The Connection Between Art and Life Is a Complex One Vygotsky
PSYCHOLOGY OF ART
Centro Universitário de Brasília, Brasil
Vygotsky's "The Psychology of Fine art": A foundational and still unexplored text
Estudos de Psicologia (Campinas) , vol. 35, no. 4, pp. 339-350, 2018
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Psicologia, Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Campinas
Received: 12 March 2018
Revised certificate received: 06 June 2018
Accepted: 19 June 2018
ABSTRACT: In the last ten years, new trends in the interpretation of Vygotsky's work have been developed, many of which accept transcended the traditional interpretations that take been hegemonic in Soviet and Western psychology since the 1980s. Yet, Vygotsky's "The Psychology of Fine art" is amongst the nigh interesting books written by this Soviet psychologist and, paradoxically, has not received plenty attention in the study of his legacy. In that book, Vygotsky developed a rich psychology, in dialogue with Philosophy, Folklore and Art. In this newspaper, some theoretical questions and concepts adult by Vygotsky are discussed, which were not included in the dominant interpretation of his piece of work, neither in Soviet nor Western psychology. The give-and-take opened by Vygotsky throughout the book shows that philosophy, fine art, poetry, Sociology and Psychology are interrelated in such a way that they are a living theoretical representation whose epicenter was homo motivation and the creative character of human being functioning.
Keywords: Fine art, Inventiveness, Imagination, Motivation, Perezhivanie.
Resumo: Nos últimos dez anos, têm sido desenvolvidos trabalhos sobre every bit novas tendências na interpretação da obra de Vygotsky, muitos dos quais transcenderam as interpretações tradicionais que foram hegemônicas na psicologia Soviética e ocidental desde a década de oitenta. Não obstante, a obra "A Psicologia da Arte", de Vygotsky, está entre os livros mais interessantes escritos pelo psicólogo soviético, e paradoxalmente, até o momento não recebeu suficiente atenção no estudo de seu legado. Nesse livro, Vygotsky constrói uma rica psicologia, estabelecendo diálogos com a Filosofia, a Sociologia eastward a Arte. Neste trabalho são discutidas algumas questões teóricas e conceitos desenvolvidos por Vygotsky que não foram incluídos na interpretação dominante de seu trabalho, nem na psicologia Soviética, nem na psicologia Ocidental. A discussão aberta por Vygotsky ao longo do livro mostra que a filosofia, a arte, a poesia, a Sociologia e a Psicologia, estão interrelacionadas, de tal forma que, são uma representação teórica de vive para que o epicentro foi a motivação humana e o criativo personagem do desempenho humano.
Palavras-chave: Arte, Criatividade, Imaginação, Motivação, Perejivanie.
Vygotsky may be the only author in the history of psychology whose work was broadly discussed worldwide before many of his writings were really published in their original language. Such an unprecedented state of affairs was possible due to a psychology that was developed in an environment of high force per unit area, censorship and distortions, which was the reason why, until very recent times, the history of Soviet psychology could not be used as a source for new constructions, analysis and reflections on Soviet psychology.
This newspaper aims to reveal some theoretical questions and concepts developed by Vygotsky that were not included in the dominant estimation of his piece of work, neither in Soviet nor Western psychology, where some of his last ideas and concepts take just recently begun to be discussed. However, it is of import to stress that some of his later ideas showtime appeared in the volume, "The Psychology of Art", in which Vygotsky opened what I called years ago as the "first moment of Vygotsky's work" (González Rey, 2011), whose main concepts and ideas were taken up again just at the end of his life, betwixt 1932 and 1934.
It is amazing that Vygotsky focused on fine art at a time when psychology was largely dominated by an empirical style of doing science, within which art and civilization were completely excluded. In "The Psychology of Art", the great merit of Vygotsky is that he was nevertheless not under institutional and ideological soviet pressures, or widely influenced by relevant and better-known theories such as Gestalt psychology that usefully and productively influenced the last moment of his work. Information technology is true that the version of "The Psychology of Fine art" defended as doctoral thesis by Vygotsky in 1925 expressed the influences of Kornilov's work in some paragraphs, which were completely contradictory with the residual of the text.
More recently, different authors have drawn special attention to the terminal period of Vygotsky'southward work (González Rey, 2011; Leontiev, 1992; Yasnitsky, 2009, 2012, 2015; Zavershneva, 2010, 2015). Still, the link between this period and the ideas discussed past him in "The Psychology of Art" has remained beyond researchers' attention.
