Vygotsky Lev Semenovich years of life. Lev Vygotsky: a very short introduction

Years of life: 1896 - 1934

Homeland: Orsha (Russian Empire)

Vygotsky Lev Semenovich was born in 1896. He was an outstanding domestic psychologist, the creator of the concept of the development of higher mental functions. Lev Semenovich was born in the Belarusian town of Orsha, but a year later the Vygodskys moved to Gomel and settled there for a long time. His father, Semyon Lvovich Vygodsky, graduated from the Commercial Institute in Kharkov and was a bank clerk and insurance agent. Mother, Cecilia Moiseevna, devoted almost her entire life to raising her eight children (Lev was the second child). The family was considered a kind of cultural center of the city. For example, there is information that Father Vygodsky founded a public library in the city. Literature was loved and known in the house, it is not by chance that so many famous philologists came from the Vygodsky family. In addition to Lev Semenovich, these are his sisters Zinaida and Claudia; cousin David Isaakovich, one of the prominent representatives of "Russian formalism" (somewhere in the early 20s he began to publish, and since both of them were engaged in poetics, it is natural to want to "disengage" so that they are not confused, and therefore Lev Semenovich Vygodsky I replaced the letter "d" in my last name with "t"). Young Lev Semenovich was fond of literature and philosophy. Benedict Spinoza became and remained his favorite philosopher until the end of his life. Young Vygotsky studied mainly at home. Only the last two classes he studied at the Ratner private gymnasium in Gomel. He excelled in all subjects. At the gymnasium, he studied German, French, Latin, at home, in addition, English, ancient Greek and Hebrew. After graduating from the gymnasium, L.S. Vygotsky entered Moscow University, where he studied at the Faculty of Law during the First World War (1914-1917). Then he became interested in literary criticism, and in several magazines his reviews of the books of symbolist writers - the rulers of the souls of the then intelligentsia: A. Bely, V. Ivanov, D. Merezhkovsky appeared. In these student years, he wrote his first work - the treatise "The Tragedy of Hamlet Danish W. Shakespeare." After the victory of the revolution, Vygotsky returned to Gomel and took an active part in the construction of a new school. The beginning of his scientific career as a psychologist falls on this period, since in 1917 he began to engage in research work and organized a psychological office at the pedagogical college, where he conducted research. In 1922-1923. he conducted five studies, three of which he later reported at the II All-Russian Congress on Psychoneurology. These were: "The methodology of reflexological research as applied to the study of the psyche", "How psychology should be taught now" and "The results of a questionnaire on the mood of students in the final grades of Gomel schools in 1923. ". In the Gomel period, Vygotsky imagined that the future of psychology lay in the application to the causal explanation of the phenomena of consciousness of reflexological methods, the dignity of which lies in their objectivity and natural scientific rigor. The content and style of Vygotsky's speeches, as well as his personality, literally shocked one of the participants in the congress - A. R. Luria.The new director of the Moscow Institute of Psychology N.K.Kornilov accepted Luria's proposal to invite Vygotsky to Moscow.Thus, the ten-year Moscow stage of Vygotsky's work began in 1924. This decade can be divided into three periods.The first period (1924-1927 Having just arrived in Moscow and having passed the exams for the title of researcher of the 2nd category, Vygotsky delivered three reports in six months. In terms of further developing the new psychological concept conceived in Gomel, he builds a behavior model based on the reactions The term "reaction" was introduced in order to distinguish the psychological approach from the phi siological. He introduces into it signs that allow one to correlate the behavior of the organism regulated by consciousness with the forms of culture - language and art. After moving to Moscow, he was attracted by a special area of practice - working with children suffering from various mental and physical defects. In essence, his entire first year in Moscow can be called "defectological". He combines classes at the Institute of Psychology with active work in the People's Commissariat of Education. Having shown brilliant organizational skills, he laid the foundations of the defectological service, and later became the scientific director of the special scientific and practical institute that still exists today. The most important direction of Vygotsky's research in the first years of the Moscow period was the analysis of the situation in world