Vygotsky Leo Semenovich years of life occupation. Theory of the zone of proximal development

Biography

Lev Semenovich Vygotsky (in 1917 and 1924 changed his middle name and last name) was born on November 5 (17), 1896 in the city of Orsha, the second of eight children in the family of a bank employee, a graduate of the Kharkov Commercial Institute, Semyon Yakovlevich Vygotsky and his wife Tsilya (Cecilia) Moiseevna Vygotsky . He was educated by a private teacher, Solomon Ashpits, known for using the so-called Socratic dialogue method. A significant influence on the future psychologist in his childhood was also exerted by his cousin, subsequently the famous literary critic David Isaakovich Vygotsky (-, English).

Daughter of L. S. Vygotsky - Gita Lvovna Vygodskaya - Soviet psychologist and defectologist, candidate of psychological sciences, co-author of the biography “L. S. Vygotsky. Strokes to the portrait ”(1996).

Chronology of major life events

1924 - report at the neuropsychiatric congress, moving from Gomel to Moscow
1925 - defense of the dissertation Psychology of art (November 5, 1925, due to illness without protection, Vygotsky was awarded the title of senior scientific associate, equivalent to the current degree of a candidate of sciences, an agreement on publication Psychology of art was signed on November 9, 1925, but the book was never published during Vygotsky’s lifetime)
1925 - the first and only overseas trip: sent to London for a defectology conference; on the way to England I drove Germany, France, where I met with local psychologists
1925 - 1930 - member of the Russian Psychoanalytic Society (RPSAO)
November 21, 1925 to May 22, 1926 - tuberculosis, hospitalization in the sanatorium-type hospital “Zakharyino”, writes notes in the hospital, subsequently published under the title The historical meaning of the psychological crisis
1927 - employee of the Institute of Psychology in Moscow, works with such prominent scientists as Luria, Bernshtein, Artyomov, Dobrynin, Leontiev
1929 - International Psychological Congress at Yale; Luria presented two reports, one of which was co-authored with Vygotsky; Vygotsky himself did not go to Congress
1929, spring - Vygotsky gives lectures in Tashkent
1930 - At the VI International Conference on Psychotechnics in Barcelona (April 23-27, 1930), a report was read by L. S. Vygotsky on the study of higher psychological functions in psychotechnical research
1930 October Psychological Systems Report: The Start of a New Research Program
1931 - entered the faculty of medicine at the Ukrainian Psychoneurological Academy in Kharkov, where he studied in absentia with Luria
1932, December - a report on consciousness, a formal discrepancy with the Leontiev group in Kharkov
1933, February-May - Kurt Levin stops in Moscow passing from the USA (through Japan), meeting with Vygotsky
1934, May 9 - Vygotsky transferred to bed rest
June 11, 1934

Scientific contribution

The emergence of Vygotsky as a scientist coincided with the period of perestroika of Soviet psychology based on the methodology of Marxism, in which he took an active part. In search of methods for an objective study of complex forms of mental activity and personality behavior, Vygotsky critically analyzed a number of philosophical and most of his contemporary psychological concepts (“The Meaning of a Psychological Crisis”, manuscript,), showing the futility of attempts to explain human behavior, reducing higher forms of behavior to lower elements.

Exploring speech thinking, Vygotsky in a new way solves the problem of localization of higher mental functions as structural units of brain activity. Studying the development and decay of higher mental functions based on the material of child psychology, defectology and psychiatry, Vygotsky concludes that the structure of consciousness is a dynamic semantic system of affective volitional and intellectual processes that are in unity.

Cultural History Theory

In the book “The History of the Development of Higher Psychic Functions” (publ.), A detailed exposition of the cultural-historical theory of the development of the psyche is given: according to Vygotsky, it is necessary to distinguish between lower and higher psychic functions, and accordingly two planes of behavior - natural, natural (the result of the biological evolution of the animal world ) and cultural, socio-historical (the result of the historical development of society), merged in the development of the psyche.

The hypothesis put forward by Vygotsky proposed a new solution to the problem of the correlation of lower (elementary) and higher mental functions. The main difference between them is the level of arbitrariness, that is, natural mental processes cannot be regulated by a person, and people can consciously control higher mental functions. Vygotsky came to the conclusion that conscious regulation is associated with the mediated nature of higher mental functions. Between the acting stimulus and the human reaction (both behavioral and mental), an additional connection arises through the mediating link - the stimulus-tool, or sign.

The most convincing model of mediated activity characterizing the manifestation and realization of higher mental functions is the “Buridan donkey situation”. This classical situation of uncertainty, or a problem situation (a choice between two equal opportunities), interests Vygotsky primarily from the point of view of means that allow you to transform (solve) the situation that has arisen. Throwing lots, a person “artificially introduces into the situation, changing it, new auxiliary stimuli not connected with anything”. Thus, the cast of lots becomes, according to Vygotsky, a means of transformation and resolution of the situation.

Thinking and Speech

In the last years of his life, Vygotsky focused on studying the relationship of thought and word in the structure of consciousness. His work “Thinking and Speech” (1934), devoted to the study of this problem, is fundamental to Russian psycholinguistics.

Genetic roots of thinking and speech

According to Vygotsky, the genetic roots of thinking and speech are different.

For example, Kohler’s experiments, which discovered the ability of chimpanzees to solve complex problems, showed that humanoid intelligence and expressive speech (absent in monkeys) function independently.

The ratio of thinking and speech in both phylogeny and ontogenesis is a variable value. There is a pre-speech stage in the development of intelligence and a pre-intellectual stage in the development of speech. Only then thinking and speech intersect and merge.

The resulting speech thinking resulting from such a merger is not a natural, but a socio-historical form of behavior. It has specific (compared with natural forms of thinking and speech) properties. With the advent of speech thinking, the biological type of development is replaced by a socio-historical one.