In this paper, it is intended to evidence how some of the seminal ideas avant-garde by Vygotsky in "The Psychology of Fine art" were taken upwardly again past himself in 1932, when he continued the pathway which he had begun with in that book and which he focused on until 1934, the year of his expiry. The paper is organized as follows. Firstly, the chief contributions of "The Psychology of Art" are discussed in depth. Secondly, I discuss why this book was only published forty years later its introduction as Vygotsky'due south doctoral thesis, too every bit the affect that its preface, written by A.N. Leontiev, had in terms of lack of attending given to "The Psychology of Art" in Soviet psychology and consequently in Western psychology. Finally, Vygotsky's return to the topics of his original agenda between 1931 and 1934, is discussed, besides equally the evolution of these topics towards the discussion of meaning, perezhivanie and the social state of affairs of evolution, topics that open a new path for extending his legacy to topics that accept been historically less developed within the cultural-historical standpoint, such as subjectivity, inventiveness and motivation.
The theoretical originality of "The Psychology of Fine art" in the context of Russian psychology of the fourth dimension
In "The Psychology of Fine art", Vygotsky continuously referred to more than various expressions of psychology and culture of that time. The discussion opened past Vygotsky throughout the book shows that philosophy, art, poetry, folklore and psychology are interrelated in such a way that they are a living theoretical representation whose epicenter was man motivation and the artistic character of homo performance. Russian poets quoted by Vygotsky in this text did not appear again in psychology or artistic magazines in the Soviet Marriage for fifty years. Vygotsky's interest in the psychological functioning of the artistic artist, which was a relevant precedent to approach the study of inventiveness in a different mode, was made clear in the adjacent statement:
By its nature, artistic perezhivanie remains incomprehensible and closed to the subject in its class and essence. We never know why we like or dislike a piece of work of art. Everything we intend to explain their influence is subsequently thought to be a consummate rationalization of unconscious processes. The very essence of perezhivanie remains a mystery for the states
(Vygotsky, 1965, p.25; translated from the Russian version by the author).
Hither, Vygotsky emphasizes that perezhivanie is not a unproblematic "emotional feel", as is commonly assumed in English translations. Perezhivanie has a specific psychological nature, stressing emotions as intrinsic to the creative functions in a process that is not accessible to the man through consciousness. Circuitous psychological networks and dynamics lie behind these tendencies and need to be further studied. From the very beginning, Vygotsky's work recognized the emotional undertones of human actions and performances that are beyond the conscious control of the discipline.
Vygotsky advanced a theoretical representation of motivation supported by the concept of perezhivanie as an emotional country of the creator that qualified their performance beyond whatsoever conscious proposal. Vygotsky seemed to worry about the subject's motivational formations rather than about the psychological entities or functions. In this sense, he used the concept of perezhivanie to define a fix of emotions inherent to human performance. Perezhivanie was used to define the intrinsic emotional character of creation in art, as well every bit to explicate the perception of the creative piece of work. Fine art, from his perspective, was intrinsically associated with feeling, imagination and fantasy.
We can never say exactly why we like 1 or another art production; words tin hardly ever express the essential and almost important aspects of perezhivanie and, as Plato stated (in his dialogue Ion), poets know the way by which they create less than anyone else
(Vygotsky, 1965, p.93; translated from the Russian version by the writer).
With the concept of perezhivanie, Vygotsky established dialogues with High german psychologists devoted to the relations between fantasy and emotions in artistic creation, and with Freud on the basis of common interests, which revealed his great curiosity for the emotional inner life of human beings and its unconscious character. However, Vygotsky gradually introduced his own opinions and concepts, like perezhivanie, through which he advanced new demands in his search for an agreement of creative motivation, as nosotros volition see beneath. Vygotsky'due south sympathy with Freud was clear in chapter 4 of "The Psychology of Fine art", in which Vygotsky established a critical dialogue with Freud. Though stressing his differences with Freud, Vygotsky was, at the same time, very impressed by Freud's adventurous and creative ideas almost the unconscious character of some psychological processes and the key identify given to fantasy. However, unlike Freud, Vygotsky did not acquaintance perezhivanie, the nature of which he divers as unconscious, with inner human universal forces and defined it as being closely related with activity.
Vygotsky'southward and Luria'southward relations with psychoanalysis extended until the stop of the 1920s (Van der Veer & Valsiner, 1991). The attention fatigued by Vygotsky to Freud in "The Psychology of Art" is another argument for the openness of Vygotsky's original thinking while he was writing the first version of the book. Vygotsky´s orientation to psychology in "The Psychology of Art" was clearly addressed to the report of the affective side of the human being being.
