Vygotsky the Psychology of Art Focuses on What Piece of Literature
PSYCHOLOGY OF ART
Centro Universitário de Brasília, Brasil
Vygotsky'due south "The Psychology of Art": A foundational and all the same unexplored text
Estudos de Psicologia (Campinas) , vol. 35, no. 4, pp. 339-350, 2018
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Psicologia, Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Campinas
Received: 12 March 2018
Revised certificate received: 06 June 2018
Accustomed: xix June 2018
Abstract: In the concluding x years, new trends in the interpretation of Vygotsky's work accept been adult, many of which have transcended the traditional interpretations that have been hegemonic in Soviet and Western psychology since the 1980s. Withal, Vygotsky's "The Psychology of Art" is among the most interesting books written past this Soviet psychologist and, paradoxically, has non received plenty attention in the study of his legacy. In that book, Vygotsky developed a rich psychology, in dialogue with Philosophy, Sociology and Art. In this paper, some theoretical questions and concepts developed by Vygotsky are discussed, which were not included in the dominant estimation of his work, neither in Soviet nor Western psychology. The discussion opened by Vygotsky throughout the volume shows that philosophy, art, poesy, Sociology and Psychology are interrelated in such a way that they are a living theoretical representation whose epicenter was man motivation and the creative character of human operation.
Keywords: Art, Inventiveness, Imagination, Motivation, Perezhivanie.
Resumo: Nos últimos dez anos, têm sido desenvolvidos trabalhos sobre as novas tendências na interpretação da obra de Vygotsky, muitos dos quais transcenderam every bit interpretações tradicionais que foram hegemônicas na psicologia Soviética east ocidental desde a década de oitenta. Não obstante, a obra "A Psicologia da Arte", de Vygotsky, está entre os livros mais interessantes escritos pelo psicólogo soviético, due east paradoxalmente, até o momento não recebeu suficiente atenção no estudo de seu legado. Nesse livro, Vygotsky constrói uma rica psicologia, estabelecendo diálogos com a Filosofia, a Sociologia e a Arte. Neste trabalho são discutidas algumas questões teóricas e conceitos desenvolvidos por Vygotsky que não foram incluídos na interpretação dominante de seu trabalho, nem na psicologia Soviética, nem na psicologia Ocidental. A discussão aberta por Vygotsky ao longo do livro mostra que a filosofia, a arte, a poesia, a Sociologia e a Psicologia, estão interrelacionadas, de tal forma que, são uma representação teórica de vive para que o epicentro foi a motivação humana e o criativo personagem do desempenho humano.
Palavras-chave: Arte, Criatividade, Imaginação, Motivação, Perejivanie.
Vygotsky may be the only author in the history of psychology whose work was broadly discussed worldwide before many of his writings were really published in their original language. Such an unprecedented state of affairs was possible due to a psychology that was developed in an surround of high pressure, censorship and distortions, which was the reason why, until very contempo times, the history of Soviet psychology could not be used as a source for new constructions, assay and reflections on Soviet psychology.
This newspaper aims to reveal some theoretical questions and concepts developed by Vygotsky that were not included in the dominant interpretation of his work, neither in Soviet nor Western psychology, where some of his terminal ideas and concepts have just recently begun to exist discussed. Still, it is important to stress that some of his afterward ideas first appeared in the book, "The Psychology of Art", in which Vygotsky opened what I called years agone as the "first moment of Vygotsky's work" (González Rey, 2011), whose principal concepts and ideas were taken upwards once more just at the end of his life, betwixt 1932 and 1934.
Information technology is astonishing that Vygotsky focused on art at a fourth dimension when psychology was largely dominated by an empirical style of doing science, within which art and civilization were completely excluded. In "The Psychology of Art", the keen merit of Vygotsky is that he was still not under institutional and ideological soviet pressures, or widely influenced past relevant and better-known theories such equally Gestalt psychology that usefully and productively influenced the terminal moment of his work. It is truthful that the version of "The Psychology of Art" dedicated every bit doctoral thesis by Vygotsky in 1925 expressed the influences of Kornilov'due south work in some paragraphs, which were completely contradictory with the rest of the text.
More recently, different authors have drawn special attention to the final menstruation of Vygotsky's piece of work (González Rey, 2011; Leontiev, 1992; Yasnitsky, 2009, 2012, 2015; Zavershneva, 2010, 2015). However, the link betwixt this period and the ideas discussed by him in "The Psychology of Art" has remained beyond researchers' attention.
In this paper, it is intended to prove how some of the seminal ideas advanced past Vygotsky in "The Psychology of Art" were taken up again by himself in 1932, when he continued the pathway which he had begun with in that book and which he focused on until 1934, the twelvemonth of his death. The newspaper is organized as follows. Firstly, the primary contributions of "The Psychology of Fine art" are discussed in depth. Secondly, I discuss why this book was just published forty years subsequently its introduction equally Vygotsky's doctoral thesis, also as the bear upon that its preface, written by A.Due north. Leontiev, had in terms of lack of attention given to "The Psychology of Art" in Soviet psychology and consequently in Western psychology. Finally, Vygotsky's return to the topics of his original agenda between 1931 and 1934, is discussed, likewise as the development of these topics towards the discussion of meaning, perezhivanie and the social situation of development, topics that open a new path for extending his legacy to topics that take been historically less developed within the cultural-historical standpoint, such as subjectivity, creativity and motivation.
