The society into which the child is born is therefore not to be conceived
merely as a loose aggregate made up of a number of biological individuals.
It is rather a body of mental products, an established network of
psychical relationships. By this, the new person is moulded and shaped
to his maturity. He enters into this network as a new cell in the social
tissue, joining in its movement, revealing its nature and contributing
to its growth. It is literally a tissue, psychological in character, in
the development of which the new individual is differentiated. He does not
enter into it as an individual.On the contrary, he is only an individual
when he comes out of it by a process of "budding" or "cell division" to
pursue the physiological analogy. Society is a mass of mental and moral
states and values, which perpetuates itself in individual persons. In
the personal self, the social is individualized."
Emily Cahan wrote about James Mark Baldwin in her self intro. The quote
is from his History of Psychology, Volume 2. Baldwin was drawn upon by
both Piaget and Vygotsky, among others.
See why its worthwhile to study the history of cultural-historical
ideas in psychology?
mike