"The Psychology of Art" had historically been excluded, as an "immature" moment in Vygotsky's work. I believe this was a effect of the type of psychology proposed by Vygotsky in this book, which represented the opposite of the objectivist path, taken past official versions of Soviet psychology from those years until the mid-1970s (González Rey, 2014, 2017). In addition, another fact that contributed to the representation of "The Psychology of Art" as an immature piece of work was Leontiev's short paper written as the preface of the 1965 Russian edition of "The Psychology of Art". This introduction tin be interpreted every bit a theoretical critique of the book which, in this case, included political connotations.
The real importance of the concept of perezhivanie in "The Psychology of Fine art" has long passed unnoticed and many Vygotsky interpreters who are interested in the concept still do non consider the use to perezhivanie given past Vygotsky in this book. It was in "The Psychology of Art" that Vygotsky highlighted perezhivanie every bit the prepare of emotional processes that integrates the unit fantasy-emotion as inseparable from artistic creation.
The interest of emotions in human cosmos was promising due to its potential for explaining a new qualitative level of the homo psyche within which emotions are inseparable from intellectual operations. This position anticipated Vygotsky's accent on the intellectual and emotional unity that characterized his holistic period, between 1932 and 1934 (Yasnitsky, 2015; Zavershneva, 2015). Full-bodied heavily on artistic perezhivanie, Vygotsky could not extend its use to other types of human performance in which the individual is actively involved as the artistic subject of the action. However, perezhivanie was a key concept in his emphasis on the emotional side of human life.
"The Psychology of Fine art" was not only an expression of the broad intellectual and cultural interests of Vygotsky in the first moment of his piece of work, it was also an expression of Vygotsky´south special interest in the topics of emotions, fantasy and imagination, which formed one of the theoretical cores of "The Psychology of Art". His dialogue with Freud and Ribot also evidenced his involvement in the relation of those topics with mental disorders. So, in a dialogue with Ribot, Vygotsky stated:
This new approach can be described approximately as follows: The psychologists proceed from the irrefutable association that exists between emotion and imagination. Nosotros know that every emotion has a psychic expression in addition to a concrete ane. In other words, a feeling "is embodied, fixed in an idea, as is evidenced in cases of persecution mania", according to Ribot. Consequently, an emotion is expressed by the mimic, pantomimic, secretory, and somatic responses of our organism. It also requires some expression of our imagination. We observe the best testify for this view among the so chosen objectless emotions. Pathological phobias, persistent fears, and so along, are e'er associated with specific ideas, most of which are absolutely false and distort reality, but in so doing, find their "psychic" expression. A patient who suffers from obsessive fear is emotionally sick, his fright is irrational; and then in order to rationalize information technology, he imagines that anybody is pursuing and persecuting him
(Vygotsky, 1971, p.209).
At that fourth dimension, Vygotsky was closer to subjectivity than at whatsoever other moment of his piece of work. The idea that "feeling is embodied, fixed in an thought", as stressed past Vygotsky, was an of import antecedent of the manner he would approach the concept of unit in the terminal phase of his work, mainly expressed by concepts such equally senses and perezhivanie. Withal, in that concluding stage of his piece of work, Vygotsky was still far from the position that whatsoever idea, in one case it becomes subjectively configured, distorts reality, creating imaginary realities, which is the cornerstone of our proposal of subjectivity. However, Vygotsky'southward almost important theoretical intuition is that, aside from the different corporal and somatic expressions of emotions, these processes ever require the expression of imagination. Art was the path for Vygotsky to accelerate a new and original representation of the human mind. Following his previous idea, Vygotsky took an adventurous footstep forrard:
This means that in essence, all our fantasy experiences take identify on a completely real emotional basis. Nosotros see, therefore, that emotion and imagination are non two separate processes; on the contrary, they are the same process. Nosotros tin regard a fantasy as the central expression of an emotional reaction
(Vygotsky, 1971, p.210).
The consideration of fantasy "as the fundamental expression of an emotional reaction" is essential because information technology integrates emotions with psychological functions. Such integration emphasizes the "fictional grapheme" of psychological functions, the objectivity of which is inseparable from their cultural and emotional character. This is an argument which implies that objectivity should be considered as a culturally produced concept. Properly human processes and realities are fictional, non because they are non-objective, just because they are new realities invented by human being beings, which progressively separate them more and more than from nature. This human being nature is inseparable from a plot of different facts and conditions that are not controlled by individuals or social instances; this fact defines all homo processes and realities equally objective. Nonetheless, human realities, processes and facts share a qualitative attribute that does not exist in the residuum of natural phenomena; their subjective character turns homo beings into creators, making them capable of creating new, original realities and processes within which, in turn, subjectivity emerges.
