[xmca] varying definitions of perezhivanie

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

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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