The theoretical originality of "The Psychology of Art" in the context of Russian psychology of the time
In "The Psychology of Art", Vygotsky continuously referred to more diverse expressions of psychology and culture of that fourth dimension. The discussion opened by Vygotsky throughout the volume shows that philosophy, fine art, poetry, folklore and psychology are interrelated in such a mode that they are a living theoretical representation whose epicenter was human being motivation and the creative character of human functioning. Russian poets quoted by Vygotsky in this text did not appear again in psychology or artistic magazines in the Soviet Spousal relationship for 50 years. Vygotsky's interest in the psychological functioning of the creative artist, which was a relevant precedent to approach the study of creativity in a unlike way, was made articulate in the next statement:
By its nature, artistic perezhivanie remains incomprehensible and closed to the subject area in its course and essence. We never know why we like or dislike a work of art. Everything we intend to explain their influence is later on thought to be a consummate rationalization of unconscious processes. The very essence of perezhivanie remains a mystery for us
(Vygotsky, 1965, p.25; translated from the Russian version by the author).
Here, Vygotsky emphasizes that perezhivanie is non a simple "emotional feel", as is commonly assumed in English translations. Perezhivanie has a specific psychological nature, stressing emotions every bit intrinsic to the creative functions in a process that is not accessible to the human being being through consciousness. Circuitous psychological networks and dynamics lie behind these tendencies and need to be further studied. From the very beginning, Vygotsky's work recognized the emotional undertones of human deportment and performances that are beyond the witting command of the subject.
Vygotsky avant-garde a theoretical representation of motivation supported by the concept of perezhivanie every bit an emotional state of the creator that qualified their performance beyond whatsoever witting proposal. Vygotsky seemed to worry almost the subject's motivational formations rather than nearly the psychological entities or functions. In this sense, he used the concept of perezhivanie to ascertain a set up of emotions inherent to human performance. Perezhivanie was used to define the intrinsic emotional character of cosmos in fine art, as well every bit to explain the perception of the artistic work. Art, from his perspective, was intrinsically associated with feeling, imagination and fantasy.
Nosotros can never say exactly why we like one or another art production; words tin hardly ever express the essential and most important aspects of perezhivanie and, as Plato stated (in his dialogue Ion), poets know the fashion by which they create less than anyone else
(Vygotsky, 1965, p.93; translated from the Russian version by the author).
With the concept of perezhivanie, Vygotsky established dialogues with German psychologists devoted to the relations between fantasy and emotions in artistic creation, and with Freud on the basis of common interests, which revealed his great marvel for the emotional inner life of homo beings and its unconscious grapheme. Notwithstanding, Vygotsky gradually introduced his own opinions and concepts, like perezhivanie, through which he avant-garde new demands in his search for an understanding of creative motivation, as we volition see below. Vygotsky's sympathy with Freud was clear in chapter 4 of "The Psychology of Art", in which Vygotsky established a critical dialogue with Freud. Though stressing his differences with Freud, Vygotsky was, at the aforementioned fourth dimension, very impressed by Freud's audacious and creative ideas about the unconscious character of some psychological processes and the central place given to fantasy. Notwithstanding, unlike Freud, Vygotsky did non associate perezhivanie, the nature of which he divers as unconscious, with inner human being universal forces and defined it as being closely related with activeness.
Vygotsky'south and Luria'due south relations with psychoanalysis extended until the terminate of the 1920s (Van der Veer & Valsiner, 1991). The attention drawn by Vygotsky to Freud in "The Psychology of Art" is another statement for the openness of Vygotsky's original thinking while he was writing the start version of the book. Vygotsky´southward orientation to psychology in "The Psychology of Art" was clearly addressed to the study of the affective side of the human.
"The Psychology of Art" had historically been excluded, as an "immature" moment in Vygotsky's work. I believe this was a issue of the type of psychology proposed past Vygotsky in this book, which represented the opposite of the objectivist path, taken by official versions of Soviet psychology from those years until the mid-1970s (González Rey, 2014, 2017). In addition, another fact that contributed to the representation of "The Psychology of Fine art" every bit an immature work was Leontiev'southward brusk newspaper written equally the preface of the 1965 Russian edition of "The Psychology of Fine art". This introduction tin can be interpreted as a theoretical critique of the volume which, in this case, included political connotations.
The real importance of the concept of perezhivanie in "The Psychology of Art" has long passed unnoticed and many Vygotsky interpreters who are interested in the concept still do not consider the use to perezhivanie given by Vygotsky in this book. It was in "The Psychology of Art" that Vygotsky highlighted perezhivanie as the set of emotional processes that integrates the unit fantasy-emotion as inseparable from artistic cosmos.
The involvement of emotions in human creation was promising due to its potential for explaining a new qualitative level of the human being psyche inside which emotions are inseparable from intellectual operations. This position predictable Vygotsky'due south emphasis on the intellectual and emotional unity that characterized his holistic period, between 1932 and 1934 (Yasnitsky, 2015; Zavershneva, 2015). Concentrated heavily on artistic perezhivanie, Vygotsky could non extend its utilise to other types of homo performance in which the individual is actively involved as the creative subject of the action. However, perezhivanie was a key concept in his emphasis on the emotional side of human being life.
