[Xmca-l] "Which one question . . .?"

[Anthony Barra]

Recently I was asked: "In a room of experts, which question would you most
like to hear a range of responses to?"

On the spot, I had no answer, but I do have one now:

*This question: "What do you think all this means? *(excerpted from
Collected Works, Vol 4)

   - ". . . the problem that confronts psychology is to detect the true
   uniqueness of child behavior in all the fullness and richness of its actual
   expression and to present a positive picture of the child personality. But
   a positive picture is possible only if we radically change our
   representation of child development and take into account that it is *a
   complex dialectical process that is characterized by a complex periodicity,
   disproportion in the development of separate functions, metamorphoses or
   qualitative transformation of certain forms into others, a complex merging
   of the processes of evolution and involution, a complex crossing of
   external and internal factors, a complex process of overcoming difficulties
   and adapting*" (Vygotsky 1997, Vol 4. pp. 98–99)

It seems the question can only be answered in less than 2 minutes or more
than 45 minutes. Is a middle range even possible?

If you have any thoughts, please share.

Thanks, and happy new year ~

Anthony Barra


P.S. For context, here are two preceding paragraphs to the excerpt above:

   - "Should we want to characterize in a single general statement the
   basic requisite that the problem of development raises for contemporary
   research, we could say that this requisite consists in studying the
   positive uniqueness of child behavior. This requires some explanation.
   - All psychological methods used thus far for studying the behavior of
   the normal and the abnormal child, regardless of the great variety and
   differences that exist between them, have one common characteristic that
   links them in a certain respect. This characteristic is the negative
   description of the child that results from existing methods. All the
   methods speak of what the child does not have, what the child lacks in
   comparison with the adult, and what the abnormal child lacks as compared to
   the normal child. We have before us always a negative picture of the child
   personality. Such a picture tells us nothing about the positive uniqueness
   that distinguishes the child from the adult and the abnormal child from the
   normal child." (p. 98)
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