psychology. He writes a preface to Russian translations of the works of the leaders of psychoanalysis, behaviorism, gestaltism, trying to determine the significance of each of the directions for developing a new picture of mental regulation. Back in 1920, Vygotsky fell ill with tuberculosis, and since then outbreaks of the disease have more than once plunged him into a "borderline situation" between life and death. One of the most severe outbreaks struck him at the end of 1926. Then, having got to the hospital, he set about one of his main studies, which he gave the name "The Meaning of the Psychological Crisis." The epigraph to the treatise was the biblical words: "The stone that the builders despised has become the cornerstone." This stone he called practice and philosophy. The second period of Vygotsky's work (1927-1931) in his Moscow decade was instrumental psychology. He introduces the concept of a sign, which acts as a special psychological tool, the use of which, without changing anything in the substance of nature, serves as a powerful means of transforming the psyche from natural (biological) into cultural (historical). Thus, the didactic "stimulus-response" scheme adopted by both subjective and objective psychology was rejected. It was replaced by a triadic one - "stimulus - stimulus - reaction", where a special stimulus - sign acts as an intermediary between an external object (stimulus) and the body's response (mental reaction). This sign is a kind of tool, when operating with which an individual from his primary natural mental processes (memory, attention, associated thinking) develops a special system of functions of the second sociocultural order, inherent only to a person. Vygotsky called them the highest mental functions. The most significant achievement of this period by Vygotsky and his group was summarized in a lengthy manuscript, The History of the Development of Higher Mental Functions. Among the publications that preceded the indicated generalizing manuscript, we note "Instrumental method in pedology" (1928), "The problem of the cultural development of the child" (1928), "Instrumental method in psychology" (1930), "Tool and sign in the development of the child" ( 1931). In all cases, the problem of the development of the child's psyche was at the center, interpreted from the same angle of view: the creation of new cultural forms from its biopsychic natural "material". Vygotsky becomes one of the main pedologists of the country. Out of print "Pedology of school age" (1928), "Pedology of youth" (1929), "Pedology of a teenager" (1930-1931). Vygotsky strives to recreate a general picture of the development of the mental world. He moved from studying signs as determinants of instrumental acts to studying the evolution of the meanings of these signs, primarily speech ones, in the child's mental life. The new research program became the main one in his third and last Moscow period (1931-1934). The results of its development were captured in the monograph "Thinking and Speech". Having dealt with global questions about the relationship between training and education, Vygotsky gave it an innovative interpretation in the concept he introduced about the "zone of proximal development", according to which only that training is effective, which "runs ahead" of development. In the last period of his work, the leitmotif of Vygotsky's searches, linking various branches of his work into a common knot (the history of the doctrine of affects, the study of the age dynamics of consciousness, the semantic subtext of the word), became the problem of the relationship between motivation and cognitive processes. Vygotsky worked at the limit of human capabilities. From dawn until late, his days were oversaturated with countless lectures, clinical and laboratory work. He made numerous presentations at various meetings and conferences, wrote abstracts, articles, and introductions to materials collected by his staff. When Vygotsky was taken to the hospital, he took his beloved Hamlet with him. In one of the notes about Shakespeare's tragedy, it was noted that the main state of Hamlet is readiness. "I'm ready" - these, according to the testimony of the nurse, were Vygotsky's last words. Although early death did not allow Vygotsky to implement many promising programs, his ideas, which revealed the mechanisms and laws of the cultural development of the personality, the development of its mental functions (attention, speech, thinking, affects), outlined a fundamentally new approach to the fundamental issues of personality formation. Bibliography of L.S. Vygotsky has 191 works. Vygotsky's ideas received wide resonance in all sciences that study man, including linguistics, psychiatry, ethnography, and sociology. They determined a whole stage in the development of humanitarian knowledge in Russia and still retain their heuristic potential.