"The Psychology of Art" was non only an expression of the broad intellectual and cultural interests of Vygotsky in the starting time moment of his work, it was also an expression of Vygotsky´s special interest in the topics of emotions, fantasy and imagination, which formed one of the theoretical cores of "The Psychology of Art". His dialogue with Freud and Ribot also evidenced his interest in the relation of those topics with mental disorders. And then, in a dialogue with Ribot, Vygotsky stated:
This new approach can be described approximately as follows: The psychologists continue from the irrefutable clan that exists between emotion and imagination. We know that every emotion has a psychic expression in addition to a physical one. In other words, a feeling "is embodied, fixed in an idea, as is evidenced in cases of persecution mania", according to Ribot. Consequently, an emotion is expressed by the mimic, pantomimic, secretory, and somatic responses of our organism. It also requires some expression of our imagination. We find the best evidence for this view amidst the so called objectless emotions. Pathological phobias, persistent fears, and then forth, are ever associated with specific ideas, most of which are absolutely false and misconstrue reality, but in then doing, find their "psychic" expression. A patient who suffers from obsessive fearfulness is emotionally ill, his fear is irrational; and so in order to rationalize it, he imagines that everyone is pursuing and persecuting him
(Vygotsky, 1971, p.209).
At that fourth dimension, Vygotsky was closer to subjectivity than at any other moment of his work. The idea that "feeling is embodied, fixed in an idea", as stressed past Vygotsky, was an important antecedent of the way he would approach the concept of unit in the terminal stage of his work, mainly expressed by concepts such every bit senses and perezhivanie. Yet, in that terminal stage of his work, Vygotsky was still far from the position that any idea, once information technology becomes subjectively configured, distorts reality, creating imaginary realities, which is the cornerstone of our proposal of subjectivity. Even so, Vygotsky's most important theoretical intuition is that, aside from the unlike corporal and somatic expressions of emotions, these processes e'er require the expression of imagination. Art was the path for Vygotsky to accelerate a new and original representation of the human heed. Following his previous thought, Vygotsky took an audacious step frontward:
This means that in essence, all our fantasy experiences take identify on a completely existent emotional basis. We see, therefore, that emotion and imagination are not two separate processes; on the contrary, they are the aforementioned process. We tin regard a fantasy every bit the central expression of an emotional reaction
(Vygotsky, 1971, p.210).
The consideration of fantasy "as the key expression of an emotional reaction" is essential considering it integrates emotions with psychological functions. Such integration emphasizes the "fictional character" of psychological functions, the objectivity of which is inseparable from their cultural and emotional grapheme. This is an statement which implies that objectivity should be considered as a culturally produced concept. Properly human processes and realities are fictional, not because they are non-objective, merely because they are new realities invented by human being beings, which progressively divide them more and more from nature. This man nature is inseparable from a plot of different facts and atmospheric condition that are not controlled past individuals or social instances; this fact defines all man processes and realities as objective. Nonetheless, human realities, processes and facts share a qualitative attribute that does not exist in the rest of natural phenomena; their subjective graphic symbol turns human beings into creators, making them capable of creating new, original realities and processes within which, in turn, subjectivity emerges.
Taking the prior statements equally starting points, information technology is possible to advance in the recognition that our "imaginary situations" are founded on a "completely real emotional basis", which implies in recognizing fantasy experiences as a new kind of human miracle. Homo realities and their objectivity are inseparable from human deportment, and therefore, for man beings, objectivity is always subjectively produced in human relations. The relevance of this process is that the fictional reality of civilisation is part of the genesis and evolution of the human being mind, and the human mind defines new moments in the production of culture, in an endless process inside which neither civilization nor human being listen are objectified past i some other, something that Vygotsky never made explicit in his work.
Vygotsky´s definition of culture was still very narrow, identifying civilisation mainly with language, without because homo institutions, and other human domains like science, politics and other socially given phenomena as cultural instances. The topic of the symbolic was very narrowly treated by Vygotsky, who mainly emphasized the sign among the many various symbols, symbolical devices and realities (Zinchenko, 1993).
In "The Psychology of Art" Vygotsky expressed his concern at the absenteeism of a psychological theory capable of advancing the study of sentiments and fantasies, topics that for a long time had been monopolized by psychoanalysis:
Information technology is necessary to say, however, that there are non whatsoever more than obscure topics than these ii (Vygotsky is referring to sentiments and fantasy) and although they have been subject to more than evolution and examination in recent times, at least until today, unfortunately, we accept no full general recognized and elaborated system for the written report of sentiments and fantasy
(Vygotsky, 1965, p.256, translated from the Russian version by the author).
Vygotsky'south business concern with the absence of theoretical systems capable of bringing light to topics such equally sentiments and fantasy, clearly evidenced his interest in advancing a psychology capable of studying these phenomena. Focused on these topics, Vygotsky created the ground for advancing new ways in the report of motivation and creativity. On such a unlike psychological organization, Vygotsky attempted to advance it in the last moment of his work through a new definition of consciousness (González Rey, 2009, 2011, 2017; Leontiev, 1992; Zavershneva, 2015).
"The Psychology of Art" as well brought to light some methodological insights that dealt closely with its theoretical proposal.
