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[xmca] The Missing Part



This is the beginning of Chapter Two of Thinking and Speech that was not translated into English. I posted it once several years ago, and Anton thought it didn't add very much.
 
I think it does: it structures the whole chapter, because it makes it clear that Freud, Levy-Bruhl, and Blondel share a common idealist basis as well as a common canonical stature.
 
≪Мы полагаем, . говорит он, . что настанет день, когда мысль ребенка по отношению к мысли нормального цивилизованного взрослого будет помещена в ту же плоскость, в какой находится ≪примитивное мышление≫, охарактеризованное Леви-Брюлем, или аутистическая и символическая мысль, описанная Фрейдом и его учениками, или ≪болезненное сознание≫, если только это понятие, введенное Блонделем, не сольется в один прекрасный день с предыдущим понятием≫ (1, с.408).1 Действительно, появление его первых работ по историческому значению
 этого факта для дальнейшего развития психологической мысли должно быть по справедливости сопоставлено и сравнено с датами выхода в свет ≪Les fonctions mentales dans les societes inferieures≫ Леви-Брюля, ≪Толкования сновидений≫ Фрейда или ≪La conscience morbide≫ Блонделя. Больше того, между этими явлениями в различнейших областях научной психологии есть не только внешнее сходство, определяемое уровнем их исторического значения, но глубокое, кровное, внутреннее родство . связь по самой сути заключенных и воплощенных в них философских и
 психологических тенденций. Недаром сам Пиаже в огромной мере опирался в своих исследованиях и построениях на эти три 
работы и на их авторов. 
 

 “It is therefore our belief", says (Piaget), "that the day will come when child thought will be placed on the same level in relation to adult, normal, and civilized thought as ‘primitive mentality’, as defined by Lévy-Bruhl, as autistic and symbolical thought as described by Freud and his disciples and as ‘morbid consciousness,’ assuming that this last concept, which we owe to M. Ch. Blondel, is not simply fused with the former.” (p. 201-202). In reality, the appearance of this first works, in regard to the historic importance as a fact for future reference in the development of psychological thought must be on the compared with the appearance of “Les fonctions mentales dans les societes inferieures” of Levi- Bruhl, Freud’s “The interpretation of dreams’, or Blondel’s “La conscience morbide”. It is not simply that between these phenomena in the development of the field of scientific psychology there is a formal
 resemblance, determined by their level of historic importance, but that there is a deep, internal kinship, a connection in essence which is visible in their philosophical and psychological tendencies. Not without reason does Piaget himself base in enormous measure his own studies and constructions on these three works and on their authors. 
 
Last night I was re-reading Bleuler's criticisms of Freud in "Autistic Thinking" and I also came upon these words, which Vygotsky quotes approvingly.
 
"Examining the more grown-up child, I also do not much observe that he would prefer the imaginary apple to the real. The imbecile and the savage are alike practitioners of Realpolitik and the latter, (exactly like us, who stand at the apex of cognitive ability) makes his autistic stupidities only in such cases when reason and experience prove insufficient: in his ideas about the universe, about the phenomena of nature, in his understanding of diseases and other blows of destiny, in adopting measures to shield himself from them, and in other relationships which are too complex for him.”
 
It seems to me that here and elsewhere in this chapter Bleuler is arguing for, and Vygotsky is agreeing with, a position that is simultaneously universalist, relativist, and developmentalist. It is universalist in the sense that it argues for a universal human autistic response to areas of experience of which we are ignorant. It is relativist in the sense that it argues for the independence of an "autistic" response from rationality and an autonomous art and autonomous humanities based on that independence that is in no way subordinate to rationality. It is developmentalist in the sense that it argues for an autistic response which develops out of a narrow, immediately realistic (perception based?) reality function rather than vice versa (as in Freud, Janet, and Levy-Bruhl).
 
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education 
 



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