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VYGOTSKY(real name Vygodsky) Lev Semenovich (Simkhovich) (November 5, 1896, Orsha, Mogilev Province - June 11, 1934, Moscow) - an outstanding psychologist, founder of the cultural-historical school in psychology; Professor; member of the Russian Psychoanalytic Society (1925–30).

Vygotsky’s only permanent place of work over the past 10 years (1924-1934) was the Moscow State Pedagogical University (then the Second Moscow State University and the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute named after A.S. Bubnov), where the scientist continuously worked in various positions, headed the Department of Difficult Childhood of the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute.

In 1917 he graduated from the Faculty of Law of Moscow State University and at the same time - the Faculty of History and Philosophy of the Moscow City People's University. A.L. Shanyavsky. After the revolution of 1917 in Gomel he taught literature at school. Worked at the Moscow State Institute of Experimental Psychology (1924–28); in LGPI them. A.I. Herzen; at the State Institute of Scientific Pedagogy at the Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute. A.I. Herzen (1927–34); at the 2nd Moscow State University (1924–30); at the Academy of Communist Education. N.K. Krupskaya (1929–31); at the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute A.S. Bubnova (1930–34); at the Experimental Defectological Institute of the Narkompros (EDI) founded by Vygotsky himself (1929–34). He also read courses of lectures at universities in Tashkent and Kharkov. Carried away by literary criticism, Vygotsky wrote reviews of the books of the Symbolist writers: A. Bely, V. Ivanov, D. Merezhkovsky (1914–17), as well as the treatise The Tragedy of Danish Hamlet by W. Shakespeare (1915–16). In 1917 he began to engage in research work and organized a psychological study in Gomel at the Pedagogical College. At the II All-Russian Congress on Psychoneurology in Leningrad (1924) he delivered an innovative report "Methodology of reflexological and psychological research." He was sent to London for a defectological conference (1925), visited Berlin, Amsterdam and Paris. In 1925, his doctorate was accepted for defense. diss. "Psychology of Art". He published a textbook on psychology for teachers of secondary schools "Pedagogical Psychology" (1926). Member of the International Psychological Congress at Yale University (1929). At the VI International Conference on Psychotechnics in Barcelona, Vygotsky's report on the study of higher psychological functions in psychotechnical research was read (1930). He entered the medical faculty at the Ukrainian Psychoneurological Academy in Kharkov (1931). Together with A.R. Luria organized a scientific expedition to Central Asia (1931–32), during which one of the first cross-cultural studies of cognitive processes was carried out. In 1924 the Moscow stage of Vygotsky's activity began. The most important line of research in the early years (1924–27) was the analysis of the situation in world psychology. The scientists wrote prefaces to Russian translations. the works of the leaders of psychoanalysis, behaviorism, gestaltism, in which the significance of each of the directions was determined for the development of a new picture of mental regulation. Up until 1928, Vygotsky's psychology was a humanistic reactology, a type of learning theory that attempted to recognize the social nature of human thought and action. In search of methods for the objective study of complex forms of mental activity and behavior of the individual, Vygotsky created the fundamental work The Historical Meaning of the Psychological Crisis (1926–27). He tried to give human psychology the status of a science based on the laws of cause and effect. The second period of creativity (1927-31) - instrumental psychology. Vygotsky wrote the book The History of the Development of Higher Mental Functions (1930–31, published in 1960), in which he outlined the cultural-historical theory of the development of the psyche, which singled out two plans of behavior merged in evolution: “natural” (a product of the biological development of the animal world) and “ cultural” (the result of historical development). He formulated the concept of a sign as an instrument, when operating with which an individual from his primary natural mental processes (memory, attention, associated thinking) develops a special system of functions of the second sociocultural order, inherent only to a person. Vygotsky called them the highest mental functions. The new research program was the main one in the last years of the scientist's life (1931–34). The monograph "Thinking and Speech" (1934), devoted to the study of the relationship between thought and word in the structure of consciousness, became fundamental for Russian psycholinguistics. Vygotsky revealed the role of speech in the transformation of a child's thinking, in the formation of concepts, and in solving problems. The triad "consciousness-culture-behavior" became the focus of Vygotsky's searches. Studying the development and decay of higher mental functions on the material of child psychology, defectology and psychiatry, I came to the conclusion that the structure of consciousness is a dynamic semantic system of affective volitional and intellectual processes that are in unity. Of great importance in the creative heritage of Vygotsky was the idea of the relationship between education and the mental development of the child. The main source of this development is the changing social environment, to describe which Vygotsky introduced the term "social situation of development". A serious contribution to educational psychology was the concept he created of the "zone of proximal development", according to which only that training is effective, which "runs ahead" of development. Many of Vygotsky's works are devoted to the study of mental development and the patterns of personality formation in childhood, and to the problems of teaching children at school. Vygotsky played an outstanding role in the development of defectology and pedology. He created in Moscow a laboratory for the psychology of abnormal childhood, which later became an integral part of the EDI. One of the first among domestic psychologists, he not only theoretically substantiated, but also confirmed in practice that any shortcoming in both psychological and physical development can be corrected. Vygotsky proposed a new periodization of the human life cycle, which was based on the alternation of stable periods of development and crises, accompanied by the appearance of certain neoplasms. He was the first in psychology to approach the consideration of the psychological crisis as a necessary stage in the development of the human psyche, revealing its positive meaning. In the last period of creativity, the leitmotif of the scientist’s searches, linking various branches of his work into a common knot (the history of the doctrine of affects, the study of the age dynamics of consciousness, the semantic subtext of the word), became the problem of the relationship between motivation and cognitive processes. Vygotsky's ideas, which revealed the mechanisms and laws of the cultural development of the individual, the development of his mental functions (attention, speech, thinking, affects), outlined a fundamentally new approach to the fundamental issues of personality formation. Vygotsky had a great influence on the development of domestic and world psychology, psychopathology, pathopsychology, neuropsychology, psychiatry, sociology, defectology, pedology, pedagogy, linguistics, art history, and ethnography. The emergence of social constructivism is associated with the name of Vygotsky. The ideas of the scientist determined a whole stage in the development of humanitarian knowledge in Russia and still retain their heuristic potential. In the 1980s, all of Vygotsky's main works were translated and formed the basis of modern educational psychology in the United States.