Taking the prior statements equally starting points, information technology is possible to advance in the recognition that our "imaginary situations" are founded on a "completely existent emotional basis", which implies in recognizing fantasy experiences as a new kind of human miracle. Human realities and their objectivity are inseparable from man actions, and therefore, for human beings, objectivity is always subjectively produced in man relations. The relevance of this process is that the fictional reality of civilisation is part of the genesis and development of the human mind, and the human being listen defines new moments in the production of civilization, in an endless process within which neither civilization nor human being mind are objectified past one another, something that Vygotsky never made explicit in his work.
Vygotsky´s definition of culture was even so very narrow, identifying culture mainly with language, without because human being institutions, and other homo domains like scientific discipline, politics and other socially given phenomena as cultural instances. The topic of the symbolic was very narrowly treated by Vygotsky, who mainly emphasized the sign amongst the many diverse symbols, symbolical devices and realities (Zinchenko, 1993).
In "The Psychology of Fine art" Vygotsky expressed his concern at the absence of a psychological theory capable of advancing the written report of sentiments and fantasies, topics that for a long time had been monopolized by psychoanalysis:
It is necessary to say, however, that at that place are not any more obscure topics than these two (Vygotsky is referring to sentiments and fantasy) and although they take been subject area to more development and examination in recent times, at to the lowest degree until today, unfortunately, we accept no general recognized and elaborated system for the report of sentiments and fantasy
(Vygotsky, 1965, p.256, translated from the Russian version by the author).
Vygotsky's business with the absence of theoretical systems capable of bringing light to topics such every bit sentiments and fantasy, clearly evidenced his interest in advancing a psychology capable of studying these phenomena. Focused on these topics, Vygotsky created the basis for advancing new means in the study of motivation and creativity. On such a unlike psychological system, Vygotsky attempted to advance it in the last moment of his piece of work through a new definition of consciousness (González Rey, 2009, 2011, 2017; Leontiev, 1992; Zavershneva, 2015).
"The Psychology of Fine art" also brought to light some methodological insights that dealt closely with its theoretical proposal.
For this reason, I think it is necessary to propose some other method for the psychology of art, which needs a clear methodological basis. Against this proposal, I will ofttimes object to what is often said in relation to the study of the unconscious: the unconscious is, according to its ain meaning, something non recognized by us and therefore not clear for united states, and for this reason, it could not become the object of scientific research. Starting from this erroneous premise that "nosotros can study simply (and in general tin can just know) what we straight recognize has no support considering we report and know many things that we practice not directly know and what we know just with the support of analogies, constructions, hypotheses, conclusions, deductions so on, in general by indirect means"
(Vygotsky, 1965, pp.32-33; translated from the Russian version by the author).
Vygotsky acutely perceived that to further accelerate on the questions he raised in "The Psychology of Art", information technology was important to utilize indirect routes, analogies and assumptions as methodological resources for following the complex processes of human being cosmos. This relevant epistemological assumption has been completely unnoticed by Vygotsky's followers within and outside Soviet psychology. In the Soviet Spousal relationship, epistemological discussions in particular were taboo due to their philosophical implications for a scientific discipline ruled by a strict objectivity based on the empirical correspondence betwixt theory and empirical facts.
We stated in the showtime chapter that this point of view was wrong and that practice magnificently denies it. This shows that science studies non but firsthand and recognized facts, but besides a series of phenomena and events that tin be studied only indirectly past means of footsteps and vestiges, and with the assist of textile that is not simply completely unlike from what nosotros study but which is often false
(Vygotsky, 1965, p.94; translated from Russian version past the writer).
These methodological assumptions advanced in the opposite management to the positivist path taken by the instrumental and experimental positions that characterized first the researchers in Kornilov's group, and later the experimental studies of psychological functions that were conducted post-obit the Activity Theory framework. These natural and objective methodological positions were also defended by Vygotsky betwixt 1927 and 1931 (Vygotsky, 2012).
