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[1] __TRANSL__ Translated from the Russian nCHXOJIOrHMECKHE HCCJIEflOBAHUfl B CCCP Ha __COPYRIGHT__ First printing 1966REQUEST TO READERS
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[2] CONTENTS Page From the Editors .................. ? PART ONE GENERAL PROBLEMS OF PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY Development of the Higher Mental Functions, L. S. Vygotsky. Translated by D. Myshne ............. 11 Problem of Development of the Higher Mental Functions . . 11 Method of Investigation .............. 19 Structure of the Higher Mental Functions ........ 31 Genesis of the Higher Mental Functions ........ 35 Problems of Psychological Theory, by S. L. Rubinstein. Translated by D. Myshne .................. 46 Special Features of the Afferent Apparatus of the Conditioned Reflex and Their Importance to Psychology, by P. K. Anokhin. Translated by D. Myshne ........... 67 Concerning the Decisive Role of Afferent Systems in Nervous Activity .................... 68 Theory of Return Afferentation ........... 72 Theory of the Acceptor of Action .......... 81 Role of the Foregoing Theory in Explaining Certain Physio-- logic and Mental Phenomena ........... 95 The Physiology of Conditioned Reflex, by E. A. Asratyan .... 99 Bilateral Regulation as a Mechanism of Behaviour, by B. G.The collection of articles under the general title of Psychological Research in the U.S.S.R. is aimed at aquainting foreign readers with Soviet research in psychology and certain related disciplines. The articles were written at different times, deal with various problems and express different trends of psychological thought in the U.S.S.R.
To present an actual picture of Soviet psychological research, the authors preferred to compile this collection not from review articles, hut from original works some of which were written more than ten and even twenty years ago. Most of them have been published and only a few articles which constitute the authors' summaries of their investigations were written especially for this publication. The articles are arranged according to a thematic rather than a chronological principle.
Of course, the content of this collection cannot pretend to give a complete picture of the psychological research conducted in the U.S.S.R. Many branches of psychology deserving of consideration are not represented in it at all. Others are represented but by few articles. However, the editors hope that the present publication will help the readers to get a sufficiently clear and, what is most important, an objective idea of Soviet psychology. Simultaneously with publishing this collection in English the Publishers have released a collection in French dealing with the following subjects:
1. Memory, thinking and speech.
2. Personality. Development and learning.
Professor A. Leontyev
Professor A. Luriya
Professor A. Smirnov
^^*^^ Abridged translation of L. S. Vygotsky's extensive work written under the same title in 1930--31. The complete work was published in L. S. Vygotsky's book Development of the Higher Mental Functions, Moscow, Publishing House of the R.S.F.S.R. Academy of Pedagogical Sileiidces., I960, pp. 13--223.
Here and elsewhere all references are made to Russian editions unless otherwise stated.
[9] ~ [10]The history of development of the higher mental functions is an entirely unexplored field of psychology. Despite the enormous importance of studying the processes of development of the higher mental functions for the correct understanding and elucidation of absolutely all aspects of the child's personality the boundaries of this field have not been clearly marked, the investigators are not methodologically cognisant of the problems they are faced with and no appropriate method of investigation has been elaborated; nor have investigators outlined or developed the elements of a theory or at least a working hypothesis which might help them to comprehend and tentatively to explain the facts obtained and the regularities observed in the process of work.
Moreover, the very concept of development of the higher mental functions is still vague and unclear. It is not sufficiently differentiated from other closely associated and related concepts and its content is not definite enough.
It stands to reason that with things as they are it is necessary to elucidate the basic concepts, state the main problems and ascertain the objects of investigation.
The traditional views of the development of the higher mental functions are one-sided and erroneous primarily 11 and mainly because they are unable to see facts as facts of historical development, regard them as natural processes and formations, confuse them and fail to differentiate the organic from the cultural, the natural from the historical, the biological from the social in the child's mental development, in a word---these views of the nature of the phenomena in question are fundamentally incorrect.
The higher mental functions and complex cultural forms of behaviour with all the specific features of their function and structure, with all the specificity of their genetic development from appearance to complete maturity or extinction, with all the special laws by which they are governed, usually remained outside the investigator's field of vision. Complex formations and processes were broken up into constituent elements and ceased to exist as a whole, as structures. They were reduced to processes of a more elementary order, occupying a subordinate position and performing a definite function with respect to the whole, part of which they formed. Like an organism which, broken up into its constituent elements, reveals its composition, but no longer displays its specifically organic properties and regularities, these complex and integral psychological formations lost their basic quality and ceased to be themselves when reduced to processes of a more elementary order.
Such an approach to the problem of the child's mental development was pernicious because the concept of development radically differs from the mechanistic conception which likens the appearance of the complex mental process from separate parts or elements to a sum forming from arithmetical addition of separate numbers.
Since this approach to the problems of development of the child's higher mental functions prevailed the analysis of the ready form of behaviour was, as a rule, replaced by elucidation of the genesis of this form. The genesis was often replaced by an analysis of some complex form of behaviour at various stages of its development so that an impression was created that not the form as a whole developed, but its separate elements, together forming at each given stage of their development a particular phase in the development of the given form of behaviour.
Under these circumstances the very process of development of complex and higher forms of behaviour failed to be elucidated and methodologically comprehended.
12One of the most essential features of such an approach is that psychology has not as yet sufficiently firmly established the differences between the organic and cultural processes of development and maturation, between two genetic series differing in essence and nature, and, consequently, between two fundamentally different series of regularities which govern these two lines of development of the child's behaviour.
Child psychology---the older psychology, as well as that of our time---is characterised by an opposite striving, namely, to put all the facts of the cultural and organic development of the child's behaviour in one series and to regard them as a phenomenon of one order, one psychological nature, revealing fundamentally the same kind of regularities.
This is the result of refusing to study the specific regularities of one series, reducing complex mental processes to elementary processes and studying one-sidedly the natural aspects of the mental functions.