Pupils and followers: L.I. Bozhovich, P.Ya. Galperin, L.V. Zankov, A.V. Zaporozhets, P.I. Zinchenko, R.E. Levina, A.N. Leontiev, A.R. Luria, N.G. Morozova, L.S. Slavina, D.B. Elkonin. A number of foreign researchers and practitioners (J. Bruner, J. Valsiner, J. Wertsch, M. Cole, B. Rogoff, R. Hare, J. Shotter) consider Vygotsky their teacher.

Op.: Pedagogical psychology // Worker of education. M., 1926; Adolescent pedology. M., 1930; Thinking and speech. M.; L., 1934; Mental development of children in the learning process: a collection of articles. M., 1935; Development of higher mental functions. M., 1960; Psychology of art. M., 1965; Structural psychology. M., 1972; Collected works: in 6 volumes / ch. ed. A.V. Zaporozhets. M., 1982–84; Problems of defectology. M., 1995.

“Works of L. S. Vygotsky: on the occasion of the 120th anniversary of his birth.”

Lev Simkhovich Vygodsky (in 1917 and 1924 he changed his patronymic and surname) was born on November 5 (17), 1896 in the city of Orsha, the second of eight children in the family of the deputy manager of the Gomel branch of the United Bank, a graduate of the Kharkov Commercial Institute, merchant Simkha (Semyon) Yakovlevich Vygodsky (1869-1931) and his wife Tsili (Cecilia) Moiseevna Vygodskaya (1874-1935). He was educated by a private teacher Sholom (Solomon) Mordukhovich Ashpiz (Aspiz, 1876-?), known for using the so-called method of Socratic dialogue and participating in revolutionary activities as part of the Gomel Social Democratic organization. A significant influence on the future psychologist in childhood was also exerted by his cousin, later a well-known literary critic and translator, David Isaakovich Vygodsky (1893-1943). L. S. Vygodsky changed one letter in his last name in order to differ from D. I. Vygodsky, who had already gained fame.

In 1917, Lev Vygotsky graduated from the Faculty of Law of Moscow University and at the same time - the Faculty of History and Philosophy of the University. Shanyavsky. After completing his studies in Moscow, he returned to Gomel. In 1924 he moved to Moscow, where he lived the last decade of his short life. Worked in

Moscow State Institute of Experimental Psychology (1924-1928),
State Institute of Scientific Pedagogics (GINP) at the LGPI and in the LGPI. 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 - in the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute. A. S. Bubnova (1930-1934),
State Scientific Institute for the Protection of Health of Children and Adolescents named after the 10th Anniversary of the October Revolution (since the beginning of 1931 in the position of deputy director of the institute for the scientific part), as well as in the one founded with his active participation
Experimental Defectological Institute (1929-1934);
also gave lecture courses at a number of educational institutions and research organizations in Moscow, Leningrad, Kharkov and Tashkent, for example, at the Central Asian State University (SAGU) (in 1929).

Family and relatives

Parents - Simkha (Semyon) Yakovlevich Vygodsky (1869-1931) and Tsilya (Cecilia) Moiseevna Vygodskaya (1874-1935).

Wife - Rosa Noevna Smekhova.

Gita Lvovna Vygodskaya (1925-2010) - Soviet psychologist and defectologist, candidate of psychological sciences, co-author of the biography “L. S. Vygotsky. Strokes for a portrait" (1996); her daughter - Elena Evgenievna Kravtsova, Doctor of Psychology, Director of the Institute of Psychology. L. S. Vygotsky RGGU
Asya Lvovna Vygodskaya (born 1930).

Other relatives:

Claudia Semyonovna Vygodskaya (sister) - linguist, author of Russian-French and French-Russian dictionaries.
Zinaida Semyonovna Vygodskaya (sister) - linguist, author of Russian-English and English-Russian dictionaries.
David Isaakovich Vygodsky (1893-1943) (cousin) - a prominent poet, literary critic, translator (his wife is a children's writer Emma Iosifovna Vygodskaya).

