My source is Mikhail Yaroshevsky's book Lev Vygotsky, published by
Progress Publishers in Moscow; I got it at the 1994 Vygotsky conference
in Golitsyna and don't know if it's available in the US, though some PP
books are. Yaroshevsky devotes a chapter (which in turn is streamed
through other chapters) to "Psychology in terms of drama." Using ms's
that haven't to my knowledge yet been translated into English,
Yaroshevsky reviews V's work in the 1920's. I'll provide 2 pagagraphs
from the text (p. 217):
"What is man?" Vygotsky asked. "For Hegel, he is a logical subject. For
Pavlov, a <italic>soma</italic>, an organism. For us, he is a social
personality = <italic>an ensemble of social relations</italic> embodied
in the individual." [footnoted to L.S.V, "Konkretnaya psikhologiya
cheloveka," Concrete Psychology of Man, Vestnik Moskovskogo universiteta,
Seriya Psikhologiya, 1986, No. 1, pp. 58-9]
In this context, Vygotsky's ideas were consonant with Politzer's plan
for elaborating the problems of psychology in terms of drama. This plan
resembled the Dilthey formula "Shakespeare in concepts" only in
appearance. Being a Marxist, Politzer relied on the idea of social
determination of the individual's behaviour. After reading Politzer's
work <italic>Critique of the Foundations of Psychology,</italic> which
appeared in 1928 in Paris, Vygotsky remarked in one of his ms's of 1929:
"Dynamics of the individual=drama...The individual as a participant in a
drama. The drama of an individual...Psychology is humanised. The
psychology of man side by side with the scientific psychology of animals.
That is the meaning of Politzer's article." [ibid, pp.60-62]
Yaroshevsky goes on to say: "But when Vygotsky posited personality--a
character of the drama of life on the social stage--as the highest unit
of psychological analysis, the picture of the transformation of the story
line of that drama, of external objective relations between men, into the
invisible psychical world, assumed a different colouring" p. 219.
And so to Vygotsky, the drama of human action becomes the unit of
analysis for studying changes in consciousness, and because drama is
enacted socially, personality becomes derivative of collective life
through social mediation--a familiar theme that overlooks LSV's original
concern for the role of art in human emotion. I think that emotion must
be a central aspect of the unit of analysis, then, if one is to view it
from a Vygotskian perspective.