The Psychology of Art": its outset publication 40 years after its presentation as Vygotsky'southward doctoral thesis
This commencement edition of "The Psychology of Art" was published in 1965 with a short "introductory paper" by A. North. Leontiev, a fact that, taken together with the omission of Soviet psychology regarding the topics discussed by Vygotsky in that book, contributes to explaining the lack of attention for this book in Soviet psychology. Vygotsky'south work was centered on art, but his reflections had relevant implications to the evolution of a general psychology, since the motivational and creative processes discussed by him in relation to fine art are general to all human motivated performances. In that introduction, Leontiev made a presentation/wrote an introduction stressing the idea that the book represented a historical work with lilliputian theoretical value, considering the advances of Soviet psychology in the 40 years after the book had been written. That edition had niggling affect in the Soviet Spousal relationship.
No matter how distant this prologue was written in relation to the original version of the book, to some extent it permits an explanation of why the volume was published so late, as well as of the slight impact it had in Soviet psychology. Since 1951, Leontiev had been the Chair of Psychology in the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Moscow. He enjoyed the peak of his intellectual and political prestige in 1963, when he received the "Lenin Prize". Why then, instead of using the publication of "The Psychology of Art" as a first pace to the introduction of Vygotsky in the West, did he write such a highly critical introductory paper to a volume that was extremely difficult to admission, given the small-scale numbers of this edition?
Leontiev's preface to this edition of "The Psychology of Art" seemed to take a political proposal that announced the main trends of Soviet psychology in the 1960s. His introductory paper represented a written testimony of the integration of Vygotsky's ideas within the Action Theory as it was developed by Leontiev, which represented the new ascendant official psychology of the Soviet Marriage in the 1960s.
From the very beginning of his preface, Leontiev diminished the moment of Vygotsky'south ideas with political argumentation:
Vygotsky wrote "The Psychology of Fine art" xl years ago in the years of the establishment of Soviet psychological scientific discipline. At that time a battle was still being waged with the idealistic psychology that dominated the nigh important psychological research eye of the state – the Institute of Psychology of the University of Moscow, headed by professor Chelpanov. ... At that time, Vygotsky was still a young homo inside scientific psychology, and information technology is as well possible to say an unexpected man
(Leontiev, 1965, p.iii-four; translated from the Russian version by the author).
It is curious from a historical perspective that, fifty-fifty after Stalinism was officially overcome, the political discourse of Leontiev continued the same arguments developed past Soviet psychology in the 1930s, an expression of pressure and institutional political control at a time when social fear strongly characterized the social subjectivity of the country. The arguments given by Leontiev in 1965 are like to those that supported the most bourgeois sector of Soviet psychology in the 1920s and 30s. Leontiev's ideological orthodoxy at that time was a clear show of his political position, which was impossible to separate from his theoretically conservative position in psychology. Leontiev invalidated Vygotsky and the all-time Russian poets and intellectuals of the time by stressing that socialist realism was not yet an option when "The Psychology of Art" was introduced. In 1965, Leontiev continued to defend socialist realism.
Afterwards all the criticism, as exemplified above, Leontiev emphatically invalidated Vygotsky as a serious author by drawing a completely different moving picture of psychology than the i defended by Vygotsky in "The Psychology of Art": "For this reason Vygotsky oftentimes speaks as an author but still not through his own words; he quotes many authors, even authors who are foreign to him in their more general footing" (Leontiev, 1965, p.viii).
In conclusion, Leontiev stated that:
After 40 years of challenge that Soviet psychologists had done much with Vygotsky and afterwards him, many of the positions in this psychological volume should exist interpreted in another way – from the position of contemporary representations of activity and man consciousness.
(Leontiev, 1965, p.x; translated from the Russian version by the author).
According to Leontiev, Vygotsky developed a few ideas of his own in the book. For this reason, Vygotsky's position needs to be updated in lite of the advances in Soviet psychology made after his decease, which were reduced past Leontiev to the works virtually consciousness and activity. The focus of Activity Theory at that time was activity itself, and consciousness was understood as the epiphenomenon of this focus (Zinchenko, 2002, 2009).
That "short introductory newspaper" was written two decades after the virulent set on made by Leontiev against the ideological deviation of Vygotsky in regards to pedology (Leontiev, 1937/1998), which remained unknown until 1998, when information technology was published in Russian in the journal "Voprosy Psychologii". This critique addressed past Leontiev to Vygotsky did not represent an isolated fact; the differences and reciprocal criticisms between them became increasingly more astute during Vygotsky'southward life, particularly afterward the decision by Vygotsky to advance a theory of consciousness in 1933 (Zavershneva, 2015). Leontiev's short introductory paper to "The Psychology of Art" and the various references to Vygotsky, as well as Vygotsky's quotations used by Leontiev after his death, including the absence of references to Vygotsky in his last volume "Activeness, Consciousness and Personality", leads to the conclusion that Leontiev's master proposal regarding Vygotsky was to relegate him to the past, as a mere historical source of the Activeness Theory, which represented the most mature theory of Soviet psychology since the 1960s.
