Mike,
Peter in his message of October 17 gave a nice overview of Leontiev's
dispute with Rubinsten.
As far as I understand, one of the main points of disagreement between
Leontiev and Rubinshtein was the theoretical status of activity in
psychology. According to Rubinstein, activity in its entirety is not a
subject matter of psychological studies, and only some aspects of activity,
directly related to mental phenomena, are of interest to psychologists (who
are concerned with the mind, not activities). Leontiev responds to it as
follows
"... activity enters into the subject matter of psychology not in (or with?
-- VK) its own special "place" (aspect, part -- VK) or "element" but
through its special function. This is
the function of entrusting the subject to an objective reality and
transforming this reality into a form of subjectivity" (this is, by the
way, one of the most famous citations in Russian psychology)
In general, comparative analysis of Leontiev and Rubinshtein is a tricky
issue and I do not feel I am an expert in this area, so perhaps someone
more knowledgeable will help us out.
Also, I want to add that it would be an exaggeration to claim that Leontiev
divided psychology into the bad Western psychology and the true Soviet
psychology. In the very beginning of Chapter 3 he mentions the
contributions of Soviet psychology into psychology in general ("Soviet
psychology... was the first to introduce into psychology a number of
important categories")
Best wishes,
Victor
>Victor, please, tell us what Leontiev was constrasting his view WITH.
>Hitting on the Westerners is easy, but what about the dispute with
>Rubenshtein, in what did it/does it consist?
>mike
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