For this reason, I think it is necessary to suggest another method for the psychology of fine art, which needs a articulate methodological footing. Against this proposal, I volition frequently object to what is often said in relation to the study of the unconscious: the unconscious is, according to its own meaning, something not recognized past us and therefore not articulate for us, and for this reason, it could not become the object of scientific research. Starting from this erroneous premise that "we can study merely (and in full general can only know) what we direct recognize has no support considering nosotros study and know many things that we practise not straight know and what we know only with the support of analogies, constructions, hypotheses, conclusions, deductions and so on, in general past indirect ways"
(Vygotsky, 1965, pp.32-33; translated from the Russian version past the writer).
Vygotsky acutely perceived that to farther advance on the questions he raised in "The Psychology of Fine art", information technology was important to use indirect routes, analogies and assumptions as methodological resources for following the circuitous processes of human creation. This relevant epistemological assumption has been completely unnoticed by Vygotsky's followers within and outside Soviet psychology. In the Soviet Union, epistemological discussions in item were taboo due to their philosophical implications for a science ruled by a strict objectivity based on the empirical correspondence between theory and empirical facts.
Nosotros stated in the get-go chapter that this point of view was incorrect and that practice magnificently denies it. This shows that scientific discipline studies not only immediate and recognized facts, just likewise a series of phenomena and events that can be studied only indirectly by means of footsteps and vestiges, and with the help of material that is non only completely different from what we study just which is frequently fake
(Vygotsky, 1965, p.94; translated from Russian version by the writer).
These methodological assumptions advanced in the opposite direction to the positivist path taken by the instrumental and experimental positions that characterized first the researchers in Kornilov's grouping, and subsequently the experimental studies of psychological functions that were conducted post-obit the Activity Theory framework. These natural and objective methodological positions were as well defended past Vygotsky between 1927 and 1931 (Vygotsky, 2012).
The Psychology of Art": its showtime publication 40 years after its presentation as Vygotsky'southward doctoral thesis
This starting time edition of "The Psychology of Fine art" was published in 1965 with a short "introductory paper" past A. North. Leontiev, a fact that, taken together with the omission of Soviet psychology regarding the topics discussed by Vygotsky in that volume, contributes to explaining the lack of attention for this book in Soviet psychology. Vygotsky'southward piece of work was centered on art, but his reflections had relevant implications to the evolution of a general psychology, since the motivational and creative processes discussed by him in relation to art are general to all homo motivated performances. In that introduction, Leontiev made a presentation/wrote an introduction stressing the idea that the volume represented a historical piece of work with piddling theoretical value, because the advances of Soviet psychology in the twoscore years afterwards the book had been written. That edition had little touch on in the Soviet Spousal relationship.
No matter how afar this prologue was written in relation to the original version of the book, to some extent it permits an explanation of why the book was published then tardily, as well as of the slight bear on it had in Soviet psychology. Since 1951, Leontiev had been the Chair of Psychology in the Kinesthesia of Philosophy of the University of Moscow. He enjoyed the peak of his intellectual and political prestige in 1963, when he received the "Lenin Prize". Why then, instead of using the publication of "The Psychology of Art" every bit a first step to the introduction of Vygotsky in the West, did he write such a highly critical introductory paper to a book that was extremely difficult to admission, given the small-scale numbers of this edition?
Leontiev's preface to this edition of "The Psychology of Art" seemed to have a political proposal that announced the principal trends of Soviet psychology in the 1960s. His introductory newspaper represented a written testimony of the integration of Vygotsky'due south ideas within the Activity Theory as it was developed by Leontiev, which represented the new dominant official psychology of the Soviet Wedlock in the 1960s.
From the very get-go of his preface, Leontiev diminished the moment of Vygotsky'south ideas with political argumentation:
Vygotsky wrote "The Psychology of Fine art" forty years ago in the years of the establishment of Soviet psychological science. At that time a battle was still being waged with the idealistic psychology that dominated the near important psychological research center of the country – the Institute of Psychology of the University of Moscow, headed past professor Chelpanov. ... At that time, Vygotsky was still a immature man within scientific psychology, and it is also possible to say an unexpected human being
(Leontiev, 1965, p.three-iv; translated from the Russian version past the writer).
It is curious from a historical perspective that, even afterward Stalinism was officially overcome, the political discourse of Leontiev continued the aforementioned arguments developed past Soviet psychology in the 1930s, an expression of pressure and institutional political control at a fourth dimension when social fear strongly characterized the social subjectivity of the land. The arguments given by Leontiev in 1965 are similar to those that supported the most conservative sector of Soviet psychology in the 1920s and 30s. Leontiev'south ideological orthodoxy at that time was a clear evidence of his political position, which was incommunicable to dissever from his theoretically bourgeois position in psychology. Leontiev invalidated Vygotsky and the all-time Russian poets and intellectuals of the time by stressing that socialist realism was non however an option when "The Psychology of Art" was introduced. In 1965, Leontiev connected to defend socialist realism.
After all the criticism, as exemplified above, Leontiev emphatically invalidated Vygotsky as a serious author by cartoon a completely different picture of psychology than the one defended past Vygotsky in "The Psychology of Art": "For this reason Vygotsky often speaks as an author but yet not through his own words; he quotes many authors, even authors who are strange to him in their more than full general footing" (Leontiev, 1965, p.viii).