Research method

An adequate method for studying the relationship of thought and word, says Vygotsky, should be an analysis that divides the object under study - speech thinking - into units, not units. The unit is the minimum part of the whole, possessing all its basic properties. Such a unit of speech thinking is the meaning of the word.

Levels of the formation of thought in a word

The relation of thought to word is inconstant; this is process, the movement from thought to word and vice versa, the formation of thought in a word:

Motivation of thought.
Think.
Inner speech.
External speech.

Self-centered Speech: Against Piaget

Vygotsky concluded that egocentric speech is not an expression of intellectual egocentrism, as Piaget claimed, but a transitional stage from external to internal speech. Self-centered speech initially accompanies practice.

Research Vygotsky - Sakharov

In a classical experimental study, Vygotsky and his collaborator L. S. Sakharov, using their own technique, which is a modification of the technique of N. Aha, established the types (they are also the age stages of development) of concepts.

Worldly and scientific concepts

Exploring the development of concepts in childhood, L. S. Vygotsky wrote about everyday (spontaneous) and scientific concepts (“Thinking and Speech,” ch. 6).

Worldly concepts are words acquired and used in everyday life, in everyday communication such as “table”, “cat”, “house”. Scientific concepts are words that a child learns at school, terms that are embedded in the knowledge system, associated with other terms.

When using spontaneous concepts, a child for a long time (up to 11-12 years) is aware only of the subject they are pointing to, but not the concepts themselves, not their meaning. This is expressed in the absence of the ability “to verbally define a concept, to be able to give its verbal wording in other words, to the arbitrary use of this concept when establishing complex logical relationships between concepts”.

Vygotsky suggested that the development of spontaneous and scientific concepts goes in opposite directions: spontaneous - towards a gradual awareness of their meaning, scientific - in the opposite direction, because “it’s in the very field where the concept of“ brother “turns out to be a strong concept, that is, in the sphere of spontaneous of using it, applying it to countless specific situations, the wealth of its empirical content and its connection with personal experience, the scientific concept of a schoolboy shows his weakness. Analysis of the spontaneous concept of the child convinces us that the child was much more aware of the subject than the concept itself. The analysis of the scientific concept convinces us that the child at the very beginning is much better aware of the concept itself than the object presented in it. ”

The awareness of meanings that comes with age is deeply connected with the emerging systematic nature of concepts, that is, with the appearance, with the emergence of logical relations between them. A spontaneous concept is associated only with the subject to which it points. On the contrary, a mature concept is immersed in a hierarchical system, where logical relations connect it (already as a carrier of meaning) with many other concepts of a different - with respect to this - level of generalization. This completely changes the possibilities of the word as a cognitive tool. Outside the system, writes Vygotsky, in concepts (in sentences) only empirical connections can be expressed, that is, relations between objects. “Along with the system, the relations of concepts to concepts arise, the mediated relationship of concepts to objects through their relation to other concepts, a completely different relationship of concepts to an object arises: superempirical connections become possible in concepts.” This finds expression, in particular, in the fact that a concept is no longer determined through the relationship of the determined object with other objects (“the dog guards the house”), but through the relation of the determined concept to other concepts (“the dog is an animal”).

Well, since the scientific concepts that the child learns in the learning process are fundamentally different from everyday concepts precisely in that by their very nature they should be organized into a system, Vygotsky believes that their meanings are recognized first. Awareness of the meanings of scientific concepts is gradually spreading to everyday ones.

Developmental and educational psychology

Vygotsky’s works examined in detail the relationship between the role of maturation and learning in the development of the child’s higher mental functions. So, he formulated the most important principle, according to which the safety and timely maturation of brain structures is a necessary but insufficient condition for the development of higher mental functions. The main source for this development is the changing social environment, for the description of which Vygotsky introduced the term social development situation, defined as "a peculiar, specific for a given age, exceptional, single and unique relationship between the child and his surrounding reality, especially social". It is this attitude that determines the course of development of the psyche of the child at a certain age stage.

Vygotsky proposed a new periodization of the human life cycle, which is based on the easy alternation of stable periods of development and crises. Crises are characterized by revolutionary changes, the criterion of which is the emergence neoplasms. The reason for the psychological crisis, according to Vygotsky, lies in the growing discrepancy between the developing psyche of the child and the unchanging social situation of development, and it is precisely the restructuring of this situation that the normal crisis is directed at.

Thus, each stage of life opens with a crisis (accompanied by the appearance of certain neoplasms), followed by a period of stable development, when the development of neoplasms takes place.

The crisis of the newborn (0-2 months).

Infancy (2 months - 1 year).

The crisis of one year.

Early childhood (1-3 years).

The crisis of three years.

Preschool age (3-7 years).

The crisis is seven years old.

School age (8-12 years).

The crisis of thirteen years.

Teenage (puberty) period (14-17 years).

The crisis of seventeen years.

The youthful period (17-21 year).

Later, a slightly different version of this periodization appeared, developed as part of the activity approach by Vygotsky's pupil D. B. Elkonin. It was based on the concept of leading activities and the idea of \u200b\u200ba change in leading activities during the transition to a new age stage. At the same time, Elkonin distinguished the same periods and crises as in the periodization of Vygotsky, but with a more detailed consideration of the mechanisms that work at each stage.

Vygotsky, apparently, was the first in psychology to consider the psychological crisis as a necessary stage in the development of the human psyche, revealing its positive meaning.

In the 1970s, Vygotsky's theories began to arouse interest in American psychology. In the next decade, all of Vygotsky’s main works were translated and formed, along with Piaget, the basis of modern educational psychology in the United States.