Old subjective psychology saw the main object of scientific investigation in singling out the primary, no further dissociable elements of experience, which it found through abstracting elementary mental phenomena, like sensation of pleasure, displeasure and volitional effort, or in similarly isolated elementary mental processes and functions, such as attention and association. The higher and complex processes were broken up into constituent parts; they were completely reduced to combinations of these primary experiences or processes of various complexity and form. This gave rise to a vast mosaic of mental life composed of separate pieces of experiences, an immense atomistic picture of the dismembered human spirit.
Nor does the new, objective psychology know any other ways of cognising the complex whole except analysis and dissociation, except elucidation of the composition and reduction to elements. Reflexology^^*^^ closes its eyes on the _-_-_
^^*^^ By reflexology the author implies the conception which was very popular in the 1920s; this conception endeavoured mechanistically to reduce all of human behaviour to a simple combination of conditioned (combinative) reflexes. This point of view was clearly expressed in such works as V. M. Bekhterev's Fundamentals of Reflexology, G. A. Vasilyev's Outlines of Physiology of the Mental Life, etc. A very similar point of view was developed by American behaviourists (Editor's note).
13 qualitative specificity of the higher forms of behaviour; it makes no fundamental distinction between them and the lower, elementary processes. All processes of behaviour are broken up into chains of combinative reflexes differing in length and the number of links, in some cases inhibited and not revealed in their external part. Behaviourism operates with units of a somewhat different character, but if some units are replaced by others, if the reflexes are replaced by reactions in the reflexological analysis of the higher forms of behaviour, the resulting picture will very much resemble the one produced by the analyses of objective psychology.But in the problem of the child's cultural development the ways of objective and subjective psychology diverge as they approach the higher mental functions. Whereas objective psychology consistently altogether refuses to discriminate between the higher and lower mental functions, limiting itself to dividing reactions into inborn and acquired and regarding all acquired reactions as a single class of skills, empiric psychology, on the one hand, limited with magnificent consistence the child's development to maturation of elementary functions and, on the other hand, built over each elementary function a second storey taking it from no one knows where.
In addition to mechanical memory, logical memory was distinguished as its highest form; voluntary attention was superimposed on involuntary attention; reproductive imagination was topped by creative imagination; conceptual thinking rose as a second storey over imaginative thinking; lower feelings were symmetrically supplemented by higher feelings, and impulsive volition---by previsional volition.
Thus the whole theory of the most important mental functions was built in two storeys. But since child psychology had to do only with the lower storey, while the development and origin of the higher functions remained entirely unelucidated, this created a gap between child psychology and general psychology. What general psychology found and set apart as voluntary attention, creative imagination, logical memory, previsional volition, etc., i.e., the higher forms, the higher functions, remained terra incognita for child psychology.
Failure to ascertain the genesis of the higher functions 14 inevitably leads to an essentially metaphysical conception, namely, the higher and lower forms of memory, attention and thinking exist side by side, independent of each other, unconnected genetically, functionally or structurally, as though originally created separately, as the existence of various species of animals was conceived before Darwin. This closed the way to scientific investigation and explanation of the higher processes also for general psychology, so that not only the history of development, but also the theory of logical memory and voluntary attention is absent from modern psychology.
This metaphysical division of psychology into two storeys, this dualism of the higher and the lower finds its extreme expression in the idea of dividing psychology into two separate and independent sciences: physiologic, natural-science, explanatory or causal psychology, on the one hand, and conceptual, descriptive or teleological psychology of the spirit, as the basis of all the humanities, on the other hand. This idea of Dilthey, Miinsterberg, Husserl and many others, extraordinarily popular in our time and numbering many adherents, reveals in pure form two heterogeneous and in a certain sense contrary tendencies which have opposed each other within empirical psychology as long as it has existed.
It is impossible to find more convincing proof of the insolubility of the problem of higher mental functions on the basis of empirical psychology than the historical fate of this science, breaking up in two before our very eyes and striving to sacrifice its lower part to natural science in order to retain the higher part in pure form and thereby rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's... . Thus the dilemma which empirical psychology has realised as fatal and inevitable consists in the choice of either physiology of the mind or metaphysics. Psychology as a science is impossible---such is the historical result of empirical psychology.
__b_b_b__We have endeavoured to show the present-day state of the problem of development of the higher mental functions and the blind alleys into which the problem has been driven in the most important psychological systems of our time so that we may thereby, first, outline the concrete content and subject of pur investigation and disclose the 15 content of the concept of ``development of the higher mental functions" or ``the child's cultural development'', secondly, state the problem of development ol the higher mental functions as one of the main problems of child psychology, and, thirdly, outline the methodological conception of this most complicated and extraordinarily muddled problem, and seek an approach to it.
The concept of ``development of the higher menial functions" covers two groups of phenomena which at first sight appear entirely dissimilar, but are actually two main branches, two inseparably connected but never confluent streams of development of the higher forms of behaviour. These are, first, the processes of mastering the external means of cultural development and thinking---language, writing, counting and drawing, and, secondly, the processes of development of the special higher mental functions which are not delimited, nor in any way exactly defined, and are called in traditional psychology voluntary attention, logical memory, formation of concepts, etc. All of them taken together form what we conventionally call the process of development of the higher forms of the child's behaviour.
In this conception the problem of development of the higher forms of behaviour has never occurred to child psychology as a special problem. It is not found in the modern system of child psychology as a single and special field of investigation and study. It is dispersed in parts through most diverse chapters of child psychology. Nor could either of the two main parts of our problem---- development of the child's speech, writing and drawing, and development of the higher mental functions in the proper sense of the word, as we have already seen, be adequately solved separately in child psychology.
