Germany (and in fact, the
Nazis were very big on it; the selection ramp at Auschwitz was based on
it). In China, there was also quite a bit of emphasis on making sure that
people suited the professions chosen for them, as education was a very
scarce resource.

Isaac Spielrein--Sabine's brother, who was a colleague of Vygotsky--was a
psychotechnician; his essay on the language of the Red Army soldier is
written with that perspective in mind. And it was at a psychotechnic
conference that Vygotsky was asked if there could be a pedology of adults,
to aid in psychotechnic selection.

Vygotsky said no.

David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

New Article: 'Commentary: On the originality of Vygotsky's "Thought and
Word" i
in *Mind Culture and Activity*

*https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10749039.2020.1711775
<https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10749039.2020.1711775>*
Some free e-prints available at:
https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/SK2DR3TYBMJ42MFPYRFY/full?target=10.1080/10749039.2020.1711775

New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: "L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works
Volume One: Foundations of Pedology"

 https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270




On Wed, Jan 15, 2020 at 1:02 PM mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:

> Might you be looking for “psychotechnics” Andy?
> Mike
>
> On Tue, Jan 14, 2020 at 7:35 PM David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Andy--
>>
>> That really doesn't sound like Vygotsky to me.
>>
>> Yes, he refers to art as the "social technique of emotion" (Psychology of
>> Art). Yes, he did experiments on reading "Gentle Breath" to see if Bunin's
>> short story had any affect on breathing rates. But as far as I know he had
>> nothing to do with Luria's work on lie detectors (in The Nature of Human
>> Conflict), and he was even rather skeptical of Luria's work on optical
>> illusions in "uneducated" peoples
>>
>> . Remember, this is the guy who denied that a general psychology could
>> ever cut itself off from practice and vice versa (History of the Crisis in
>> Psychology), who rejected the idea that thinking is speech with the sound
>> turned off (Thinking and Speech). Besides, who ever heard of a technology
>> opposed to an epistemology? What would that mean? A hand without a brain?
>>
>> Vygotsky sounds more like this: "Neither the hand nor the brain left to
>> itself can do much."  Francis Bacon, *Novum Organum* (1620), Book 1,
>> Aphorism 2.
>>
>> David Kellogg
>> Sangmyung University
>>
>> New Article: 'Commentary: On the originality of Vygotsky's "Thought and
>> Word" i
>> in *Mind Culture and Activity*
>>
>> *https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10749039.2020.1711775
>> <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10749039.2020.1711775>*
>> Some free e-prints available at:
>>
>> https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/SK2DR3TYBMJ42MFPYRFY/full?target=10.1080/10749039.2020.1711775
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Jan 15, 2020 at 11:49 AM Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org> wrote:
>>
>>> There's somewhere where Vygotsky talks about psychology as a technology
>>> as opposed to (for example) an epistemology. Can anyone point me to where
>>> this observation is to be found. I can find it with my search engines. I
>>> think Vygotsky and Luria's invention of the lie-detector has been mentioned
>>> in this connection.
>>>
>>> Andy
>>>
>>
>>> --
>>> ------------------------------
>>> *Andy Blunden*
>>> Hegel for Social Movements <https://brill.com/view/title/54574>
>>> Home Page <https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm>
>>>
>> --
>  fiction is but a form of symbolic action, a mere game of “as if”,
> therein lies its true   function and its potential for effecting change -
> R. Ellison
> ---------------------------------------------------
> For archival resources relevant to the research of myself and other
> members of LCHC, visit
> lchc.ucsd.edu.  For a narrative history of the research of LCHC, visit
> lchcautobio.ucsd.edu.
>
>
>
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