Notes

Bibliography L.S. Vygotsky

Psychology of Art ( idem) (1922)
A tool and a sign in the development of the child
(1930) (co-authored with A.R. Luria)
Lectures on psychology (1. Perception; 2. Memory; 3. Thinking; 4. Emotions; 5. Imagination; 6. The problem of will) (1932)
The problem of the development and decay of higher mental functions (1934)
Thinking and Speech ( idem) (1934)
- The bibliographic index of the works of L. S. Vygotsky includes 275 titles

Online Publishing

Leo Vygotsky, Alexander Luria Studies in the history of behavior: Monkey. Primitive. Child (monograph)
Course of lectures on psychology; Thinking and speaking; Works of different years
Vygotsky Lev Semenovich (1896-1934) - an outstanding Russian psychologist

About Vygotsky

Book section Lauren Graham "Natural History, Philosophy and the Science of Human Behavior in the Soviet Union", dedicated to L. S. Vygotsky
Etkind A.M. More about L. S. Vygotsky: Forgotten texts and contexts not found // Psychology Issues. 1993. No. 4. P. 37-55.
Garai L., Kechki M. Another crisis in psychology! A possible reason for the noisy success of L. C. Vygotsky's ideas // Questions of Philosophy. 1997. No. 4. P. 86-96.
Garai L. On meaning and brain: Is Vygotsky compatible with Vygotsky? // Subject, cognition, activity: On the seventieth birthday of V. A. Lektersky. M .: Canon +, 2002.P. 590-612.
Tulviste P.E.-J. Discussion of the works of L. S. Vygotsky in the USA // Questions of Philosophy. 1986. No. 6.

Translations

Vygotsky @ http://www.marxists.org
Some translations into German: @ http://th-hoffmann.eu
Denken und Sprechen: psychologische Untersuchungen / Lev Semënovic Vygotskij. Hrsg. und aus dem Russ. übers. vom Joachim Lompscher und Georg Rückriem. Mit einem Nachw. von Alexandre Métraux (German)

Psychology
Sections	General psychology Acmeology Differential psychology Psychogenetics Psychodiagnostics Psycholinguistics Perceptual psychology (smell, color) Developmental psychology Psychophysiology Social psychology Special psychology Comparative psychology Evolutionary psychology Experimental psychology

Vygotsky Lev Semenovich (1896-1934) - Soviet psychologist, creator of the cultural-historical theory of the development of higher mental functions. Lev Semenovich Vygotsky was born on November 5, 1896 in the city of Orsha. A year later, the Vygotsky family moved to Gomel. It was in this city that Leo graduated from high school. After graduating from high school, L.S. Vygotsky entered Moscow University, where he studied at the Faculty of Law.

He worked at the Moscow State Institute of Experimental Psychology (1924-1928), at the State Institute of Scientific Pedagogy (GINP) at the Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute and at the Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute. A.I. Herzen (both in 1927-1934), Academy of Communist Education (AKV) (1929-1931), 2nd Moscow State University (1927-1930), and after the reorganization of the 2nd Moscow State University - at the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute. A. S. Bubnova (1930-1934), as well as in the Experimental Defectological Institute founded by him (1929-1934); also gave lecture courses at a number of educational institutions and research organizations in Moscow, Leningrad, Tashkent and Kharkov, for example, at the Central Asian State University (SAGU) (in 1929).

Vygotsky was engaged in a large volume of pedagogy, consulting and research activities. He was a member of many editorial boards, and he wrote a lot. Despite the materialistic form of his theory, Vygotsky adhered to an empirical evolutionist trend in the study of cultural differences in thinking, creating an approach to psychology. Exploring speech thinking, Vygotsky in a new way solves the problem of localization of higher mental functions as structural units of brain activity. Studying the development and decay of higher mental functions based on the material of child psychology, defectology and psychiatry, Vygotsky concludes that the structure of consciousness is a dynamic semantic system of affective volitional and intellectual processes that are in unity.

In 1928-32, Vygotsky, along with his colleagues Luria and Leontyev, participated in experimental studies at the Academy of Communist Education. Vygotsky headed the psychological laboratory, and Luria - the entire faculty. The most famous was brought to Vygotsky by the psychological theory he created, which became widely known under the name Cultural-historical concept of the development of higher mental functions, the theoretical and empirical potential of which has not yet been exhausted. The essence of this concept is a synthesis of the doctrine of nature and the doctrine of culture. Theory provides an alternative to existing behavioral theories, and above all behaviorism. According to the author himself, the study of the basic laws of the development of culture can give an idea of \u200b\u200bthe laws of personality formation. Lev Semenovich considered this problem in the light of child psychology. The spiritual development of the child was put in a certain dependence on the organized impact of adults on him. Leo Semenovich has a lot of work devoted to the study of mental development and patterns of personality formation in childhood, the problems of learning and teaching children in school. It is Vygotsky who plays the most prominent role in the formation of the science of defectology. He created in Moscow a laboratory of psychology of abnormal childhood, which later became an integral part of the Experimental Defectological Institute. The main emphasis in the study of the psychological characteristics of abnormal children was made by Vygotsky on the mentally retarded and deaf-blind.

Vygotsky’s works examined in detail the relationship between the role of maturation and learning in the development of the child’s higher mental functions. He formulated the most important principle, according to which the safety and timely maturation of brain structures is a necessary but insufficient condition for the development of higher mental functions. The main source for this development is the changing social environment, for the description of which Vygotsky introduced the term social development situation, defined as “a peculiar, specific for a given age, exceptional, unique and unique relationship between the child and his surrounding reality, especially social”. It is this attitude that determines the course of development of the psyche of the child at a certain age stage.

A significant contribution to educational psychology is the concept of proximal development introduced by Vygotsky. The zone of proximal development is “an area of \u200b\u200bnot ripened, but ripening processes”, encompassing tasks that a child at this level of development cannot cope on his own, but which he can solve with the help of an adult; this is the level reached by the child so far only in the course of joint activity with an adult.

