Thanks, Mike, for taking the time to answer my question. It is interesting
(and sad) that mainstream psychologists have been so reluctant to use
literary works as a source of insight for their work. Of course, psychology
would have been so different if psychologists would have had the courage to
tackle literature not only to support, partially, their ideas but also as a
source of research questions. It would have been less obvious too! I guess
that what is behind that attitude is not only psychologists' mistrust of the
humanities in general but also their rejection to the work (and openness) of
interpretation. There are exceptions, of course. I think especially of the
work of Jerome Bruner and what we could call the "narrative school" that
follows up his work. Still, it is impossible to think today of any
psychology department in the US that would be open to hire an assistant
professor with a research program in the psychology of literature!
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Cole" <mcole@weber.ucsd.edu>
To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Saturday, August 02, 2003 4:05 PM
Subject: literature and psychology
>
> I apologize for failing to respond to the question about literature
> and psychology. I do so now only because the other tasks facing me
> are difficult, so I can play at working instead.
>
> If you have not done so, it is worth dipping into Vygotsky's *Psychology
> of Art* which is not in the collected works. The first chapter is
> fascinating, among other things, for Vygotsky's adoption of ideas from
> Plekhanov, an important Marxist thinker in the early USSR, which adopted
> a base/superstructure distinction and located psychology vis a vis
> ideology on the sociopolitical regime (underpinned by economic system)
> on the other. And the examples are all from literature, which is the
> subject of the treatise.
>
> But mostly we are talking about (at least I was talking about) the
> insights from literature which can be found in a lot of LSV's writting.
>
> We could start with Mandelshtam, a poet: I forgot the word I wanted to
> say, and thought, unembodied, returned to the hall of shadows. This
> epigram for the chapter on Thought and Word in "Thinking and Speech"
(1987)
> is full for literary examples as sources of illustration and discovery
> of principles that LSV then seeks to confirm in different ways. There is
> the famous scene from War and Peace where the two-to-be lovers, levin and
> kitty, speak in the initial letters of the words to declare their love,
> the group of drunks using a single word to mean many different things.
> (from Dostoevski). Somewhere LSV uses Pierre trying to decide whether or
> not to go to Borodino to fight Napolean as an example of a decision
> making artifact: using dice to decide the outcome.
>
> One of the great things about teaching in a communication department is
> that all of human culture is allowable as legitimate sources of insight
> into important principles. Montage in music and film, narrative of course,
> poetry (I will try to post a couple of poem's which have had a profound
> influence on my thinking about language, thought, and development).
>
> There are, of course, many different ways in which to use literature, art,
> film, etc as a working cultural historical activity theorist. Yrjo
> uses a Finnish folk tale and Huck Finn to talk about Zones of Proximal
> Development and a
> Peter Houg novel to talk about development. Puzerei in Russia actually
> used Dostoevsky as a major source of data for elaborating on the concept
> of perezhivanie, one of those words we worry a lot about on xmca
(literally
> experiencing, but probably more closely approximated by the idea of having
> a very intense experience).
>
> My own practice has been to use literature as a source of ideas and to
seek
> (or stumble over!) the insight they provide into very different domains,
> such as the organization of kids' activity using computers.
>
> Phew. Now time to turn back to work and pretend its play, instead of the
> other way round!
> mike
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