Re: Individual differences
Keith R Sawyer (sawyer who-is-at cats.ucsc.edu)
Thu, 4 Apr 1996 23:32:36 -0800 (PST)
In response to both Michael's posting RE individual difference, and
Arne's RE activity/action: I think Michael's posting brings these threads
together, at least for me. Because I read Soviet psychology mostly in
terms of its Marxist origins as a structural theory, I agree with Michael
that individual differences are not a concern. When I read Marx writing
that philosophy and psychology are obsolete disciplines, subsumed by
political economy (_The German Ideology p. 155), or that the "essence of
man" derives from "the sum of productive forces, capital funds and social
forms of intercourse" (p. 165), I think it would have been a stretch for
Soviet psychologists to spend too much time talking about individual
differences, since if psychology derives from social structure, then the
individuals in a society would presumably have "the same" psychology.
(Once again, this was a big issue for the critical theorists.) I remain
somewhat puzzled about how Vygotsky has been interpreted in America.
Keith Sawyer
Department of Psychology
University of California, Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, CA 95064