At the last stage of his scientific activity, Vygotsky was interested in the problems of thinking and speech, and he wrote the scientific work Thinking and Speech. In this fundamental scientific work, the main idea is the inextricable connection that exists between thinking and speech. Vygotsky first suggested that he himself soon confirmed that the level of development of thought depends on the formation and development of speech. He revealed the interdependence of these two processes.

During the life of Lev Semenovich, his work was not allowed for publication in the USSR. Since the early 1930s real persecution began against him; authorities accused him of ideological perversions. On June 11, 1934, after a long illness, at the age of 37, Lev Semenovich Vygotsky died.

“Consciousness as a problem of behavior” (1925), “Development of higher mental functions” (1931), “Thinking and speech” (1934)

L.S. Vygotsky Developed the doctrine of the development of mental functions in the process of individual-mediated development of cultural values \u200b\u200bby an individual. Cultural signs (primarily the signs of the language) serve as a kind of tools, operating with which the subject, acting on another, forms his own inner world, the main units of which are meanings (generalizations, cognitive components of consciousness) and meanings (affective-motivational components). Mental functions given by nature (" natural") Are transformed into functions of a higher level of development (" cultural"). Thus, mechanical memory becomes logical, the associative flow of ideas becomes focused thinking or creative imagination, impulsive action becomes arbitrary, etc. Are all internal processes a product? interiorization. “Every function in the cultural development of a child appears on the scene twice, in two ways - first social, then psychological. First between people as an interpsychic category, then inside the child as an intrapsychic category. ” Originating in the child’s direct social contacts with adults, higher functions then “rotate” into his consciousness ”(History of the Development of Higher Mental Functions, 1931). Based on this idea of \u200b\u200bVygotsky, a new direction in child psychology was created, including a provision on “Zone of proximal development”, which had a great influence on simultaneous domestic and foreign experimental studies of the development of child behavior. The development principle was combined in Vygotsky’s concept with the principle of consistency. He developed the concept of "psychological systems", which were understood as holistic formations and the form of various forms of interfunctional connections (for example, the connections between thinking and memory, thinking and speech). In the construction of these systems, the main role was initially assigned to the sign, and then to the value as a “cell” from which the tissue of the human psyche grows, in contrast to the psyche of animals. Together with his students, Vygotsky experimentally traced the main stages of the conversion of meanings in the ontogenesis “Thinking and Speech”, 1934), proposed a hypothesis adequate to the development principle that psychic functions are localized as structural units of brain activity. Vygotsky’s ideas are used not only in psychology and its various branches, but also in other human sciences (in defectology, linguistics, psychiatry, art history, ethnography, etc.).

Considering the state of psychological science, L.S. Vygotsky noted that domestic science is characterized by the closeness of the personality problem and its development. He identified four main ideas of the concept of personality.

The first idea is the idea of \u200b\u200ban individual’s activity. Treating the signs of language as mental tools, which, unlike tools, do not change the physical world, but the consciousness of the subject they are operating on. The tool was considered as a possible point of application of the individual’s forces, and the individual acted as a carrier of activity. Vygotsky, however, discovered the development of the meanings of words in ontogenesis, the change in their structure during the transition from one stage of mental development to another. Before a person begins to operate on words, he already has a pre-speech mental content (elementary mental functions), to which psychological development gives a qualitatively new structure (higher mental functions arise) and the laws of cultural development of consciousness, which is qualitatively different from “natural”, come into force the development of the psyche (which is observed, for example, in animals).

The second idea is Vygotsky’s thought about the main peculiarity of a person’s psychic functions: their indirect nature. The mediation function is provided by the signs with the help of which the mastery of behavior, its social determination takes place. The use of signs restructures the psyche, strengthening and expanding the system of mental activity.

The third idea is the provision on interiorization social relations. Acts of internalization, as Vygotsky noted, are committed mainly in the processes of communication. Communication was seen as a process based on intellectual understanding and the conscious transfer of thoughts and experiences using a well-known system of means. The latter means that social relations, while remaining tool-mediated, bear the imprint of individuality, there is a transfer of individual characteristics, communicating people and the formation of their ideal representation in a foreign “I”. In this Vygotsky sees the difference between education and upbringing, since the first is the translation of “meanings,” and the second is “personal meanings” and experiences. In this regard, he introduces the concept of "zone of proximal development" for training. It means a discrepancy between the level of tasks that a child can solve on his own or under the guidance of an adult. Training, distributing a similar "zone", and leads to development.

And, finally, the fourth idea - the formation of personality lies in the transitions between the states of "in themselves", "for others", "for themselves being." According to Vygotsky, a personality becomes for itself what it is in itself, through what it presents to others. Personality as a system reveals itself twice: for the first time - in acts of socially oriented activity (in actions and deeds), the second time - in acts completing an act based on the counter-activity of another person.

Vygotsky’s views lead to the understanding of personality as a special form of organization of the mutual activity of a given individual and other individuals, where the real being of the individual is connected with the ideal being of other individuals in it and where at the same time the individual is ideally represented in the real life of other people (aspects of personality and personalization). Thus, Vygotsky’s ideas, emerging mainly in the psychology of cognitive processes, laid the foundation for the domestic approach to understanding psychology.

Everyone knows Freud, Yurga - the majority, Carnegie and Maslow - many. Vygotsky Lev Semenovich - a name rather for professionals. The rest, except that they have heard the surname, and at best, can associate it with defectology. And that’s all. But it was one of the brightest stars of Russian psychology. It was Vygotsky who created a unique direction that had nothing to do with the interpretation of the formation of the human personality of any of the gurus of science. In the 1930s, everyone in the world of psychology and psychiatry knew this name - Lev Semenovich Vygotsky. The labors of this man made a splash.

