RE: [xmca] varying definitions of perezhivanie

["Michael Levykh" <mlevykh@shaw.ca>]

I hope the following paragraph from my 2008 PhD Theses might shed a bit more
light on your discussion: 

 

Vasilyuk (1984) writes in his annotation to Psikhologia Perezhivaniya
(Psychology of Perezhivaniye), that in order to manage (perezhits)
"situations of stress, frustration, inner conflict, and life crisis, quite
often a painful inner work has to be done in re-establishing inner
equilibrium and reconstructing a new meaningful life" (para. 1, my
translation). For him, even a painful experience in the past can be
recreated as a positive, pleasurable, meaningful future-oriented experience
of personality. Hence, perezhivaniye is a future-oriented, conscious, and
individual emotional experience of past events achieved in the
"here-and-now" through reflection on the individual's struggle within
himself/herself (e.g., as if struggling between the dual consciousness of
self and the character he/she portrays) and with the social environment
(e.g., his/her audience). Although perezhivaniye connotes mostly negative
(painful) experience of the past, its future-orientedness provides
possibilities for positive outcomes. Such positive possibilities are also
reflected in Vygotsky's optimistic views on cultural development in general.

 

Michael Levykh

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
Behalf Of mike cole
Sent: October-01-11 2:53 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture,Activity
Subject: [xmca] varying definitions of perezhivanie

 

Below are two snippets from Vasiliuk's book which have informed my,

still forming, understanding (s) of perezhivanie as used by Russians.

 

Its from Vasiliuk's book, The psych of experiencing. There is a ton to the

book of interest but

these citations bring out a feature of perezhivanie that is not evident in

"lived through experience"

nor even in "a mixture of emotion and cognition" versions.

 

This book is written within a dialogue with activity theory. perezhivanie is

translated as experiencing.

 

mike

---------------

 

But in this real world, in life, situations exist where the main problem

cannot be solved either by practical activity, even the best-equipped, or by

the most highly accurate reflection of that problem in the mind. If a person

is threatened by danger he can try to save himself by running away, but as

R. Peters writes, "if a man is overcome by grief because his wife is dead,

what can be done of a specific sort to remedy *that *situation?"

 

 

 

. when we speak of "generating meaning" what we have in mind is a

special *activity

on the part of the individual*. 7

 

The specifics of this activity are determined by the peculiarities of the

situations which put the individual under the necessity of experiencing. We

shall refer to these as critical situations. If one had to use one word only

to define the nature of such situations one would have to say that they are

situations of impossibility. Impossibility of what? Impossibility of living,

of realising the internal necessities of life.

The struggle against that impossibility, the struggle to realise internal

necessities - that is experiencing. Experiencing is the repair of a

"disruption" of life, a work of restoration, proceed-ing as it were at right

angles to the line of actualisation of life.

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