On Sat, 22 Oct 2005 10:41:19 -0400 "Charles Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > rdumain > > -clip- Wasn't there some association between the Hegelian Deborites > and > non-Pavlovian, anti-reductionist Soviet psychologists in the 1920s? > > > ^^^^^^
I suspect that Vygotsky would probably have been influenced by Deborin and his disciples. He certainly saw himself as developing a dialectical, anti-reductionist psychology. The Soviet psychologists like Vygotsky, Lenontiev, Rubenshtein, Luria, etc. saw psychology as a science that was in a crisis, analogous to the crisis that Lenin had described in his *Materialism and Empirio-Criticism* as afflicting the natural sciences. The crisis in psychology was seen as emerging from a contradiction between the materialist outlook that was associated with experimental psychology, and the idealism which bourgeois psychology retained from the philosophies of Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, and Kant. The writings of Wundt, the father of modern psychology were seen as exemplifying this contradiction. Therefore, early Soviet psychologists were more than willing to give a fair hearing to psychologies that challenged Wundt's introspectionism including both John B. Watson's behaviorism and Gestalt psychology. Watson's work was look favorably upon because he was seen as attempting to articulate a materialist psychology. Watson was invited to write an article on behaviorism for the *Large Soviet Encyclopedia*. Gestalt psychology was treated favorably at first because it was seen as an attempt at developing a dialectical psychology. A little later on, Soviet psychologists initiated attempts at developing their own psychological theories which were they hoped would be consistent with basic Marxist principles such as the materialist conception of history and Lenin's analysis of reflection. Thus American behaviorism was ultimately rejected as being mechanistic and positivistic while Gestalt psychology was rejected as idealist. Nevertheless, they were recognized as having made important contributions which had to be absorbed into a psychology that was firmly grounded in dialectical materialism. I have since read enough of Pavlov to know that he and his disciples took pains to emphasize the dialectical character of their work but then again, the Mechanists had likewise took pains to assert the dialectical character of their views too. In the late Stalin period when the debate over cybernetics broke out, both sides of the debate accused each other of falling into mechanistic materialism while each side asserted the dialectical character of their own views. Despite the efforts of Stalin to settle the debate between mechanists and dialecticians by fiat, the underlying issues never went away and kept reappearing in Soviet thought up to the very end. And that should be no surprise since these represented some of the fundamental issues that are posed by Marxism. > > CB: Jim says something on this: > > > "It is also interest that the issues underlying the debate between > the > mechanists and the Dialecticians appeared in other disciplines as > well such > as in Soviet psychology. The reflexology of Ivan Pavlov can be seen > as > representing a mechanist approach to psychology in which behavior > was > broken down into reflexes - both unconditioned and conditioned. In > contrast > the Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky attempted to construct a > psychology > directly from the premisses of dialectical materialism. He developed > > Genetic approach to the development of concepts in early childhood > and > youth, tracing the transition through a series of stages of human > development, based on the development of the child's social > practice. His > work eventually impacted Western psychology especially through his > influence on the thought of Jean Piaget. However, under Stalin > Vygotsky's > work was considered to be heretical while Pavlov's work became the > basis > for official Soviet psychology. Indeed, in the later years of > Stalin's > regime, it was made the official Soviet psychology and most other > schools > were suppressed. Thus, while mechanism was rejected as a general > philosophical outlook, it was embraced in psychology." > > > > _______________________________________________ > Marxism-Thaxis mailing list > [email protected] > To change your options or unsubscribe go to: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis > _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