Scientist, psychologist, teacher, philosopher

Time does not stand still. New discoveries are being made, science is moving forward, restoring something, re-discovering something lost. And if you arrange a street survey, it is unlikely that many respondents will be able to answer who Lev Semenovich Vygotsky is. Photos - old, black and white, blurry - will show us a young handsome man with a thoroughbred elongated face. However, Vygotsky did not become old. It is possible that fortunately. His life flashed a bright comet on the dome of Russian science, flickered and went out. The name was forgotten, the theory was declared erroneous and harmful. Meanwhile, even if we discard the originality and subtlety of Vygotsky’s general theory, the fact that his contribution to defectology, especially for children, is invaluable, is not in doubt. He created the theory of working with children suffering from damage to the organs of perception and mental disorders.

Childhood

November 5, 1986. It was on this day that Vygotsky Lev Semenovich was born in Orsha, Mogilev Province. The biography of this man did not contain vivid and amazing events. Wealthy Jews: father is a merchant and banker, mother is a teacher. The family moved to Gomel, and there a private teacher, Solomon Markovich Ashpiz, was engaged in teaching the children there, the figure in those parts is quite remarkable. He practiced not traditional teaching methods, but Socratic dialogues, which were almost never used in educational institutions. Perhaps it was this experience that determined Vygotsky’s unusual approach to teaching practice. A cousin, David Isaakovich Vygodsky, a translator and a well-known literary critic, also influenced the formation of the worldview of the future scientist.

Student years

Vygotsky knew several languages: Hebrew, Ancient Greek, Latin, English and Esperanto. He studied at Moscow University, first at the medical faculty, then transferred to law. For a while he comprehended science in parallel at two faculties - legal and historical-philosophical, at the University. Shaniavsky. Later, Vygotsky, Leo Semenovich, decided that he was not interested in jurisprudence, and focused entirely on his passion for history and philosophy. In 1916, he wrote a two hundred-page work devoted to the analysis of Shakespeare's drama - Hamlet. He later used this work as a thesis. This work was highly appreciated by specialists, since Vygotsky applied a new, unexpected method of analysis, which allows you to look at a literary work from a different angle. Lev Semenovich at that time was only 19 years old.

When he was a student, Vygotsky did a lot of literary analysis, published works on the works of Lermontov and Bely.

First steps in science

After the revolution, having graduated from high school, Vygotsky first left for Samara, then with his family he looked for work in Kiev and, in the end, returned again to his native Gomel, where he lives until 1924. Not a psychotherapist, not a psychologist, but a teacher - this is precisely the profession that Lev Semenovich Vygotsky chose. A brief biography of those years can fit in several lines. He worked as a teacher in schools, technical schools, courses. He headed the theater education department first, and then the art department, wrote and published (critical articles, reviews). For some time Vygotsky even worked as an editor of a local publication.

In 1923, he was the leader of a group of students at the Moscow Pedagogical Institute. The experimental work of this group provided material for study and analysis, which Lev Semenovich Vygotsky could use in his works. His activity as a serious scientist began precisely in those years. At the All-Russian Congress of Psychoneurologists in Petrograd, Vygotsky made a report based on data obtained as a result of these experimental studies. The work of the young scientist made a splash; for the first time, words were spoken about the emergence of a new direction in psychology.

Carier start

It was with this speech that the career of a young scientist began. Vygotsky was invited to the Moscow Institute of Experimental Psychology. Outstanding scientists-psychologists of that time — Leontyev and Luria — already worked there. Vygotsky not only organically fit into this scientific team, but also became an ideological leader, as well as an initiator of research.

Soon, almost every practicing psychotherapist and defectologist knew who Lev Semenovich Vygotsky was. The main works of this outstanding scientist will be written later, at that time he was a brilliant practitioner for everyone, personally involved in pedagogical and therapeutic activities. Parents of sick children made incredible efforts to get an appointment with Vygotsky. And if it was possible to become an “experimental model” in the laboratory of abnormal childhood, it was considered an incredible success.

How did the teacher become a psychologist?

What is so unusual about the theory that Leo Semenovich Vygotsky proposed to the world? After all, psychology was not his core subject; rather, he was a linguist, literary critic, culturologist, and practicing teacher. Why exactly psychology? Where from?

The answer is in the theory itself. Vygotsky was the first who tried to move away from reflexology, he was interested in the conscious formation of personality. Figuratively speaking, if a person is a house, before Vygotsky, psychologists and psychiatrists were interested exclusively in the foundation. Of course, this is necessary. Without this, he won’t be at home. The foundation largely determines the building - shape, height, some design features. It can be improved, improved, strengthened and isolated. But this does not change the fact. The foundation is just the foundation. But what will be built on it is the result of the interaction of many factors.

Culture defines the psyche

If we continue the analogy, it was precisely these factors that determined the final appearance of the house that Leo Semenovich Vygotsky was interested in. The main works of the researcher: “Psychology of Art”, “Thinking and Speech”, “Psychology of Child Development”, “Pedagogical Psychology”. The scientist’s circle of interests clearly formed his approach to psychological research. A person who is passionate about art and linguistics, a gifted teacher, who loves and understands children, is Vygotsky Lev Nikolaevich. He clearly saw that it is impossible to separate the psyche and the products it produces. Art and language are products of the activity of human consciousness. But they also determine the emerging consciousness. Children grow up not in a vacuum, but in the context of a certain culture, in a linguistic environment that has a great influence on the psyche.