In decision, Leontiev stated that:
After forty years of claiming that Soviet psychologists had done much with Vygotsky and after him, many of the positions in this psychological book should exist interpreted in another way – from the position of gimmicky representations of action and human being consciousness.
(Leontiev, 1965, p.ten; translated from the Russian version by the author).
According to Leontiev, Vygotsky developed a few ideas of his own in the book. For this reason, Vygotsky's position needs to be updated in light of the advances in Soviet psychology made after his decease, which were reduced by Leontiev to the works about consciousness and action. The focus of Action Theory at that time was action itself, and consciousness was understood every bit the epiphenomenon of this focus (Zinchenko, 2002, 2009).
That "short introductory paper" was written ii decades afterwards the virulent attack made by Leontiev against the ideological deviation of Vygotsky in regards to pedology (Leontiev, 1937/1998), which remained unknown until 1998, when it was published in Russian in the journal "Voprosy Psychologii". This critique addressed by Leontiev to Vygotsky did non represent an isolated fact; the differences and reciprocal criticisms betwixt them became increasingly more acute during Vygotsky's life, particularly after the decision by Vygotsky to accelerate a theory of consciousness in 1933 (Zavershneva, 2015). Leontiev's short introductory paper to "The Psychology of Fine art" and the various references to Vygotsky, every bit well as Vygotsky'south quotations used by Leontiev afterwards his death, including the absence of references to Vygotsky in his final book "Activity, Consciousness and Personality", leads to the conclusion that Leontiev's main proposal regarding Vygotsky was to relegate him to the past, as a mere historical source of the Activity Theory, which represented the well-nigh mature theory of Soviet psychology since the 1960s.
Behavior and social determinism became central to the definition of an objective psychology, which Kornilov and his group considered every bit a Marxist psychology. Under the new political and scientific conditions in which Vygotsky worked since his entry to Kornilov's group in 1924, he took a completely different path from that of "The Psychology of Art". The central identify given to behavior past Kornilov in those years was explicitly defended by Luria as follows: "The psychologist as a dominion shares the objective position of physiologists, but bear on their work on a much broader basis, approaching psychology from the perspective of that structural beliefs which is determined by social conditions" (Luria, 1928, p.347). Information technology was Vygotsky'south plow to the study of college forms of human behaviors, used by him indistinctively equally higher psychological functions that have as their chief function the control of behavior, as will be discussed below, a clear expression of the winds that blew in Kornilov's grouping at that time.
The return of Vygotsky to some of his main topics in "The Psychology of Art"
In what is termed the 3rd stage of Vygotsky'south work, in the menstruum betwixt 1931 and 1934 (González Rey, 2011, 2016), he transcended some positions that dominated his works betwixt 1927-1931, a period that has been defined by unlike authors as an instrumental menstruum (Leontiev, 1984; Yasnitsky, 2015; Zavershneva, 2015). The concepts of higher psychological functions, sign, mediation and internalization, which were central in this instrumental period were replaced by concepts like perezhivanie, sense and social situation of development. Information technology is amazing that these concepts were largely disregarded by both Soviet and Western psychology until very recent times. In Soviet psychology but Bozhovich (1968) drew attending to the concepts of perezhivanie and social situation of development, advancing forrad on Vygotsky'due south definition on perezhivanie.
However, the concept of sense may be a effect of its very short and fast conception past Vygotsky, and its niggling integration to the residuum of the concepts has been considered equally relevant by very few authors (González Rey, 2002, 2005, 2009; Leontiev, 1992; Zavershneva, 2015). The concept of word sense, every bit formulated past Vygotsky opened a new path to advance on consciousness as a psychological system. Sense, as divers by Vygotsky, is:
A word's sense is the amass of all psychological facts that ascend in our consciousness as a result of the word. Sense is a dynamic, fluid, and complex formation which has several zones that vary in their stability. Significant is but one of these zones of the sense that the give-and-take acquires in the context of voice communication
(Vygotsky, 1987, p.279).
As sense was defined by Vygotsky equally a quality of the word, in fact the discussion itself is transformed into a psychological unit, embodying several psychological facts that arise in consciousness equally a result of its emergence. His definition of sense, which was strongly influenced by the French psychologist Frédric Paulhan, followed the principle of integration between emotions and ideas already discussed past him in "The Psychology of Art", when he still had not been in contact with Lewin and his grouping. The idea of unit was in embryo in "The Psychology of Fine art" when Vygotsky was at the very outset of his piece of work. The relations stressed by him in "The Psychology of Art", betwixt emotions, imagination and fantasy, were topics that he completely abandoned during his instrumental catamenia.
Undoubtedly, the influence of Thou. Lewin and his group on Vygotsky was stiff in that concluding phase of his work (Bozhovich, 1968; Yarochevsky, 2007; Yasnitsky, 2012, 2015; Zavershneva, 2015). Lewin's advances on the inseparability of human needs and the social environment were closely associated with the inseparability of personality and environment. Lewin's position on the matter helped to understand the environment, not every bit a reality per se, but in its close relation to individuals. Individuals were understood as inseparable from the environment and the concept of human relationship became primal for the agreement of the relationship between individuals and their social environment. For Vygotsky, perezhivanie appears to be the psychological term to explain that unit of measurement. The impossibility of analyzing social environment outside of individual motivation and personality influenced Vygotsky's definition of perezhivanie through which he attempted to overcome the mechanical social determinism as understood by Soviet psychology at that time.
