A Psychologist in the Land of the Soviets
Type de matériel :
39
Vygotsky and Wallon subscribed to a sociohistorical conception of the human mind, which develops under biological and social constraints. They did not know each other, and their proximity can be explained by their common reference to dialectical materialism. The idea that each scholar was ignorant of the other’s work needs to be reexamined. In an unpublished letter, A. Luria informed Wallon of Vygotsky’s positions. Yet Wallon never cited him. This omission can be attributed to political reasons. Vygotsky’s work was censored in the name of a proletarian science opposed to a bourgeois science (pedology among others). However, it can also be explained by the internal reasoning of Wallonian theory. When he received Luria’s letter, Wallon had already worked out his own sociohistorical conception of the mind (1925) within the framework of conditional reactions theory. The theoretical convergence between Vygotsky and Wallon is therefore paradoxical since the former always became more and more estranged from Pavlov’s work whereas the latter never ceased to go deeper into it and readjust it.
Réseaux sociaux