Teacher and psychologist

Vygotsky understood the children well. He was a wonderful teacher and a sensitive loving father. His daughters said that they had a warm trusting relationship not only with their mother, a strict and restrained woman, but with their father. And they noted that the main feature of Vygotsky’s attitude towards children was a feeling of deep sincere respect. The family lived in a small apartment, and Leo Semenovich did not have a separate place for work. But he never yanked children, did not forbid them to play or invite friends to visit. After all, this was a violation of family equality. If guests come to their parents, children have the same right to invite friends. To ask not to make noise for some time, as an equal equal - this is the maximum that Vygotsky Lev Semenovich allowed himself to do. Quotes from the memoirs of the scientist’s daughter, Gita Lvovna, will allow you to look “behind the scenes” of the life of an outstanding Russian psychologist.

Vygotsky's daughter about his father

The scientist’s daughter says that there wasn’t so much time dedicated to her. But her father took her with him to work, to college, and there the girl could freely look at any exhibits and preparations, and her father’s colleagues always explained to her what, why, and why. So, for example, she saw a unique exhibit - the brain of Lenin, stored in a bank.

Father did not read her children's poems - he simply did not like them, he considered this a tasteless primitive. But Vygotsky had an excellent memory, and he could recite many classic works by heart. As a result, the girl developed perfectly in art and literature, not at all feeling her age mismatch.

Surrounding about Vygotsky

The daughter also notes that Vygotsky Lev Semenovich was extremely attentive to people. When he listened to the interlocutor, he focused on the conversation completely. During the dialogue with the student, it was impossible to immediately understand who the student was and who was the teacher. This moment is also noted by other people who knew the scientist: janitors, attendants, cleaners. All of them said that Vygotsky beat an exceptionally sincere and friendly person. Moreover, this quality was not demonstrative, developed. No, it was just a character trait. It was very easy to confuse Vygotsky, he was extremely critical of himself, while he treated people with tolerance and understanding.

Work with children

Perhaps it was sincere kindness, the ability to deeply feel other people and treat indulgence in their shortcomings that led Vygotsky to defectology. He always claimed that abilities limited in one thing were not a sentence for a child. A flexible children's psyche is actively seeking opportunities for successful socialization. Silence, deafness, blindness are just physical limitations. And children's consciousness instinctively tries to overcome them. The main duty of doctors and teachers is to help the child, push him and support him, as well as provide alternative opportunities for communication and information.

Vygotsky paid particular attention to the problems of mentally retarded and deaf-blind children as the most problematic socialized children, and achieved great success in organizing their education.

Psychology and Culture

Vygotsky was keenly interested in the psychology of art. He believed that this particular industry is capable of exerting a critical influence on a person, releasing affective emotions that in ordinary life cannot be realized. The scientist considered art the most important tool for socialization. Personal experiences form a personal experience, but emotions caused by the influence of a work of art form an external, social, social experience.

Vygotsky was also convinced that thinking and speech are interconnected. If developed thinking allows you to speak a rich, complex language, then there is an inverse relationship. The development of speech will lead to a qualitative leap in intelligence.

He introduced the third element, culture, into the familiar mind-behavior bundle of psychologists.

The death of a scientist

Alas, Lev Semenovich was not a very healthy person. Back in 19 years, he contracted tuberculosis. For many years the disease was dozing. Vygotsky, although he was not healthy, nevertheless coped with the disease. But the disease progressed slowly. Perhaps the situation was aggravated by the persecution of the scientist that unfolded in the 30s. Later his family joked sadly that Lev Semenovich died on time. This saved him from arrest, interrogation and imprisonment, and his relatives from repression.

In May 1934, the condition of the scientist became so difficult that he was prescribed bed rest, and a month later the body's resources were completely exhausted. On June 11, 1934, the outstanding scientist and talented teacher Lev Semenovich Vygotsky died. 1896-1934 - only 38 years of life. Over the years, he managed an incredible amount. His work was appreciated not immediately. But now many practices of working with abnormal children are based precisely on the techniques developed by Vygotsky.

Reading mode

Defectology in the scientific biography of L.S. Vygotsky *

In the activity and work of Leo Semenovich, the problems of defectology occupied a significant place. The entire Moscow period of life, all ten years, Lev Semenovich, in parallel with psychological research, conducted theoretical and experimental work in the field of defectology. The proportion of studies carried out on this issue is very high ...

Lev Semenovich began his scientific and practical activities in the field of defectology in 1924, when he was appointed head of the department of abnormal childhood at the People's Commissariat of Education. We have already written about his bright and pivotal report for the development of defectology at the II Congress of SPON. I would like to note that interest in this field of knowledge turned out to be persistent, it increased in subsequent years. L.S. Vygotsky conducted not only intensive scientific, but also did a great deal of practical and organizational work in this area.

In 1926, he organized a laboratory for the psychology of abnormal childhood at the Medical and Pedagogical Station (in Moscow, on 8 Pogodinskaya St.). Over the three years of its existence, the employees of this laboratory have accumulated interesting research material and have done important educational work. About a year Lev Semenovich was the director of the entire station, and then became her scientific consultant.

In 1929, on the basis of the laboratory mentioned above, the Experimental Defectological Institute of the People's Commissariat of Education (EDI) was created. The Director of the Institute was appointed I.I. Danyushevsky. Since the creation of EDI and until the last days of his life, L.S. Vygotsky was his supervisor and consultant.

The staff of scientists gradually increased, the base for research expanded. At the institute, an abnormal child was examined, diagnosed and planned for further corrective work with deaf and mentally retarded children.

Until now, many defectologists recall how scientific and practical workers flocked from different regions of Moscow to observe how L.S. Vygotsky examined the children, and then analyzed in detail each individual case, revealing the structure of the defect and giving practical recommendations to parents and teachers.

In EDI there was a community school for children with behavioral abnormalities, an auxiliary school (for mentally retarded children), a school for the deaf, and a clinical diagnostic department. In 1933, L.S. Vygotsky together with the director of the institute I.I. Danyushevsky decided to study children with speech impairments.