This is due mainly to the fact that child psychology has not yet learned the indubitable truth that it is necessary to distinguish two, essentially different lines in the child's mental development. In dealing with the development of the child's behaviour child psychology does not know which of the two lines it is a question of, confuses the two lines and regards this confusion---the product of an undifferentiated scientific conception of a complex process---as the real unity and simplicity of the process itself. In a word, child psychology continues to regard the process of 16 development of the child's behaviour as simple, whereas it is actually a complex process. This is undoubtedly the source of all the main fallacies, false interpretations and erroneous statements of the problem of ``development of the higher mental functions''. Ascertainment of this proposition about the two lines of the child's mental development forms a necessary prerequisite for all of our investigation.
The behaviour of a modern cultured adult is the result of two different processes of mental development: the process of biological evolution of the animal species which gave rise to the species of homo sapiens, and the process of historical development which has transformed primitive man into cultured man. Both these processes of biological and cultural development of behaviour are represented in the phylogenesis separately as individual and independent lines of development, constituting the object of various independent psychological disciplines.
The specificity and difficulty of the problem of development of the child's higher mental functions are that in the ontogenesis both these lines blend and actually form a single, although complex process. That is precisely why child psychology has not yet become aware of the specificity of the higher forms of behaviour, whereas ethnic psychology (psychology of primitive peoples) and comparative psychology (biological, evolutionary psychology) which deal with one of the two lines of phylogenetic development of behaviour have long since become aware each of its own subject. It will never occur to the representatives of these sciences to identify these two processes and to consider the development from primitive man to cultured man a mere continuation of the development from animal to man or to reduce the cultural development of behaviour to biological development. And yet this is precisely what is taking place at each step in child psychology.
We must therefore turn to the phylogenesis which does not know of any unification and blending of the two lines in order to undo the knot which has formed in child psychology.
The radical and fundamental difference between man's historical development and the biological evolution of the animal species is known well enough; that is why, to the extent that man's historical development differs from the 17 biological evolution of the animal species, the cultural type of development of the behaviour must apparently differ from the biological type of development, since the two processes form part of more general processes---history and evolution.
Thus we are faced with the process of psychological development sui generis, a process of its own kind.
The fact that the development of the higher mental functions takes place without any changes in the biological type of man, whereas the change in the biological type is the basis of the evolutionary type of development, must be considered the basic and decisive difference between this process and the evolutionary process. It is well known and has been repeatedly pointed out that this feature also forms the general difference from man's historical development. With the entirely changed type of adaptation it is the development of man's artificial organs---tools---and not the change in organs and body structure that comes to the foreground.
Primitive man does not display any essential differences in the biological type, differences which may account for the enormous difference in behaviour. All the latest investigations in this field agree that this equally applies to the most primitive man of the now living tribes, who, according to the expression of one of the investigators, must be awarded the full title of man, and to prehistoric man of the closest epoch, who, as we know, also does not display such appreciable somatic differences which may warrant regarding him as a lower category of man. In both cases, according to the same investigator, we are dealing with a full-fledged, only more primitive, human type.
All investigations confirm this proposition and show that there are no essential differences in the biological type of primitive man, which might account for the behaviour differences between primitive and cultured man. None of the elementary psychological and physiological functions--- perceptions, movements, reactions, etc.---show any deviations from the same functions of cultured man. This is as basic a fact for the psychology of primitive man, for historical psychology, as the contrary proposition is for biological psychology.
But to the same extent that the elementary psychophysiological functions have remained unchanged in the 18 process of historical development, the higher functions (verbal thinking, logical memory, formation of concepts, voluntary attention, volition, etc.) have suffered deep and all-round changes.
Culture creates special forms of behaviour, modifies the activity of the mental functions and adds new storeys to the developing system of human behaviour. This is the basic fact of which we are persuaded by every page of psychology of primitive man, which studies culturalpsychological development in its pure, isolated form. In the process of historical development social man changes the ways and means of his behaviour, transforms the natural instincts and functions, elaborates and creates new forms of behaviour---specifically cultured forms.
Child psychology did not know of the problem of higher mental functions or, what is the same thing, the problem .of the child's cultural development. That is why the central and highest problem of psychology---the problem of the personality and its development---is still closed to it. Through its best representatives child psychology arrives at the conclusion that the ``description of the inner life of man as a whole is the province of a poet or a historian''. Essentially this is a testimonium paupertatis, i.e., a statement of failure of child psychology, an admission that it is absolutely impossible to investigate the problem of personality within the methodological boundaries within which child psychology has arisen and developed. Only by decisively going beyond the methodological limits of traditional child psychology may it be possible to investigate the development of the higher mental synthesis which must with good reason be called the child's personality. The history of the child's cultural development brings us to the history of the development of the personality.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ METHOD OF INVESTIGATIONInvestigation of any new sphere necessarily begins with a search for and elaboration of a method. It may be suggested, as a general proposition, that any new approach to scientific problems inevitably leads to new methods and ways of investigation. The object and method of investigation prove to be closely interconnected. The investigation therefore assumes an entirely different form and takes a 19 different course when it is aimed at finding a new method which is adequate to the new problem; in this case the form of the investigation radically differs from the forms in which the study merely uses in new spheres the methods already elaborated and established in science.
All the psychological methods now used in experimental investigation are, despite their enormous diversity, built on one principle, according to one type, one scheme, namely, stimulus-response. However original and complex the type of psychological experiment, it is always easy to see that it stands on this universal foundation. Whatever the object and method of the psychologist's experiment, it is always a question of exerting some action on the person, exposing him to particular stimuli, in some manner stimulating his behaviour or experiences, and then studying, investigating, analysing, describing and comparing the response to this action, the reaction to the given stimulus. This method of investigation undoubtedly rests on the basic proposition, the basic psychologic law, according to which mental processes are reactions to stimuli. The basic scheme of the experiment---stimulus-response---is at the same time the basic law of behaviour. All sorts of connections, depending on the constellation and change in the stimuli and reactions have been investigated in psychology, but we do not know of a single investigation with a fundamental step made beyond the basic, essentially elementary law of behaviour. All changes were wrought within the general scheme. Even the method of conditioned reflexes finds its place within the same general range. So different from other methods in all other respects, in this respect it hinges on their common pivot.
