[Xmca-l] Re: useful psychology?

Wed Jan 15 08:21:34 PST 2020

I don’t know, I read it that he was criticizing Munsterberg with his discussion of psychotechnics, which I guess was the title of Munsterberg’s last book. To meet it reads like Vygotsky was thinking Munsterberg was falling into a dangerous materialist trap. Maybe that’s what you are saying Andy.

Michael

From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> On Behalf Of Andy Blunden
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2020 2:39 AM
To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: useful psychology?

This is what I was looking for:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/crisis/psycri12.htm#p1207<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/crisis/psycri12.htm*p1207__;Iw!!KGKeukY!kwgYnHOPX75Ybl3Dlo9PqMByhQGk_i4UVIzFuijyPSYMkYPw1dl1syiX0IBkzm3Ep0s$>

It was the exclusion of "psychotechnics" from the fundamental problems of psychology which he objected to. On the contrary, the philosophy of practice provided all the solutions to these problems. "The goal of such a psychology is not Shakespeare in concepts, as it was for Dilthey, but in one word – psychotechnics, i.e., a scientific theory which would lead to the subordination and mastery of the mind, to the artificial control of behaviour."

Thanks all.
Andy

________________________________
Andy Blunden
Hegel for Social Movements<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/brill.com/view/title/54574__;!!KGKeukY!kwgYnHOPX75Ybl3Dlo9PqMByhQGk_i4UVIzFuijyPSYMkYPw1dl1syiX0IBk8iLcReg$>
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On 15/01/2020 3:09 pm, David Kellogg wrote:
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://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10749039.2020.1711775__;!!KGKeukY!kwgYnHOPX75Ybl3Dlo9PqMByhQGk_i4UVIzFuijyPSYMkYPw1dl1syiX0IBktaxJh-A$>
Some free e-prints available at:
https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/SK2DR3TYBMJ42MFPYRFY/full?target=10.1080/10749039.2020.1711775<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.tandfonline.com/eprint/SK2DR3TYBMJ42MFPYRFY/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1711775__;Lw!!KGKeukY!kwgYnHOPX75Ybl3Dlo9PqMByhQGk_i4UVIzFuijyPSYMkYPw1dl1syiX0IBkmu8ynwE$>

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

 https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!KGKeukY!kwgYnHOPX75Ybl3Dlo9PqMByhQGk_i4UVIzFuijyPSYMkYPw1dl1syiX0IBkiawojtY$>

On Wed, Jan 15, 2020 at 1:02 PM mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu<mailto: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<mailto: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://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10749039.2020.1711775__;!!KGKeukY!kwgYnHOPX75Ybl3Dlo9PqMByhQGk_i4UVIzFuijyPSYMkYPw1dl1syiX0IBktaxJh-A$>
Some free e-prints available at:
https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/SK2DR3TYBMJ42MFPYRFY/full?target=10.1080/10749039.2020.1711775<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.tandfonline.com/eprint/SK2DR3TYBMJ42MFPYRFY/full?target=10.1080*10749039.2020.1711775__;Lw!!KGKeukY!kwgYnHOPX75Ybl3Dlo9PqMByhQGk_i4UVIzFuijyPSYMkYPw1dl1syiX0IBkmu8ynwE$>

On Wed, Jan 15, 2020 at 11:49 AM Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org<mailto: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
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