Chronology of the most important events of life

1924 - report at the psycho-neurological congress, moving from Gomel to Moscow
1925 - defense of the dissertation Psychology of Art (November 5, 1925 Vygotsky was awarded the title of senior researcher, equivalent to the modern PhD degree, due to illness without protection, the contract for the publication of the Psychology of Art was signed on November 9, 1925, but the book was never published during Vygotsky's life)
1925 - the first and only trip abroad: sent to London for a defectological conference; on the way to England, he traveled through Germany, France, where he met with local psychologists
1925-1930 - Member of the Russian Psychoanalytic Society (RPSAO)
1927 - employee of the Institute of Psychology in Moscow, works with such prominent scientists as Luria, Bernstein, Artemov, Dobrynin, Leontiev
1929 - International Psychological Congress at Yale University; Luria presented two reports, one of which was co-authored with Vygotsky; Vygotsky himself did not go to the congress
1929, spring - Vygotsky lectures in Tashkent
1931 - entered the medical faculty at the Ukrainian Psychoneurological Academy in Kharkov, where he studied in absentia with Luria
1931 - father's death
1932, December - report on consciousness, formal disagreement with Leontiev's group in Kharkov
1933, February-May - Kurt Lewin stops in Moscow on his way from the USA (through Japan), meetings with Vygotsky
1934, May 9 - Vygotsky was transferred to bed rest
1934, June 11 - death

Scientific contribution

The formation of Vygotsky as a scientist coincided with the period of restructuring 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 contemporary psychological concepts (“The Meaning of the Psychological Crisis”, manuscript, 1926), showing the futility of attempts to explain human behavior by reducing higher forms of behavior to lower elements. .

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

Cultural-historical theory

The book History of the Development of Higher Mental Functions (1931, published in 1960) provides a detailed presentation of the cultural-historical theory of the development of the psyche: according to Vygotsky, it is necessary to distinguish between lower and higher mental functions, and, accordingly, two plans of behavior - natural, natural (the result of biological evolution 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 offered a new solution to the problem of the relationship between 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 influencing stimulus and the reaction of a person (both behavioral and mental), an additional connection arises through a mediating link - a stimulus-means, or a sign.

The difference between signs and tools that also mediate higher mental functions, cultural behavior, is that the tools are directed "outside", to transform reality, and the signs "inside", first to transform other people, then to control their own behavior. The word is a means of arbitrary direction of attention, abstraction of properties and their synthesis into meaning (formation of concepts), arbitrary control of one's own mental operations.

The most convincing model of mediated activity, which characterizes the manifestation and implementation of higher mental functions, is the "situation of Buridan's donkey." This classical situation of uncertainty, or a problematic situation (a choice between two equal possibilities), interests Vygotsky primarily from the point of view of the means that make it possible to transform (solve) the situation that has arisen. By casting lots, a person "artificially introduces into the situation, changing it, new auxiliary stimuli that are not connected with it in any way." Thus, the cast die becomes, according to Vygotsky, a means of transforming and resolving the situation.

Thinking and speech

In the last years of his life, Vygotsky paid most of his attention to the study of the relationship between thought and word in the structure of consciousness. His work "Thinking and Speech" (1934), devoted to the study of this problem, is fundamental for Russian psycholinguistics.

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

For example, Köhler's experiments, which revealed the ability of chimpanzees to solve complex problems, showed that human-like intelligence and expressive speech (absent in monkeys) function independently.

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

The speech thinking that arises as a result of such a merger is not a natural, but a socio-historical form of behavior. It has specific (in comparison with natural forms of thinking and speech) properties. With the emergence of speech thinking, the biological type of development is replaced by a socio-historical one.

An adequate method for studying the relationship between thought and word, says Vygotsky, should be an analysis that dismembers the object under study - speech thinking - not into elements, but into units. A unit is the smallest part of a whole that has all its basic properties. Such a unit of speech thinking is the meaning of the word.

The relation of thought to word is impermanent; it is a process, a movement from thought to word and vice versa, the formation of a thought in a word. Vygotsky describes “the complex structure of any real thought process and its associated complex course from the first, most vague moment of the birth of a thought to its final completion in a verbal formulation”, highlighting the following levels:

Thought motivation
Thought
inner speech
Semantic plan (that is, the meanings of external words)
External speech.

Vygotsky came to the conclusion that egocentric speech is not an expression of intellectual egocentrism, as Piaget argued, but a transitional stage from external to internal speech. Egocentric speech initially accompanies practical activity.

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

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

Everyday concepts are acquired and used in everyday life, in everyday communication, words like “table”, “cat”, “house”. Scientific concepts are words that a child learns in school, terms built into the knowledge system that are related to other terms.