The impossibility to separate social environment from a child's personality was clearly expressed by Vygotsky as follows:
To state a certain, general, formal position, it would be correct to say that the environment determines the development of the kid through perezhivanie of the environs. Well-nigh essential, therefore, is rejection of the absolute indicators of the environment; the child is part of the social state of affairs, and the human relationship between the kid and the environment and betwixt the environment and the child occurs through perezhivanie and the activity of the child himself
(Vygotsky, 1998, p.294).
Perezhivanie is used by Vygotsky to sympathise the child's relations with the environs equally the existent force for their development. Nonetheless, the concept as such is vaguely defined in its psychological nature, leaving many theoretical gaps to be filled. (González Rey, 2015a, 2016b). Be that as it may, his focus seemed to be concentrated on the rejection of the accented indicators of the environment, something that was extremely revolutionary in relation to the way social surroundings was understood by behavioral psychology and by Soviet psychology as well, that always had of import convergences with a behavioral representation of psychology.
Vygotsky´s turn toward the emotional side of man psyche, between 1931 and 1934, aside from some promising statements almost emotions and his advances on some of import concepts such as sense and perezhivanie, in fact resulted in contradicting his accent on the cognitive genesis of perezhivanie. Bozhovich's critique of the concepts of perezhivanie in that concluding flow of Vygotsky's piece of work made that contradiction very explicit. Bozhovich expressed this failure past Vygotsky as follows:
If the concept of experience equally raised past him (concept that expressed the child's melancholia relations to the environment) brings the states closer to the interpretation of the truthful causes of child evolution, the subsequent search for the link that determines this development, a search that ends in the concept of generalization, has again made u.s. return to intellectualist positions
(Bozhovich, 1981, p.125; translated from the Spanish version by the author).
Bozhovich, without making information technology explicit and perhaps without being clearly conscious of this, in fact, got deeper into Vygotsky's positions in "The Psychology of Art". Her search for concepts through which to sympathize personality as a motivational organization was closer to Vygotsky's try to integrate emotions, imagination and fantasy, which he stressed equally the footing for the psychological genesis of art and mental disorders. This path was evident in Bozhovich's effort to observe concepts that were impossible to reduce to cognitive genesis or functioning. That endeavour was articulate in this adjacent assumption past Bozhovich:
In other words, what underlies perezhivanie, every bit we meet it, is the world of children's needs – their impulses, desires, intentions, complexly intertwined with one some other and interrelated with possibilities for meeting these needs. And this entire complex arrangement of connections, the entire world of a kid's needs and impulses, must be deciphered and so that we tin can empathize the nature of the influence external circumstances exert on children's mental development
(Bozhovich, 2009, p.70).
As upshot of the lack of a new ontological definition related to human psychological processes in Soviet psychology, these processes connected to be vaguely defined by the concept of psyche, and Bozhovich defined perezhivanie every bit an affective formation1. A new definition of motivation was in process in Bozhovich's work; motivation was understood rather every bit a system of formations that define the psychological cadre of personality, instead of being defined by specific concrete motives, equally the concept of motivation has been historically understood by psychology. Yet, for this representation to advance forrard, information technology would exist necessary to transcend the taxonomy of concepts by which human motivation has historically been explained, such as needs, desires, amidst others.
The necessary stride frontwards to be done demands a theoretical link capable to explain how emotions become symbolical processes having a cultural genesis; body and culture become inseparable through this possible connection. Nonetheless, that connection was impossible to be found in a psychology that treated the symbolic processes through a very narrow notion of private mediation of psychological functions through signs equally Vygotsky did. The narrow representation of the symbolical processes and realities was in some extent responsible for the narrow comprehension of culture and social processes in Soviet psychology (González Rey, 2016a, 2017; González Rey & Mitjans Martínez, 2016).
Bozhovich was aware of the need to explicate motives every bit self-oriented systems, and non every bit drives defined past external objects, every bit divers by A.N. Leontiev.
Children may therefore strive to one time once again relate to something they experienced previously that became appealing to them. In this case, perezhivanie is transformed from beingness a means of orientation to a goal in and of itself and leads to the emergence of new needs – the need for perezhivanii themselves. However, in this regard also, perezhivanii are not the exception. In the procedure of development, the unabridged human mind ceases to be a mere apparatus of orientation and adaptation
(Bozhovich, 2009, p.74-75)ii.
In the paragraph above, Bozhovich pointed out an of import question without which the problem of human motivation could non be avant-garde; human motivation is intrinsic to a concept of heed and understood as a generative and creative system. The prior argument is not a simple phone call to accelerate a new concept of motivation, but an idea to advance a new concept of human mind; Bozhovich regarded the human heed as a artistic system, capable of producing new realities. Bozhovich was the just Soviet writer to embody the main ideas that were interrupted in "The Psychology of Art".