This scheme underlies the psychological experiment however diverse the forms it assumes in investigations of various trends and whatever fields of psychology it penetrates. This scheme embraces all trends---from associationism to structural psychology, all fields of investigation--- from elementary to higher processes, all branches of psychology---from general to child psychology.
However, this proposition has its reverse side which is that with the generalisation and spread of our scheme to more extensive spheres of psychology the concrete content of this scheme has evaporated and disappeared in direct proportion to these processes. It may screen the most 20 diverse and exactly opposite approaches to the human mind and behaviour, the most diverse aims and objectives of investigation, and, lastly, the most different fields of investigation. The following question arises: under the circumstances isn't the entire scheme an empty, meaningless form which is generally devoid of any content, and isn't our generalisation therefore devoid of any meaning?
The common elements that unite all types and forms of psychological experiment and that are in various measure characteristic of all of them, since they rest on the S-R principle, constitute a naturalistic approach to human psychology, which must be disclosed and overcome if we are to find an adequate method of investigating the cultural development of behaviour. In its essence this view seems to us to be related to the naturalistic conception of history, the one-sidedness of which consists, according to F. Engels, in that it holds that ``nature exclusively reacts on man, and natural conditions everywhere exclusively determine his historical development'', and forgets that ``man also reacts on nature, changing it and creating new conditions of existence for himself''.^^*^^
The naturalistic approach to behaviour as a whole, including the higher mental functions which have formed during the historical period of development of behaviour, does not take into consideration the qualitative difference between the history of man and the evolution of animals. The S-R scheme is essentially used in the same manner in investigating the behaviour of man and the behaviour of animals. This fact alone expresses the idea that all the qualitative differences in the history of man, all the ``changes in human nature'', the whole new type of human adaptation---all of it has failed to affect human behaviour and to cause any fundamental changes in it. This idea actually declares that human behaviour is outside the pale of the general historical development of man.
However ungrounded and even preposterous as this idea, when openly stated, may be, when concealed it continues to be a silent prerequisite, an unuttered principle of experimental psychology. It is unthinkable that labour, which has radically changed the character of man's _-_-_
^^*^^ F. Engels, Dialectics of Nature, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1964, p. 234!
21 adaptation to nature, is unconnected with the change in the type of man, if we assume together with Engels that ``a tool implies specific human reality, the transforming reaction of man on nature, production''.^^*^^ Is it possible that in the psychology of man nothing corresponds to the difference in the relation to nature, which sets man apart from animals and which Engels implies when he says that ``the animal merely uses his environment, man by his changes makes it serve his ends'', or in other words, that ``all the planned action of all animals has never succeeded in impressing the stamp of their will upon the earth. That was left for man''.^^**^^The S-R scheme and the naturalistic approach to human psychology it screens assume human behaviour to be essentially passive.
If we take into account these purely theoretical considerations and add the actual impotence of experimental psychology in applying the S-R scheme to investigation of the higher mental functions, we will see that this scheme cannot serve as the basis for constructing an adequate method of investigating specifically human forms of behaviour. At best it will help us to discern the presence of lower, subordinate ``collateral forms" which ``do not exhaust the essence of the main form''. Application of this universal, all-embracing scheme to all stages of development of behaviour may but lead to establishment of a purely quantitative variety, complication and enhancement of human stimuli and reactions, compared with those of animals, but cannot grasp the new quality in human behaviour, because the development of behaviour from animals to man gave rise to a new quality, and this is our main idea. This development does not exhaust by a simple complication the relations between the stimuli and responses which are already given to us in the psychology of animals. Nor does it proceed along the path of quantitative increase and extension of these connections. It is centred upon a dialectical leap which leads to a qualitative change in the very relation between the stimulus and the response. Human behaviour---we could thus formulate our _-_-_
^^*^^ F. Engels, Dialectics of Nature, Progress Publishers, Moscow. 1964, p. 34.
^^**^^ Ibid., p. 182.
22 main conclusion---differs from the behaviour of animals in the same qualitative manner as the entire type of adaptation and historical development of man differs from the adaptation and development of animals, because the process of man's mental development is part of the general process of man's historical development. We are thereby compelled to seek and find a new methodological formula for psychological experiment.We started our investigation with a psychological analysis of several forms of behaviour which are encountered, not often, to be sure, in day-to-day life and are therefore familiar to everybody, but are at the same time an extremely complex historical formation of the most ancient epochs in man's psychological development.
These negligible and at the same time deeply significant phenomena may be with good reason called rudimentary mental functions by analogy with the rudimentary organs.
The rudimentary functions which we find in any system of behaviour and which are vestiges of similar, but more developed functions in other, older psychological systems are a living evidence of the origin of these higher systems in their historical connection with older strata in the development of behaviour. That is why their study may reveal essential data for understanding human behaviour, the data which we need to find the basic formula for the method. And that is why we decided to begin with small and negligible facts and to raise their investigation to a high theoretical level in an attempt to show how the great manifests itself in the very small.
An analysis of these psychological forms reveals to us what were formerly the higher mental functions included with them in one system of behaviour and what was this very system in which rudimentary and active functions coexist. This analysis furnishes us with the point of departure of their genesis and at the same time the point of departure of the entire method.
As ancient formations which arose in the very beginning of cultural development they have retained in pure form the principle of their structure and activity, the prototype of all other cultural forms of behaviour. What exists in infinitely more complex processes in concealed form is here open to view. All the connections with the system which at one time gave rise to them have died 23 away, the ground on which they arose has disappeared, the background of their activity has changed, they were severed from their system and were transported by the stream of historical development to an entirely different sphere. They are bearers of their own history. To analyse each such form, requires a small and finished separate monograph the size of a page. But, unlike the a priori constructions and artificially created examples and schemes, they are real formations, finding their direct and immediate continuation in experiment which reproduces their basic forms and, in investigation of primitive man, reveals their history.