When using spontaneous concepts, a child for a long time (up to 11-12 years old) is aware only of the object they point to, but not the concepts themselves, not their meaning. This is expressed in the lack of the ability "to verbal definition of the concept, to the possibility in other words to give its verbal formulation, 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 realization of their meaning, scientific - in the opposite direction, because "just in the area where the concept of "brother" turns out to be a strong concept, that is, in the area of spontaneous use, its application to countless specific situations, the richness of its empirical content and connection with personal experience, the scientific concept of the schoolchild reveals its weakness. An analysis of the child's spontaneous concept convinces us that the child is much more aware of the object than the concept itself. The analysis of a scientific concept convinces us that the child at the very beginning is much better aware of the concept itself than the object represented in it.

The awareness of meanings that comes with age is deeply connected with the emerging systematicity of concepts, that is, with the appearance, with the appearance of logical relations between them. A spontaneous concept is associated only with the object to which it refers. 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 level of generalization in relation to the given one. This completely changes the possibilities of the word as a cognitive tool. Outside the system, Vygotsky writes, only empirical connections, that is, relations between objects, can be expressed in concepts (in sentences). “Together with the system, relations of concepts to concepts arise, a mediated relation of concepts to objects through their relation to other concepts, a generally different relation of concepts to an object arises: supra-empirical connections become possible in concepts.” This finds expression, in particular, in the fact that the concept is no longer defined through the connections of the defined object with other objects (“the dog guards the house”), but through the relation of the defined concept to other concepts (“the dog is an animal”).

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

Developmental and educational psychology

In the works of Vygotsky, the problem of the relationship between the role of maturation and learning in the development of higher mental functions of the child is considered in detail. Thus, he formulated the most important principle, according to which the preservation and timely maturation of brain structures is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the development of higher mental functions. The main source for this development is the changing social environment, to describe which Vygotsky introduced the term social situation of development, defined as “a peculiar, age-specific, exclusive, unique and inimitable relationship between the child and the reality surrounding him, primarily social”. It is this attitude that determines the course of development of the child's psyche at a certain age stage.

Vygotsky proposed a new periodization of the human life cycle, which was based on the alternation of stable periods of development and crises. Crises are characterized by revolutionary changes, the criterion of which is the emergence of neoplasms. The cause of 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 at the restructuring of this situation that the normal crisis is directed.

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 neoplasms are mastered.

Neonatal crisis (0-2 months)

Infancy (2 months - 1 year)

One year crisis

Early childhood (1-3 years)

Crisis of three years

Preschool age (3-7 years old)

Crisis of seven years

School age (8-12 years old)

Crisis of thirteen years

Adolescence (pubertal) period (14-17 years)

The Crisis of Seventeen

Youth period (17-21 years old)

Later, a slightly different version of this periodization appeared, developed within the framework of the activity approach by Vygotsky's student D. B. Elkonin. It was based on the concept of leading activity and the idea of a change in leading activity during the transition to a new age stage. At the same time, Elkonin singled out the same periods and crises as in Vygotsky's periodization, but with a more detailed consideration of the mechanisms operating at each stage.

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

A significant contribution to educational psychology is the concept of the zone of proximal development introduced by Vygotsky. The zone of proximal development is “the area of not matured, but maturing processes”, which includes tasks that a child at a given level of development cannot cope with on his own, but which he is able to solve with the help of an adult; This is the level reached by the child so far only in the course of joint activities with an adult.

Vygotsky's influence

The cultural-historical theory of Vygotsky gave rise to the largest school in Soviet psychology, from which

Everyone knows Freud, Jurga - the majority, Carnegie and Maslow - many. Vygotsky Lev Semenovich is a name rather for professionals. The rest have only 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 has nothing to do with the interpretation of the formation of the human personality by any of the gurus of science. In the 1930s, in the world of psychology and psychiatry, everyone knew this name - Vygotsky Lev Semenovich. The work 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, rediscovering what was lost in something. And if you arrange a street poll, it is unlikely that many respondents will be able to answer who Vygotsky Lev Semenovich is. Photos - old, black and white, blurry - will show us a young handsome man with a thoroughbred elongated face. However, Vygotsky never became old. Perhaps fortunately. His life flashed like a bright comet on the vault of domestic science, flashed and went out. The name was consigned to oblivion, 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 children's, is invaluable, is beyond doubt. He created a theory of work 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 person did not contain bright 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 children, a rather remarkable figure in those parts. He practiced not traditional teaching methods, but Socratic dialogues that were almost never used in educational institutions. Perhaps it was this experience that determined Vygotsky's own unusual approach to teaching practice. A cousin, David Isaakovich Vygodsky, a translator and 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 Faculty of Medicine, then transferred to the Faculty of Law. For some time, he comprehended science in parallel at two faculties - legal and historical and philosophical, at the University. Shanyavsky. Later, Vygotsky Lev 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 experts, since Vygotsky applied a new, unexpected method of analysis, allowing him 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 based on the works of Lermontov and Bely.