Conducted by L.S. Vygotsky's studies at this institute are still fundamental to the productive development of defectology problems. Created by L.S. Vygotsky, the scientific system in this field of knowledge has not only historiographic significance, but also significantly affects the development of the theory and practice of modern defectology.

It is difficult to name the work of recent years in the field of psychology and pedagogy of an abnormal child, which would not experience the influence of Leo Semenovich’s ideas and would not directly or indirectly appeal to his scientific heritage. His teaching still does not lose its relevance and significance.

In the field of scientific interests L.S. Vygotsky had a wide range of issues related to the study, development, training and education of abnormal children. In our opinion, the most significant are the problems that help to understand the nature and nature of the defect, the possibilities and features of its compensation and the correct organization of the study, training and education of the abnormal child. Briefly describe some of them.

Leo Semenovich's understanding of the nature and essence of abnormal development differed from the widespread biologizer approach to the defect. L.S. Vygotsky considered the defect as a “social dislocation” caused by a change in the child’s relationship with the environment, which leads to a violation of the social aspects of behavior. He concludes that in understanding the essence of abnormal development, it is necessary to isolate and take into account the primary defect, secondary, tertiary and subsequent layers over it. Distinguishing primary and subsequent symptoms L.S. Vygotsky considered it extremely important when studying children with various pathologies. He wrote that elementary functions, being the primary flaw arising from the very core of the defect and being directly related to it, are less amenable to correction.

The problem of defect compensation is reflected in most of the works of L.S. Vygotsky, devoted to the problems of defectology.

The developed theory of compensation was organically included in the problem of development and decay of higher mental functions that he studied. Already in the 20s. L.S. Vygotsky put forward and substantiated the need for social compensation of the defect as a task of paramount importance: "It is likely that humanity will defeat sooner or later blindness, deafness, and dementia, but much earlier it will defeat them socially and pedagogically than medically and biologically."

In subsequent years, Lev Semenovich deepened and specified the theory of compensation. Extremely important for the improvement of the theory of compensation and the problems of teaching abnormal children was put forward by L.S. Vygotsky's provision on creating workarounds for the development of a pathologically developing child. In his later works, L.S. Vygotsky has repeatedly returned to the question of workarounds for development, noting their great importance for the compensation process. “In the process of cultural development,” he writes, “a child is replaced by some functions by others, bypassing, and this opens up completely new opportunities for us to develop an abnormal child. If this child cannot achieve anything directly, then the development of workarounds becomes the basis of his compensation. "

L.S. Vygotsky, in the light of his compensation problem, pointed out that all defectological pedagogical practice consists of creating workarounds for the development of an abnormal child. This, in the words of L.S. Vygotsky, "alpha and omega" of special pedagogy.

So, in the works of the 20s. L.S. Vygotsky only in the most general form put forward the idea of \u200b\u200breplacing biological compensation with social. In his subsequent works, this idea takes on a concrete form: the way to compensate for a defect is to form workarounds for the development of an abnormal child.

Lev Semenovich argued that a normal and abnormal child develop according to the same laws. But along with general patterns, he noted the uniqueness of the development of an abnormal child. And as the main feature of the abnormal psyche, he distinguished the divergence of biological and cultural development processes.

It is known that in each of the categories of abnormal children, for various reasons and to varying degrees, the accumulation of life experience is delayed, so the role of learning in their development is of particular importance. A mentally retarded, deaf and blind child, early started, properly organized training and education are necessary to a greater extent than a normally developing one, capable of independently drawing knowledge from the outside world.

Describing defectiveness as a “social dislocation”, Lev Semenovich does not at all deny that organic defects (with deafness, blindness, dementia) are biological facts. But since the teacher has to deal in practice not so much with the biological facts themselves as with their social consequences, with the conflicts that arise when the “abnormal child enters life,” L.S. Vygotsky had sufficient reason to argue that raising a child with a defect is fundamentally social in nature. Improper or later started raising an abnormal child leads to the fact that deviations in the development of his personality are aggravated, and behavioral disorders appear.

To tear an abnormal child from a state of isolation, to open up wide opportunities for a truly human life, to introduce him to socially useful work, to raise an active conscious member of society from him — these are the tasks that, in the opinion of L.S. Vygotsky, should first of all decide a special school.

Refuting the false opinion about the lowered “social impulses” of an abnormal child, Lev Semenovich raises the question of the need to educate him not as a disabled dependent or socially neutral being, but as an active conscious person.

In the process of pedagogical work with children with sensory or intellectual disabilities, L.S. Vygotsky considers it necessary to focus not on the "spools of illness" of the child, but on the "pounds of health" he has.

At that time, the essence of the correctional work of special schools, which boiled down to training the processes of memory, attention, observation, sensory organs, was a system of formal isolated exercises. L.S. Vygotsky was one of the first to draw attention to the painful nature of these trainings. He did not consider it right to isolate the system of such exercises into separate exercises, to turn them into an end in itself, and advocated such a principle of correctional and educational work, in which the correction of deficiencies in the cognitive activity of abnormal children would be part of the general educational work, would be dissolved in the entire learning process and upbringing, was carried out in the course of play, training and work.

Developing in child psychology the problem of the ratio of learning and development, L.S. Vygotsky came to the conclusion that education should precede, run ahead and pull up, lead the development of the child.