The first form of behaviour in which we are interested may be very easily pictured in connection with the specific situation in which it usually arises. This situation, in its extreme and simplified expression, is usually referred to as the situation of Buridan's ass on the basis of the wellknown philosophical joke figuring in the writings of the most diverse thinkers; the joke is ascribed to Buridan in whose writings, incidentally, it does not appear at all. A hungry ass standing at an equal distance from two absolutely similar bundles of hay suspended on the right and left sides must starve to death because the motives prompting him are equally powerful and are aimed in opposite directions. This famous joke is supposed to illustrate the idea of absolute determination of behaviour, the idea that the will is not free. What would man do in a similar ideal situation?
Some thinkers asserted that man would suffer the sad fate of the ass. Others, on the contrary, held that man would be a most shameful ass and not a thinking creature--- res cogitans---if he perished under the same circumstances.
Essentially, this is the basic problem of all of human psychology. It presents in an extremely simplified, ideal form the entire problem of our investigation, the entire stimulus-response problem. If two stimuli act with equal force in opposite directions, simultaneously evoking two incompatible reactions, complete inhibition results with mechanical necessity, behaviour is arrested and there is no way out.
A person finding himself in the situation of Buridan's ass resorts to the aid of auxiliary motives or stimuli artificially introduced into the situation. In place of 24 Buridan's ass man would throw lots and thus master the situation.
In the behaviour of people who have grown up under conditions of a backward culture casting lots plays an enormous role. According to investigators, in difficult cases many primitive tribes never take an important decision without casting lots. Bones thrown and fallen in a definite manner serve as the decisive auxiliary stimulus in the struggle of motives. Levy-Bruhl describes numerous methods by which an alternative is chosen with the aid of artificial stimuli entirely unrelated to the situation and introduced by primitive man exclusively as an aid to choosing one of two possible reactions.
If we isolate in pure form the very principle of constructing the operation of casting lots, we shall easily see that its most important feature consists in the new and entirely unusual relation between the stimuli and responses which are impossible in the behaviour of an animal.
Let us take a situation in which man is acted upon by two equally powerful and opposite stimuli A and B. If the joint action of the two stimuli leads to a mechanical addition of these actions, i.e., to a complete absence of any reactions, we have what should have happened, according to the joke, to Buridan's ass. This is the highest and purest expression of the stimulus-response principle in behaviour. Complete determinability of behaviour by stimulation and complete possibility of studying the whole of the behaviour by the S-R scheme are shown here in the most simplified ideal form.
In the same situation man throws lots. He introduces artificially into the situation, without changing it, without in any way connecting with it, auxiliary stimuli a-A and b-B. If stimulus a drops out, he will follow stimulus A, if stimulus b falls out, he will follow stimulus B. He creates his own artificial situation by introducing a couple of auxiliary stimuli. He determines his behaviour beforehand, making his choice with the aid of a stimulus introduced by himself. Let us assume that in casting lots stimulus a drops out. Stimulus A thereby wins. This stimulus A evokes the corresponding reaction X. Stimulus B evokes no reaction. Its corresponding reaction F could not be produced.
Let us analyse what has taken place. Reaction X was, of course, evoked by stimulus A. Without this stimulus the 25 reaction could not have occurred. But X was evoked not only by A. A itself was neutralised by the action of B. Reaction X was evoked also by stimulus a which has nothing to do with it and was introduced into the situation artificially. Thus the stimulus created by man himself determined his reaction. We may, consequently, say that man determined his own reaction with the aid of an artificial stimulus.
Like the casting of lots, tying a knot to remember something belongs to psychology of everyday life. Man wants to remember something; for example, he must execute some commission, do something, take something, etc. Not trusting his memory and not relying on it he usually ties a knot on his handkerchief or in an analogous manner places a piece of paper under the lid of his pocket watch, etc. The knot must remind him later of what he has to do. And, as everybody knows, in some cases it may serve as a reliable aid to memory.
Here is another operation which is unthinkable and impossible in an animal. We are again ready to see a new, specifically human behaviour characteristic in the introduction of an artificial auxiliary memory aid, in the active creation and use of a stimulus as a memory aid.
But the essence of the form of behaviour in which we are interested remains the same in all cases. This essence is in the transition from the direct perception of quantity and immediate reaction to a quantitative stimulus to the creation of auxiliary stimuli and active determination of one's own behaviour with their aid. Artificial stimuli created by man, in no way connected with the situation on hand and placed in the service of active adaptation, again appear as a distinguishing feature of higher forms of behaviour.
With this we may finish analysing concrete examples. Further consideration would inevitably make us repeat in new forms and manifestations the main feature, which we have singled out. We are interested in that extremely peculiar world of higher or cultured forms of behaviour which opens up beyond them and which investigation of inactive functions helps us to penetrate. We are searching for the key to higher behaviour.
It occurs to us that we have found it in the principle of constructing the psychological forms which we have analysed. It is in this that the heuristic significance of 26 investigating rudimentary functions consists. As we have already mentioned, these psychological fossils, these living vestiges of ancient epochs clearly show the structure of the higher form. These rudimentary functions reveal to us what all higher mental processes were like before and to what type of organisation they at one time belonged.
In all the cases we have examined, man's behaviour was determined not by the stimuli on hand, but by a new or invariably man-made psychological situation. Creation and use of artificial stimuli as aids to mastery of one's own reactions are the basis of the determinability of behaviour which distinguishes higher behaviour from elementary. The presence of created stimuli in addition to given stimuli is in our opinion a distinguishing feature of human psychology.
These artificial stimuli---means introduced by man into a psychological situation and performing the function of autostimulation---we call signs, attaching to this term a broader and at the same time more exact meaning than the usual meaning. According to our definition, any conditioned stimulus artificially created by man and serving as a means of mastering behaviour---one's own or someone else's---is a sign. Two factors are thus essential for the concept of sign: its origin and function.