First steps in science

After the revolution, after graduating from high school, Vygotsky first left for Samara, then looked for work with his family in Kyiv, and, in the end, returned to his native Gomel, where he lived until 1924. Not a psychotherapist, not a psychologist, but a teacher - this is precisely the profession that Vygotsky Lev Semenovich chose. A brief biography of those years can fit in a few lines. He worked as a teacher in schools, technical schools, courses. First he was in charge of the theatrical department of education, and then - the art department, wrote and published (critical articles, reviews). For a while, Vygotsky even worked as an editor for a local publication.

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

Carier start

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

Soon practically every practicing psychotherapist and defectologist knew who Vygotsky Lev Semenovich was. The main works of this outstanding scientist will be written later, at the same time he was a brilliant practitioner for everyone, personally engaged in pedagogical and therapeutic activities. Parents of sick children made incredible efforts to get an appointment with Vygotsky. And if you managed to become a "guinea pig" in the laboratory of abnormal childhood - it was considered incredible luck.

How did a teacher become a psychologist?

What is so unusual about the theory offered to the world by Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky? After all, psychology was not his profile subject, he was rather a linguist, literary critic, culturologist, and a practicing teacher. Why exactly psychology? Where?

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, then before Vygotsky, psychologists and psychiatrists were only interested in the foundation. Of course it is necessary. Without it, there will be no home. The foundation largely determines the building - the shape, height, some design features. It can be improved, perfected, strengthened and isolated. But that doesn't 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 determines the psyche

If we continue the analogy, it was precisely these factors that determine the final appearance of the house that Vygotsky Lev Semenovich was interested in. The main works of the researcher: "Psychology of Art", "Thinking and Speech", "Psychology of Child Development", "Pedagogical Psychology". The range of interests of the scientist clearly shaped his approach to psychological research. A person who is passionate about art and linguistics, a gifted teacher who loves and understands children - this is Vygotsky Lev Nikolayevich. He clearly saw that it was impossible to separate the psyche and the products it produced. Art and language are products of the activity of human consciousness. But they also determine the emerging consciousness. Children do not grow up 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 children well. He was a wonderful teacher and a kind, loving father. His daughters said that they had a warm trusting relationship not so much 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 Lev Semenovich did not have a separate place to work. But he never scolded the children, did not forbid them to play or invite friends to visit. After all, this was a violation of the equality accepted in the family. If guests come to their parents, the children have the same right to invite comrades. To ask them not to make noise for some time, as an equal of an equal - this is the maximum that Vygotsky Lev Semenovich allowed himself. 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 her father

The scientist's daughter says that there was not much time dedicated to her specifically. But her father took her with him to work, to the institute, and there the girl could freely examine any exhibits and preparations, and her father's colleagues always explained to her what, why and why it was necessary. So, for example, she saw a unique exhibit - Lenin's brain, which was stored in a jar.

Her father did not read children's poems to her - he simply did not like them, he considered it a tasteless primitive. On the other hand, Vygotsky had an excellent memory, and he could recite many classical works by heart. As a result, the girl developed well in art and literature, not at all feeling her age discrepancy.

People around about Vygotsky

The daughter also notes that Vygotsky Lev Semenovich was exceptionally 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 make out who was the student and who was the teacher. The same moment is noted by other people who knew the scientist: janitors, servants, cleaners. They all said that Vygotsky was an exceptionally sincere and benevolent person. Moreover, this quality was not demonstrative, worked out. No, it was just a trait. Vygotsky was very easy to embarrass, he was extremely critical of himself, while treating people with tolerance and understanding.

Work with children

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

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

Psychology and culture

Vygotsky was keenly interested in the psychology of art. He believed that it was this branch that was capable of exerting a critical influence on a person, releasing affective emotions that could not be realized in ordinary life. The scientist considered art the most important tool of socialization. Personal experiences form personal experience, but emotions, caused by the impact of a work of art, form external, public, 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 a third element, culture, into the mind-behavior connection that is familiar to psychologists.

Death of a scientist

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

In May 1934, the scientist's condition became so severe 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 Vygotsky Lev Semenovich died. 1896-1934 - only 38 years of life. Over the years, he has accomplished a lot. His work was not immediately appreciated. But now many practices of working with abnormal children are based precisely on the methods developed by Vygotsky.

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1 . Beegraphy

Lev Semenovich Vygotsky, Soviet psychologist, developed cultural-historical theory in psychology Born in the family of an employee, he graduated from the Faculty of Law of Moscow University (1917) and at the same time the Faculty of History and Philosophy of the University. Shanyavsky. From 1924 he worked at the Moscow State Institute of Experimental Psychology, then at the Institute of Defectology founded by him. Professor at the Institute of Psychology in Moscow.