Behavior and social determinism became key to the definition of an objective psychology, which Kornilov and his group considered every bit a Marxist psychology. Under the new political and scientific weather in which Vygotsky worked since his entry to Kornilov's grouping in 1924, he took a completely unlike path from that of "The Psychology of Art". The primal place given to beliefs by Kornilov in those years was explicitly dedicated past Luria as follows: "The psychologist as a rule shares the objective position of physiologists, but carry on their work on a much broader basis, budgeted psychology from the perspective of that structural behavior which is determined by social conditions" (Luria, 1928, p.347). It was Vygotsky'southward turn to the study of higher forms of human behaviors, used by him indistinctively every bit higher psychological functions that have as their main function the control of behavior, as will exist discussed beneath, a clear expression of the winds that blew in Kornilov's group at that fourth dimension.
The return of Vygotsky to some of his primary topics in "The Psychology of Art"
In what is termed the tertiary stage of Vygotsky'south work, in the period between 1931 and 1934 (González Rey, 2011, 2016), he transcended some positions that dominated his works betwixt 1927-1931, a period that has been divers by different authors every bit an instrumental period (Leontiev, 1984; Yasnitsky, 2015; Zavershneva, 2015). The concepts of higher psychological functions, sign, arbitration and internalization, which were cardinal in this instrumental menses were replaced by concepts like perezhivanie, sense and social situation of development. It is amazing that these concepts were largely disregarded past both Soviet and Western psychology until very contempo times. In Soviet psychology only Bozhovich (1968) drew attention to the concepts of perezhivanie and social situation of development, advancing forward on Vygotsky'south definition on perezhivanie.
Nonetheless, the concept of sense may be a result of its very curt and fast formulation by Vygotsky, and its picayune integration to the rest of the concepts has been considered as relevant by very few authors (González Rey, 2002, 2005, 2009; Leontiev, 1992; Zavershneva, 2015). The concept of word sense, as formulated by Vygotsky opened a new path to advance on consciousness equally a psychological system. Sense, as defined past Vygotsky, is:
A word's sense is the aggregate of all psychological facts that arise in our consciousness as a result of the word. Sense is a dynamic, fluid, and circuitous formation which has several zones that vary in their stability. Significant is just i of these zones of the sense that the word acquires in the context of oral communication
(Vygotsky, 1987, p.279).
As sense was defined by Vygotsky as a quality of the word, in fact the discussion itself is transformed into a psychological unit of measurement, embodying several psychological facts that arise in consciousness as a result of its emergence. His definition of sense, which was strongly influenced by the French psychologist Frédric Paulhan, followed the principle of integration between emotions and ideas already discussed by him in "The Psychology of Fine art", when he still had not been in contact with Lewin and his group. The idea of unit was in embryo in "The Psychology of Art" when Vygotsky was at the very beginning of his work. The relations stressed by him in "The Psychology of Fine art", between emotions, imagination and fantasy, were topics that he completely abased during his instrumental period.
Undoubtedly, the influence of Chiliad. Lewin and his group on Vygotsky was strong in that last stage of his piece of work (Bozhovich, 1968; Yarochevsky, 2007; Yasnitsky, 2012, 2015; Zavershneva, 2015). Lewin'due south advances on the inseparability of human needs and the social environment were closely associated with the inseparability of personality and environment. Lewin's position on the matter helped to understand the surround, not as a reality per se, merely in its close relation to individuals. Individuals were understood as inseparable from the environment and the concept of relationship became central for the understanding of the human relationship between individuals and their social environment. For Vygotsky, perezhivanie appears to be the psychological term to explain that unit. The impossibility of analyzing social environs outside of private motivation and personality influenced Vygotsky'south definition of perezhivanie through which he attempted to overcome the mechanical social determinism as understood past Soviet psychology at that fourth dimension.