The behaviour of man is distinguished by the fact that he creates artificial signalling stimuli, primarily a grand signal system of speech, and thereby masters the signalling activity of the cerebral hemispheres. Whereas the basic and most common activity of the cerebral hemispheres of animals and man is signalling, the basic and most common activity of man, which primarily distinguishes man from animals psychologically, is signification, i.e., creation and use of signs. We are taking this word in its literal and precise sense. Signification is creation and use of signs, i.e., artificial signals.
It is quite clear that such signalling which is a reflection of the natural connections of phenomena and is entirely a creation of natural conditions cannot form an adequate basis for human behaviour. Active reshaping of nature by man is essential to human adaptation. This reshaping of nature by man underlies all of human history. It necessarily presupposes an active change in human behaviour. ``By thus acting on the external world and changing it, 27 he at the same time changes his own nature,'' says K. Marx. ``He develops his slumbering powers and compels them to act in obedience to his sway.''^^*^^
Every definite stage in mastering the forces of nature necessarily corresponds to a definite stage in the mastery of behaviour, in subordinating the psychological processes to the power of man. Active adaptation of man to the environment and the change in man's nature cannot be based on signalling which passively reflects the natural connections of various agents. They require an active coupling of such connections which are impossible in a purely natural type of behaviour, i.e., based on a natural combination of the agents. Man introduces artificial stimuli, signifies behaviour and by means of signs creates from without new connections in the brain. Together with the assumption of this we tentatively introduce a new regulatory principle of behaviour into our investigation, a new conception of determinability of man's reactions. It is the principle of signification which means that man creates from without connections in his brain, controls his brain and through it his own body.
A question naturally arises: how is it generally possible to create connections from without and regulate the behaviour of the type under discussion? This possibility is offered in the coincidence of two factors. In point of fact, the possibility of such regulatory principle lies as an inference in the prerequisite, in the structure of the conditioned reflex.
The theory of conditioned reflexes is based on the idea that the main difference between a conditioned and an unconditioned reflex is not their mechanism, but the formation of the reflex mechanism. ``The only difference is,'' says I. P. Pavlov, ``that in one case there is a ready-made conduction path, whereas the other case requires preliminary coupling; in one case the mechanism of communication is quite ready, in the other case the mechanism is somewhat supplemented each time until it is completely ready.''^^**^^ Consequently, the conditioned reflex is a mechanism newly _-_-_
^^*^^ K. Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1958, p. 177.
^^**^^ I. P. Pavlov, Complete Works, Vol. IV, Moscow-Leningrad, Publishing House of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, 1951, p. 38.
28 created by a coincidence of two stimuli, i.e., created from without.The second factor, whose presence explains the possibility for the appearance of a new regulatory principle of behaviour, is the social life and interaction of people. In the process of social life man has created and developed most complex systems of psychological connections without which neither work nor all of the social life would be possible. These means of psychological connections are in their very nature and function signs, i.e., artificially created stimuli whose purpose is to stimulate behaviour, to form new reflex connections in the human brain.
The two factors taken together enable us to understand the possibility of formation of the new regulatory principle. Social life makes it necessary to subordinate the behaviour of the individual to social requirements and at the same time creates complex signal systems---means of communication which direct and regulate the formation of conditioned connections in the brain of man. The organisation of higher nervous activity creates the necessary prerequisite for it, creates the possibility of regulating behaviour from without.
In explaining man's behaviour from the psychological aspect the inadequacy of the regulatory principle consisting in construction of the conditioned reflex is, as was already mentioned, that by means of this mechanism we can only understand how the natural inborn connections regulate the formation of connections in the brain and human behaviour, i.e., understand behaviour on a purely naturalistic, but not historical plane. This regulatory principle quite corresponds to the passive type of animal adaptation.
But no natural connections make it possible to understand the active adaptation to nature, the change of nature by man. This can be understood only from man's social nature. Otherwise we return to the naturalist assertion that only nature acts on man. ``Natural science, like philosophy,'' says Engels, ``has hitherto entirely neglected the influence of men's activity on their thought; both know only nature on the one hand and thought on the other. But it is precisely the alteration of nature by men, not solely nature as such, which is the most essential and immediate basis of human thought, and it is in the measure 29 that man has learned to change nature that his intelligence has increased.''^^*^^
This new type of behaviour must necessarily correspond to a new regulatory principle of behaviour. We find it in the social determination of behaviour realised by means of signs. The leading role in all social connections is played by speech. I. P. Pavlov says that ``owing to all of an adult's preceding life the word is connected with all the external and internal stimuli reaching the cerebral hemispheres, it signals them all, replaces all of them and may therefore evoke all the actions and reactions of the organism conditioned by these stimuli'',^^**^^
Man's psychological development took place in the phylogenesis and is taking place in the ontogenesis not only along the line of improving and complicating the grandest signal panel, i.e., the structure and function of the neural apparatus, but also along the line of elaborating and acquiring a correspondingly grand system of speech signals which are the key to this panel.
So far our discourse appears perfectly clear. There is an apparatus meant for the coupling of temporary connections and there is a key to this apparatus, which makes il possible, in addition to the connections forming by themselves under the influence of natural agents, to produce new, artificial couplings subject to man's will and choice. The apparatus and key to it are in different hands. One man influences another through speech. But the complexity of the problem becomes obvious as soon as we connect the apparatus and the key in one person, as soon as we begin to deal with the concept of autostimulation and selfmastery. Here psychological connections of a new type arise within the selfsame system of behaviour.
We shall place this transition from the social influence outside the personality to the social influence within the personality in the centre of our investigation and shall attempt to elucidate the most important factors from which the process of such transition forms.
The use of auxiliary means, the transition to mediating activity radically reorganises the entire mental operation, _-_-_
^^*^^ F. Engels, Dialectics of Nature, Progress Publishers, 1964, p. 234.