Bated from my personal vindication in previous studies that Vygotsky, in the concluding years of his life returned to his origins, divers by me as a qualitative moment, not as chronological one, because "Pedagogical Psychology" was very close chronologically, merely very unlike from a theoretical perspective. In fact today I don't agree with my ain vindication. Vygotsky, at the final moment of his work, despite his strong theoretical advances discussed above, fails in assembling these concepts within a theoretical organization. Considering of this, these concepts overlapped each other, and were not used in theoretical constructions in which they could have been pertinent at that time. One example of this is the last affiliate of Thinking and Speech, where, instead of using the concept of sense, Vygotsky used the traditional taxonomy, like needs, motives and interests to refer to the whole character of the private thinker.
The development of the topic of subjectivity from a cultural-historical perspective has been our theoretical, epistemological and methodological focus in the last twenty years (González Rey, 1997, 2002, 2005, 2014, 2015a, 2016a, 2016b, 2017; González Rey & Mitjans Martínez, 2016, 2017; Mitjans Martínez & González Rey, 2017). This proposal on subjectivity is one of the paths through which the claiming opened upward by the Vygotsky-Bozhovich line has been advanced toward a new conception of human heed. The concepts of subjective sense, as qualitative units, within which symbolical processes and emotions turn into one and the same procedure, is what we defined equally the ontological definition of subjectivity from a cultural-historical perspective. Subjective senses stand for that link between culture and trunk that Soviet psychology could not find. The constant interweaving between subjective senses and configurations3 defined a new ontological domain for the report of human being phenomena.
Last Considerations
Vygotsky's "The Psychology of Fine art" represented a foundational proposal for a new psychology centered on the integration of emotions, imaginations and fantasy, opening an avenue to accelerate on a different psychology that he had not been able to accomplish when alive. The first ideas by the author related to that focus were addressed toward philosophical and theoretical questions that were completely omitted for decades within Soviet psychology, such as the matter of unconscious processes and the methodological demands of its study, the cosmos of new emotionally-based realities, the integration of emotions and imagination as i and the same process. All these questions continued to be out far from the focus of nearly of academic psychology until today.
The paths taken past the new Soviet land, which became an official Marxist Land, turned Marxism into a political doctrine. This process led to a unilateral accent of the materialism over dialectics, omitting the anthropological side of the Marx's thought. Equally result, Soviet sciences were politicized and, in psychology, this polarization appears through the imperative of condign an objective science. In that location was no room in this kind of science for Vygotsky'south fecund ideas such every bit the ones presented in "The Psychology of Art".
"The Psychology of Art" was non merely directed to finding psychological processes involved with the artistic creation; it was, outset of all, a theoretical platform for advancing a new psychology centering the possibility to empathize man mind as a creative system culturally and historically engendered. The topics of fantasy, unsconscious and fantasy, avant-garde by Freud, captivated the young Vygotsky. Nonetheless,he oposed the universal and ahistorical character given by Freud to the Unconscious.
References
Bozhovich, L. I. (1968). Lichnost i ee formirovanie 5 detskom vosraste [Personality and its formation in childhood]. Moscow: Pedagogika.
Bozhovich, 50. I. (1981). La personalidad y su formación en la edad infantil. Habana. Pueblo y Educación.
Bozhovich, L. I. (2009). The social situation of child development. Journal of Russian and Eastward European Psychology, 47(4), 59-86. http://dx.doi.org/10.2753/RPO1061-0405470403
González Rey, F. (1997). Epistemología cualitativa y subjectividad. São Paulo: EDUC.
González Rey, F. (2002). Sujeto y subjetividad: una aproximación histórico-cultural. México: Thomson Learning.
González Rey, F. (2005). O social na psicologia e a psicologia social. Petrópolis: Vozes.
González Rey, F. (2009). Historical relevance of Vygotsky'south work: Its significance for a new approach to the problem of subjectivity in psychology. Outlines: Disquisitional Practice Studies, 11(1), 59-73.
González Rey, F. (2011). A re-test of defining moments in Vygotsky's work and their implications for his standing legacy. Listen, Civilisation & Activity, 18(3), 257-275. http://dx.doi.org/ten.1080/10749030903338517
González Rey, F. (2014). Advancing farther the history of Soviet psychology: Moving forward from dominant representations in Western and Soviet psychology. History of Psychology, 17(1), 60-78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0035565
González Rey, F. (2015a). Human motivation in question: Discussing emotions, motives, and subjectivity from a cultural-historical standpoint. Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, 45(4), 419-439. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.12073
González Rey, F. (2015b). A new path for the word of social representations: Advancing the topic of subjectivity from a cultural-historical standpoint. Theory of Psychology, 25(4), 1-19. http://dx.doi.org/x.1177/0959354315587783
González Rey, F. (2016a). Advancing the topics of social reality, culture, and subjectivity from a cultural-historical standpoint: Moments, paths, and contradictions. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 36(3), 175-189.
González Rey, F. (2016b). Advances in subjectivity from a cultural-historical perspective: Unfolding and consequences for cultural studies today. In M. Fleer, F. González Rey, & North. Veresov (Eds.), Perezhivanie, emotions and subjectivity: Advancing Vygotsky´s legacy (pp.173-194). Singapore: Springer.
González Rey, F. (2017). The topic of subjectivity in psychology: Contradictions, paths and new alternatives. Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, 47(4), 502-521.
González Rey, F., & Mitjans Martínez, A. (2016). Perezhivanie: Advancing on its implications for the cultural-historical approach. International Inquiry in Early Childhood Education Journal, seven(one), 143-160.