The impossibility to split social environment from a child's personality was clearly expressed by Vygotsky equally follows:
To country a certain, general, formal position, information technology would be correct to say that the environment determines the development of the child through perezhivanie of the environment. Most essential, therefore, is rejection of the absolute indicators of the surround; the child is part of the social situation, and the relationship betwixt the kid and the surroundings and between the environment and the kid occurs through perezhivanie and the activity of the kid himself
(Vygotsky, 1998, p.294).
Perezhivanie is used by Vygotsky to understand the child'south relations with the environment as the real forcefulness for their evolution. Nonetheless, the concept as such is vaguely defined in its psychological nature, leaving many theoretical gaps to exist filled. (González Rey, 2015a, 2016b). Be that as it may, his focus seemed to exist concentrated on the rejection of the absolute indicators of the environment, something that was extremely revolutionary in relation to the mode social surroundings was understood by behavioral psychology and by Soviet psychology equally well, that always had of import convergences with a behavioral representation of psychology.
Vygotsky´due south turn toward the emotional side of human psyche, between 1931 and 1934, aside from some promising statements about emotions and his advances on some important concepts such as sense and perezhivanie, in fact resulted in contradicting his accent on the cerebral genesis of perezhivanie. Bozhovich'due south critique of the concepts of perezhivanie in that concluding period of Vygotsky'south work made that contradiction very explicit. Bozhovich expressed this failure by Vygotsky as follows:
If the concept of experience as raised by him (concept that expressed the kid'due south affective relations to the environment) brings usa closer to the interpretation of the true causes of child development, the subsequent search for the link that determines this evolution, a search that ends in the concept of generalization, has again made u.s.a. return to intellectualist positions
(Bozhovich, 1981, p.125; translated from the Castilian version past the author).
Bozhovich, without making information technology explicit and possibly without being clearly conscious of this, in fact, got deeper into Vygotsky's positions in "The Psychology of Art". Her search for concepts through which to understand personality as a motivational organization was closer to Vygotsky's attempt to integrate emotions, imagination and fantasy, which he stressed equally the footing for the psychological genesis of art and mental disorders. This path was axiomatic in Bozhovich's endeavor to discover concepts that were impossible to reduce to cognitive genesis or functioning. That endeavour was clear in this side by side assumption by Bozhovich:
In other words, what underlies perezhivanie, as we see information technology, is the world of children's needs – their impulses, desires, intentions, complexly intertwined with i some other and interrelated with possibilities for meeting these needs. And this unabridged complex organization of connections, the entire earth of a child'south needs and impulses, must be deciphered and then that we tin understand the nature of the influence external circumstances exert on children'southward mental development
(Bozhovich, 2009, p.seventy).
Equally outcome of the lack of a new ontological definition related to human psychological processes in Soviet psychology, these processes connected to be vaguely defined past the concept of psyche, and Bozhovich defined perezhivanie as an affective formation1. A new definition of motivation was in process in Bozhovich's work; motivation was understood rather every bit a system of formations that define the psychological cadre of personality, instead of being defined by specific physical motives, as the concept of motivation has been historically understood by psychology. However, for this representation to advance forward, it would be necessary to transcend the taxonomy of concepts by which man motivation has historically been explained, such as needs, desires, among others.
The necessary stride forwards to exist done demands a theoretical link capable to explain how emotions become symbolical processes having a cultural genesis; torso and culture become inseparable through this possible connection. Nonetheless, that connection was impossible to be found in a psychology that treated the symbolic processes through a very narrow notion of individual mediation of psychological functions through signs as Vygotsky did. The narrow representation of the symbolical processes and realities was in some extent responsible for the narrow comprehension of culture and social processes in Soviet psychology (González Rey, 2016a, 2017; González Rey & Mitjans Martínez, 2016).
Bozhovich was aware of the need to explicate motives as self-oriented systems, and non as drives defined by external objects, equally defined by A.N. Leontiev.
Children may therefore strive to in one case over again chronicle to something they experienced previously that became highly-seasoned to them. In this example, perezhivanie is transformed from existence a means of orientation to a goal in and of itself and leads to the emergence of new needs – the need for perezhivanii themselves. Even so, in this regard also, perezhivanii are not the exception. In the process of development, the entire human heed ceases to be a mere appliance of orientation and adaptation
(Bozhovich, 2009, p.74-75)2.
In the paragraph above, Bozhovich pointed out an of import question without which the problem of man motivation could not be advanced; man motivation is intrinsic to a concept of mind and understood as a generative and creative system. The prior statement is not a elementary telephone call to advance a new concept of motivation, merely an idea to accelerate a new concept of homo mind; Bozhovich regarded the man mind every bit a artistic organization, capable of producing new realities. Bozhovich was the but Soviet author to embody the primary ideas that were interrupted in "The Psychology of Art".