^^**^^ I P Pavlov, Complete Works, Vol. IV, Moscow-Leningrad, Publishing House of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, 1951, p. 429.
30 as the use of a tool modifies the natural activity of organs and endlessly extends the system of activity of the mental functions. The former and the latter together we designate by the term of higher mental function or higher behaviour. __ALPHA_LVL3__ STRUCTURE OF THE HIGHER MENTAL FUNCTIONSThe conception of psychological analysis which we have endeavoured to develop brings us to a new idea of the mental process, as a whole, and of its nature. The most important change that has of late occurred in psychology is the replacement of the analytical approach to the mental process by the integral or structural approach. The most influential representatives of modern psychology advance the integral point of view and assume it as the basis of all of psychology. The essence of this new point of view is that it pushes to the foreground the importance of the whole which possesses its own specific properties and determines the properties and functions of its constituent parts. Unlike old psychology which conceived the process of formation of complex forms of behaviour as a process of mechanical summation of separate elements, newpsychology centres the study on the whole and on such of its properties which cannot be inferred from the sum of the parts.
In the history of the child's cultural development we meet with the concept of structure twice. First, this concept arises in the very beginning of the history of the child's cultural development, forming the initial factor or point of departure of the entire process; secondly, the very process of cultural development must be conceived as a change in this initial, basic structure and a rise, on its basis, of new structures characterised by a new correlation of the parts. The former structures we shall call primitive; they are the natural, inborn psychological whole conditioned mainly by biological characteristics of the mind. The latter structures arising in the process of cultural development we shall call the higher structures because they represent a genetically more complex and higher form of behaviour.
The new structures which we oppose to the lower or primitive structures differ primarily in that the direct confluence of the stimuli and reactions in a single complex is in this case disturbed. If we analyse the peculiar forms 31 of behaviour, which we have an opportunity to observe in the reaction of choice, we cannot but notice that here the primitive structure undergoes, as it were, a stratification in behaviour. A new intermediate link appears between the stimulus at which the behaviour is aimed and man's reaction to it, and the entire operation assumes the character of a mediated act. In this connection this analysis suggests a new point of view concerning the relations existing between the act of behaviour and the external phenomenon. We can clearly distinguish two series of stimuli of which some are object stimuli and others are means stimuli; each of these stimuli peculiarly, according to its correlations, determines and directs behaviour. The specific feature of the new structure is the presence in it of stimuli of both orders. In our experiments we were able to observe how the very structure of the entire process changed, depending on the change in the place of the middle stimulus (sign) in behaviour. It was enough to use words as means of memorisation^^*^^ to impart one direction to all these processes associated with memorising instructions. But as soon as these words were replaced by meaningless figures the entire process assumed a different direction. Owing to these very simple experiments we deem it possible to suggest, as a general rule, the following proposition: in the higher structure the sign and the method of its use are the functional, determining whole or focus of the entire process. Just as the use of a tool dictates the entire structure of a labour operation, the character of the sign used is the basic factor which underlies the construction of the whole remaining process. Thus, the most important factor underlying the higher structure is a special form of organisation of the whole process consisting in the fact that the whole process is constructed by drawing into situation well-known artificial stimuli which play the part of signs. Consequently, the functionally _-_-_
^^*^^ Here L. S. Vygotsky describes the experiment, suggested by him, with mediated memorisation in which a series of words is memorised with the aid of a series of additional auxiliary signals (pictures or words); by using these aids the subject is able essentially to extend the limits of his memory. This method is specially described in the following books by A. N. Leontyev: Development of Memory, published by the Academy of Communist Education in 1931, and Problems of Development of the Mind, published by the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences in 1959, Moscow. (Editor's note.)
32 different role of two stimuli and their interconnections underlie the connections and relations which form the very process.The process of drawing extraneous stimuli into the situation which in this case assumes a certain functional importance may best be observed in experiments in which the child for the first time passes from the direct operation to using signs. In our experimental studies we placed the child in a situation in which he was faced with a problem of memorising, comparing or choosing something. If this problem was not beyond the child's natural abilities, the child managed to cope with it by a direct or primitive method. An essential feature of this scheme is that the reaction itself forms part of the situation and is necessarily included in the structure of this situation as a whole. That dominating whole, mentioned in its time by Volkelt, predetermines already the direction of the child's grasping movement. But in our experiment the situation is hardly ever such. The problem with which the child is faced is, as a rule, beyond his ability and is usually insoluble by such a primitive method. But, if some material altogether neutral with respect to the entire situation lies before the child, we happen to observe, under certain conditions, how these neutral stimuli cease to be neutral when the child is faced with an insoluble problem and how they are drawn into the process of behaviour and assume the function of a sign.
In application to the structure we could say that precisely the differentiation of the primitive wholeness and the clear singling out of two poles (sign stimulus and object stimulus) are the characteristic feature of the higher structure, but this differentiation has its other aspect which consists in the fact that the entire operation as a whole assumes a new character and significance. We could not describe this new significance of the whole operation otherwise than by saying that it is mastery of one's own process of behaviour. It is surprising to us that traditional psychology completely failed to notice this phenomenon which we can call mastering one's own reactions. In the attempts to explain this fact of ``will'' this psychology resorted to a miracle, to intervention of a spiritual factor in the operation of nervous processes, and thus tried to explain the action by the line of most resistance, as did, __PRINTERS_P_33_COMMENT__ 3---1597 33 for example, James in developing his theory of the creative character of the will.