González Rey, F., & Mitjans Martínez, A. (2017). Subje-tividade: teoria, epistemologia e método. Campinas: Alínea.
Leontiev, A. A. (1984). The productive career of Aleksei Nikolaevich Leont'ev. Soviet Psychology, 23(ane), 6-56.
Leontiev, A. A. (1992). Ecce Homo: Methodological issues of the activity theoretical approach. Multidisciplinary Newsletter for Activity Theory, 11/12, 41-45.
Leontiev, A. N. (1965). Psikhologiya Iskustva [The Psychology of Art] Moscow: Iskustva Isdatelstva.
Leontiev, A. N. (1998). Ushenie o srede vpedologisheskix rabotax L. Southward. Vygotskogo [Theory on environment in the pedological works of Vygotsky]. Voprosy Psychologii, ane, 108-124. (Original piece of work published 1937).
Luria, A. R. (1928). Psychology in Russian federation. The Pedagogical Seminary and Journal of Genetic Psychology, 35(3), 347-355. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08856559.1928.10533070
Mitjans Martínez, A., & González Rey, F. (2017). Psicologia, educação east aprendizagem escolar. São Paulo: Cortez.
Van Der Veer, R., & Valsiner, J. (1991). Agreement Vygotsky: A quest for synthesis. New York: Blackwell.
Vygotsky, L .Due south. (1965). Psikhologiya Iskustva [The Psychology of Fine art] Moscow: Iskustva Isdatelstva.
Vygotsky, 50. S. (1971). Psychology of fine art. New York: MIT Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). Thinking and speech. In R. Rieber, & A. Carton (Eds.), The nerveless works of Fifty. S. Vygotsky (Vol. 1, pp.43-287). New York: Plenum.
Vygotsky, Fifty. S. (1998). The Collected Works of L. Southward. Vygotsky (Vol. 5). New York: Plenum.
Vygotsky, L. S. (2012). The science of psychology. Journal of Russian and East European Journal, 50(4), 85-106.
Yarochevsky, M. Yard. (2007). 50. S. Vygotsky: V poiskax novoi psykjologii [L. Due south. Vygotsky: In the search for a new psychology]. Moscow: L. Yard. I.
Yasnitsky, A. (2009). Vygotsky circle during the decade of 1931-1941: Toward an integrative science of heed, encephalon and education (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Toronto, Canada.
Yasnitsky, A. (2012). Revisionist revolution in Vygotskian science: Toward cultural-historical Gestalt Psychology. Journal of Russian and Due east European, 50(4), 3-15. http://dx.doi.org/10.2753/RPO1061-0405500400
Yasnitsky, A. (2015). A transnational history of "the beginning of a beautiful friendship": The birth of the Cultural Historical Gestalt Psychology of Alexander Luria, Kurt Lewin, Lev Vygotsky and others. In: A. Yasnitsky & R. Van Der Veer (Eds.), Revisionist Revolution in Vygotsky Studies (pp.201-226). London. Routledge.
Zavershneva, E. (2015). The way to freedom: Vygotsky in 1932. In: A.Yasnitsky & R. Van Der Veer (Eds.), Revisionist Revolution in Vygotsky Studies (pp.127-140). London: Routledge.
Zinchenko, V. P. (1993). Kulturno-istoricheskaya psikhologiya. Opyt amplifikatsii. [Cultural-historical psychology: The experience of amplification]. Voprosy Psychologii [Questions of Psychology], 4, five-19.
Zinchenko, V. P. (2002). Problematika myshleniya 5 razvivayushevo obucheniya [The problem of thinking in developmental education]. In Razvivayushee obrazovanie. Dialog c V.V. Davydovym [Developmental education. Dialog with V. V. Davydov] (pp.46-102). Moscow: Akademiya.
Zinchenko, Five. P. (2009). Consciousness equally the subject matter and task of psychology. Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, 47(5), 44-75.
Notes
i Bozhovich'south concept of psychological formation of personality stressed the idea that motives are not entities, but complex systems within which different needs and motives organized around one dominant core of motives, attempting to define a bureaucracy of motives that she defined equally "orientation of personality". These promising concepts were not completely developed by her and in the end were reduced to some dominant contents. So, the orientations of personality were reduced by her to individualistic and collectivistic deportment, and to actions addressed to praxis. Perezhivanie, as defined above, is explicitly divers by her as a germination.
2 This quotation, which was taken from the English version of ane of the chapters of her book "Personality and its formation in childhood" repeats the mistake of translating perezhivanie as experience. As result of this, I supersede experience with "perezhivanie".
three "Subjective configurations emerge every bit a cocky-regulative and generative organization of subjective senses. Subjective configurations are dynamic, but have a relative stability due to the congruency of the subjective senses that they generate" (2017, p.515).
Como citar este artigo/How to cite this article
González Rey, F. L. (2018). Vygotsky's "The Psychology of Art": A foundational and even so unexplored text. Estudos de Psicologia (Campinas), 35(four), 339-350. http://dx.doi.org/ten.1590/1982-02752018000400002
Writer notes
Correspondência para/Correspondence to: F. L. GONZÁLEZ REY. E-mail: <gonzalez_rey49@hotmail.com>.
Source: https://www.redalyc.org/journal/3953/395357410002/html/
0 Response to "Vygotsky the Psychology of Art Focuses on What Piece of Literature"
Postar um comentário