In the last years of his life, Vygotsky focused on studying the structure of consciousness (Thinking and Speech, 1934). Investigating verbal thinking, Vygotsky solves the problem of localization of higher mental functions as structural units of brain activity in a new way. Studying the development and decay of higher mental functions on the basis of child psychology, defectology and psychiatry, Vygotsky comes to the conclusion that the structure of consciousness is a dynamic semantic system of affective volitional and intellectual processes that are in unity.

2 . On thescientific contributionL.S.Vygotsky

The formation of Vygotsky as a scientist coincided with the period of restructuring 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 subjected a number of philosophical and most contemporary psychological concepts to critical analysis, showing the futility of attempts to explain human behavior by reducing higher forms of behavior to lower elements.

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

In 1960, an unfinished manuscript was published under the title "History of the Development of Higher Mental Functions". It provides a detailed presentation of the cultural-historical theory of the development of the psyche according to Vygotsky, “it is necessary to distinguish between lower and higher mental functions, and, accordingly, two planes of behavior - natural, natural and cultural, socio-historical, merged in the development of the psyche.

A significant contribution to educational psychology is the concept of the zone of proximal development introduced by Vygotsky. The zone of proximal development is “the area of not matured, but maturing processes”, encompassing tasks that a child at a given level of development cannot cope with on his own, but which he is able to solve with the help of an adult. This is the level reached by the child so far only in the course of joint activities with an adult.

Vygodsky L.S. The following scientific works were written: The Psychology of Art (1925), Consciousness as a Problem in the Psychology of Behavior (1924), The Historical Meaning of the Psychological Crisis (1927), The Problem of the Cultural Development of the Child (1928), The Concrete Psychology of Man (1929), The Tool and the Sign in the Development of the Child (1930) (co-authored with A. R. Luria), Studies in the History of Behavior: Monkey. Primitive. Child (1930) (co-authored with A. R. Luria), History of the development of higher mental functions (1931), Pedology of the adolescent: in three volumes, Lectures on psychology (1. Perception; 2. Memory; 3. Thinking; 4. Emotions 5. Imagination 6. The problem of will) (1932), The problem of development and decay of higher mental functions (1934), Thinking and speech (1934).

3 . Byapproach to understanding the personality and its self-development in the worksL.S.Vygotsky

Vygotsky psychologist consciousness personality

L.S. Vygotsky considers human development within the framework of a cultural-historical approach; his ideas partly served to understand the process of self-development in psychology. L.S. Vygotsky repeatedly emphasized that development is always self-development.

L.S. Vygotsky, following his concept, interprets the social environment not as a "factor", but as a "source" of personality development. In the development of the child, he notes, there are, as it were, two intertwined lines. The first follows the path of natural maturation. The second consists in mastering cultures, ways of behaving and thinking. The transition from the external to the internal way of thinking goes through several stages. 1. An adult, with the help of a certain means, controls the behavior of the child, directing the realization of his ability. 2. The child himself already becomes a subject and, using this psychological tool, directs the behavior of another. 3. The child begins to apply to himself (as an object) those methods of controlling behavior that others have applied to him, and he - to them. Vygotsky writes that each mental function appears on the stage twice - first as a collective, social activity, and then as an internal way of thinking of the child, which leads to his development and self-development.

Thus, we can conclude that the personality, according to Vygotsky, acts as a product of social and social development. Its real basis is the totality of social relations implemented by a person in his activity. The activity of each specific person depends on his place in society, on the conditions of his life and unique individual circumstances. Man's activity follows from his needs. And the higher the needs, the higher the motivation, the desire of a person for the goal, which leads to development and, thereby, to self-development.

List of sources

1. Asmolov A.G. XXI century: psychology in the age of psychology. // Question. psychology. - M., 2009. - No. 1. - S. 3-12.

2. Asmolov A.G. Cultural-historical psychology and ethnosociology of education: rebirth. // Question. psychology. - M., 1999. - No. 4. - S. 106-107.

3. Blinnikova I.V. Cultural-historical psychology: a view from the outside. // Psych. magazine. - M., 1999. - T. 20, No. 3. - S. 127-130.

4. Vygotsky L.S. The history of the development of mental functions. // Vygotsky L.S. Psychology [Collection]. - M., 2002. - S. 512-755.

5. Vygotsky L.S. The problem of age // Collection. op. T. 4. M., 1984.

6. Vygotsky L.S. The problem of learning and mental development at school age // Izbr. psychol. research M., 1956.

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