Such an understanding of the correlation of these processes led him to the need to take into account both the current (“current”) level of development of the child and his potential capabilities (“zone of proximal development”). Under the "zone of proximal development" L.S. Vygotsky understood the functions “Being in the process of ripening, functions that will ripen tomorrow, which are now still in their infancy, functions that can be called not the fruits of development, but the buds of development, the colors of development, i.e. that is just ripening. "

Thus, in the process of developing the concept of the “zone of proximal development”, Lev Semenovich put forward an important thesis that when determining the mental development of a child, one cannot focus only on what he has achieved, i.e. to the passed and completed stages, but it is necessary to take into account the "dynamic state of its development", "those processes that are now in a state of formation."

According to Vygotsky, the “zone of proximal development” is determined in the process of solving a child’s difficult tasks for his age with the help of an adult. Thus, the assessment of the child’s mental development should be based on two indicators: susceptibility to the assistance provided and the ability to solve similar problems in the future on their own.

In his daily work, confronting not only normally developing children, but also examining children with developmental disabilities, Lev Semenovich became convinced that ideas about development zones are very productive when applied to all categories of abnormal children.

The leading method of examining children by pedologists was the use of psychometric tests. In some cases, interesting in themselves, they, however, did not give an idea about the structure of the defect, about the real possibilities of the child. Pedologists believed that abilities can and should be quantified with a view to the subsequent distribution of children in different schools depending on the results of this measurement. A formal assessment of children's abilities, conducted by test tests, led to errors, as a result of which normal children were sent to auxiliary schools.

In his writings L.S. Vygotsky criticized the methodological inconsistency of the quantitative approach to the study of the psyche using test tests. According to the figurative expression of the scientist, during such examinations “kilometers were summed up with kilograms”.

After one of the reports made by Vygotsky (December 23, 1933) he was asked to give his opinion on the tests. Vygotsky answered it this way: “At our congresses, the smartest scientists argued over which method is better: laboratory or experimental. It’s the same as arguing which is better: a knife or a hammer. A method is always a means, a method is always a way. Is it possible to say that the best way is from Moscow to Leningrad? If you want to go to Leningrad, then of course this is so, but if to Pskov, then this is a bad way. This is not to say that tests are always a good or bad tool, but one general rule can be said that tests themselves are not an objective indicator of mental development. Tests always reveal signs, and signs do not indicate the development process directly, but always need to be supplemented with other signs. ”

Answering the question of whether tests can serve as a criterion of actual development, L.S. Vygotsky said: “I think the question is which tests and how to use them. This question can be answered in the same way as if I had been asked if a knife could be a good tool for surgery. Watching which one? A knife from Narpitov’s dining room, of course, will be a bad remedy, and a surgical one will be a good one. ”

“The study of a difficult-educated child,” wrote L.S. Vygotsky, more than any other child’s type, should be based on his long-term observation in the process of upbringing, on a pedagogical experiment, on the study of products of creativity, play, and all aspects of a child’s behavior. ”

"Tests to study the will, emotional side, imagination, character, etc. can be used as an auxiliary and indicative means."

From the above statements L.S. Vygotsky can be seen: he believed that tests alone cannot be an objective indicator of mental development. However, he did not deny the permissibility of their limited use along with other methods of studying a child. In fact, Vygotsky’s view of tests is similar to that currently held by psychologists and defectologists.

A lot of attention in his works L.S. Vygotsky devoted the problem of studying abnormal children and their proper selection to special institutions. The modern principles of selection (comprehensive, holistic, dynamic, systemic and integrated study) of children are rooted in the concept of L.S. Vygotsky.

Ideas L.S. Vygotsky about the features of the child’s mental development, about the areas of current and immediate development, the leading role of education and upbringing, the need for a dynamic and systematic approach to implementing corrective action, taking into account the integrity of personality development and a number of others, were reflected and developed in theoretical and experimental studies of domestic scientists, and also in the practice of different types of schools for abnormal children.

In the early 30s. L.S. Vygotsky worked fruitfully in the field of pathopsychology. One of the leading provisions of this science, contributing to the correct understanding of the abnormal development of mental activity, according to well-known experts, is the provision on the unity of intelligence and affect. L.S. Vygotsky calls it the cornerstone in the development of a child with a safe intellect and the mentally retarded. The significance of this idea goes far beyond the problems in connection with which it was expressed. Leo Semenovich believed that “The unity of intellect and affect provides the process of regulation and the mediation of our behavior (in Vygotsky’s terminology -“ changes our actions ”).”

L.S. Vygotsky took a new approach to the experimental study of the basic processes of thought and to the study of how higher mental functions are formed and decay in pathological conditions of the brain. Thanks to the work carried out by Vygotsky and his collaborators, the decay processes received their new scientific explanation ...

The problems of speech pathology that interested Leo Semenovich began to be studied under his leadership at the EDI speech clinic-school. In particular, from 1933-1934. One of the students of Lev Semenovich, Roza Evgenievna Levina, was engaged in the study of Alalik children.

Leo Semyonovich belongs to the attempts of a thorough psychological analysis of the changes in speech and thinking that occur with aphasia. (These ideas were subsequently developed and developed in detail by A.R. Luria).

Theoretical and methodological concept developed by L.S. Vygotsky, ensured the transition of defectology from empirical, descriptive positions to truly scientific foundations, contributing to the formation of defectology as a science.

Such well-known defectologists as E.S. Bane, T.A. Vlasova, R.E. Levina, N.G. Morozova, J.I. Shif, who were fortunate enough to work with Lev Semenovich, appreciates his contribution to the development of theory and practice: “His works served as the scientific basis for building special schools and the theoretical justification of the principles and methods of studying the diagnosis of difficult (abnormal) children. Vygotsky left a legacy of enduring scientific significance, which was included in the treasury of Soviet and world psychology, defectology, psychoneurology and other related sciences. "

Fragments of the book G.L. Vygodskoy and T.M. Lifanova “Leo Semenovich Vygotsky. A life. Activity Strokes to the portrait. " - M .: Sense, 1996. - S. 114–126 (in abbreviation). *