Aside from my personal vindication in previous studies that Vygotsky, in the last years of his life returned to his origins, defined by me as a qualitative moment, non as chronological ane, because "Pedagogical Psychology" was very shut chronologically, simply very different from a theoretical perspective. In fact today I don't agree with my own vindication. Vygotsky, at the last moment of his work, despite his strong theoretical advances discussed above, fails in assembling these concepts within a theoretical arrangement. Because of this, these concepts overlapped each other, and were not used in theoretical constructions in which they could have been pertinent at that time. One example of this is the terminal chapter of Thinking and Speech, where, instead of using the concept of sense, Vygotsky used the traditional taxonomy, like needs, motives and interests to refer to the whole grapheme of the individual thinker.
The development of the topic of subjectivity from a cultural-historical perspective has been our theoretical, epistemological and methodological focus in the last twenty years (González Rey, 1997, 2002, 2005, 2014, 2015a, 2016a, 2016b, 2017; González Rey & Mitjans Martínez, 2016, 2017; Mitjans Martínez & González Rey, 2017). This proposal on subjectivity is one of the paths through which the claiming opened upwards by the Vygotsky-Bozhovich line has been advanced toward a new formulation of human mind. The concepts of subjective sense, as qualitative units, within which symbolical processes and emotions turn into i and the same procedure, is what nosotros defined every bit the ontological definition of subjectivity from a cultural-historical perspective. Subjective senses stand for that link between civilisation and body that Soviet psychology could not observe. The constant interweaving betwixt subjective senses and configurations3 defined a new ontological domain for the report of human phenomena.
Final Considerations
Vygotsky's "The Psychology of Art" represented a foundational proposal for a new psychology centered on the integration of emotions, imaginations and fantasy, opening an avenue to advance on a unlike psychology that he had non been able to attain when alive. The first ideas past the writer related to that focus were addressed toward philosophical and theoretical questions that were completely omitted for decades inside Soviet psychology, such as the affair of unconscious processes and the methodological demands of its study, the cosmos of new emotionally-based realities, the integration of emotions and imagination as i and the same process. All these questions continued to be out far from the focus of most of bookish psychology until today.
The paths taken by the new Soviet country, which became an official Marxist Country, turned Marxism into a political doctrine. This procedure led to a unilateral emphasis of the materialism over dialectics, omitting the anthropological side of the Marx'southward thought. As result, Soviet sciences were politicized and, in psychology, this polarization appears through the imperative of becoming an objective science. There was no room in this kind of science for Vygotsky's fecund ideas such every bit the ones presented in "The Psychology of Art".
"The Psychology of Art" was not only directed to finding psychological processes involved with the artistic creation; it was, first of all, a theoretical platform for advancing a new psychology centering the possibility to understand human heed as a creative system culturally and historically engendered. The topics of fantasy, unsconscious and fantasy, advanced past Freud, captivated the young Vygotsky. Yet,he oposed the universal and ahistorical character given past Freud to the Unconscious.
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Notes
1 Bozhovich's concept of psychological germination of personality stressed the idea that motives are not entities, but complex systems within which different needs and motives organized around i dominant core of motives, attempting to define a bureaucracy of motives that she defined as "orientation of personality". These promising concepts were not completely adult by her and in the finish were reduced to some dominant contents. Then, the orientations of personality were reduced past her to individualistic and collectivistic actions, and to actions addressed to praxis. Perezhivanie, equally defined to a higher place, is explicitly defined by her as a formation.
ii This quotation, which was taken from the English version of ane of the capacity of her book "Personality and its formation in childhood" repeats the mistake of translating perezhivanie every bit feel. Every bit effect of this, I replace feel with "perezhivanie".
three "Subjective configurations emerge every bit a self-regulative and generative organization of subjective senses. Subjective configurations are dynamic, merely take a relative stability due to the congruency of the subjective senses that they generate" (2017, p.515).
Como citar este artigo/How to cite this article
González Rey, F. L. (2018). Vygotsky's "The Psychology of Fine art": A foundational and still unexplored text. Estudos de Psicologia (Campinas), 35(4), 339-350. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/1982-02752018000400002
Writer notes
Correspondência para/Correspondence to: F. L. GONZÁLEZ REY. E-mail: <gonzalez_rey49@hotmail.com>.
Source: https://www.redalyc.org/journal/3953/395357410002/html/
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