But even recent psychology which is gradually introducing the concept of mastery of one's own behaviour into the system of psychologic concepts does not as yet have the necessary clarity in this very concept or an adequate evaluation of its true significance. K. Lewin notes with good reason that phenomena of mastering one's own will have not yet appeared with complete clarity in the psychology of the will. Contrariwise, in pedagogics the problems of mastering one's own behaviour have long since been considered the basic problems of education. In modern education the will has replaced the proposition of purposive action. External discipline, compulsory drill is replaced by independent mastery of one's own behaviour, which presupposes no suppression of the child's natural inclinations, but implies the child's mastery of his own actions. In connection with this, obedience and good behaviour are pushed into the background and the problem of self-mastery is brought to the foreground. And this problem is really of much greater importance since we mean the purpose which governs the child's behaviour. This recession of the problem of purpose into the background with respect to the problem of self-mastery is manifested in the problem of a small child's obedience. A child must learn to obey through self-mastery. Self-mastery is not built on obedience and purpose, but, on the contrary, obedience and purposiveness arise on self-mastery. The analogous changes with which we are familiar from the pedagogics of the will are necessary for the main problem of psychology of the will.
We are summing up our basic views.
As was already mentioned above, we proceed from the proposition that the processes of behaviour are the same natural processes governed by natural laws as all the others. Subordinating the processes of nature to his power and intervening in the course of these processes man makes no exception for his own behaviour either. However, the main and most important question arises as to how we must conceive this mastery of one's own behaviour.
Old psychology knew two basic facts. On the one hand, it knew the fact of the hierarchic relations between the higher and lower centres owing to which some processes 34 regulate the course of others; on the other hand, by resort ing to the spiritualistic interpretation of the problem of the will, it suggested the idea that the psychologic forces act on the brain and through it on the whole body.
The structure which we imply differs essentially from both the former and latter cases. The difference is in the fact that we emphasise the problem of the means by which the behaviour is mastered. Like mastering any natural processes, the mastery of one's own behaviour presupposes not abrogation of the main laws which govern these phenomena, but obedience to them. But we know that the main law of behaviour is the stimulus-response law, for which reason we cannot master our own behaviour other than through corresponding stimulation. Mastery of the stimuli offers the key to mastering the behaviour. Thus, mastering the behaviour is a mediated process which is always carried into effect through certain auxiliary stimuli.
We might sum up that to which we are brought by the comparative consideration of the higher and lower forms of behaviour and say that the unity of all the processes, which are constituents of the higher form, is based on two factors: first, the unity of the problem with which man is faced and, secondly, the means, which, as was already said, dictate their structure of the process of behaviour.
__ALPHA_LVL3__ GENESIS OF THE HIGHER MENTAL FUNCTIONSThe analysis and structure of the higher mental processes bring us close to elucidating the basic problem of the entire history of the child's cultural development, elucidating the genesis of the higher forms of behaviour, i.e., the origin and development of the mental forms which constitute the subject of our study.
If we examine the concept of development, as it appears in modern psychology, we shall see that it still contains many factors which modern investigations must overcome.
The first of these factors, the sad survival of prescientific thinking in psychology, is the latent, vestigial preformism in the theory of child development. Old conceptions and erroneous theories disappear from science, leaving traces, vestiges in the form of habits of thought. Despite the fact that the science about the child has long since rid itself of the view that the child differs from an adult only in 35 bodily proportions, only in size, this conception has been retained by child psychology in a concealed form. Not a single work in child psychology can now openly repeat the long disproved ideas that the child is an adult in miniature, and yet this view persists and can still be found in concealed form in almost every psychological investigation. From the point of view of child psychology the entire process of development can be conceived extraordinarily simply; it consists in a quantitative increase in size of that which is given from the very outset in the embryo, the embryo gradually enlarging, growing and thus developing into a mature organism. This point of view has long since been discarded by embryology and is only of historical interest. And yet, in psychology this point of view continues to exist in practice, although it has also long since been abandoned in theory.
Theoretically psychology long ago gave up the idea that the child's development is a purely quantitative process. Everybody agrees that we are dealing with a much more complex process which is not exhausted by quantitative changes alone. But in practice psychology has yet to disclose this complex process of development in all its completeness and grasp all the qualitative changes and transformations which reshape the child's behaviour in the process of development.
If we were to characterise by one general proposition the basic demand made of modern investigation by the problem of development, we could say that it consists in studying the positive peculiarity of the child's behaviour.
Psychology is now faced with the problem of grasping this real peculiarity of the child's behaviour in all the completeness and wealth of its actual expression, and of producing a positive picture of the child's personality. But this positive picture becomes possible only if we radically change our conception of the child's development and if we take into account that it is a complex dialectical process which is characterised by complex periodicity, disproportion in the development of various functions, metamorphoses or qualitative transformations of some forms into others, complex interlacement of processes of evolution and involution, complex crossing of external and internal factors, and a complex process of surmounting difficulties and of adaptation.
36Another factor, the surmounting of which must clear the way to modern genetic investigation, is the concealed evolutionism which still dominates child psychology. Evolution, or development by means of gradual and slow accumulation of various changes, continues to be regarded as the only form of the child's development which exhausts all the known processes forming part of this general conception. Essentially the discourses on child development contain a concealed analogy with the process of plant growth.
Child psychology will have nothing to do with those sudden, leaplike revolutionary changes with which the history of child development is replete and which are so often encountered in the history of cultural development. To naive consciousness evolution and revolution seem incompatible. For it historical development continues only as long as it proceeds along a straight line. Where there is a revolution, a disruption of historical tissue, a leap, naive consciousness sees only catastrophe, downfall and a precipice. There history ends for it for the entire period until it takes the straight and even road again.
Scientific consciousness, on the contrary, regards revolution and evolution as two interconnected and mutuallysupposing forms of development. The leap performed in the development of the child at the moment of such changes scientific consciousness regards as a point in any line of development as a whole.
This proposition is of particular importance to the history of cultural development since, as we shall see below, the history of cultural development occurs to an enormous extent through such sudden, leaplike changes taking place in the child's development. The very essence of cultural development consists in the clash between the developed cultural forms of behaviour, which the child encounters, and the primitive forms which characterise his own behaviour.
The immediate conclusion from this is a change in the usual point of view concerning the processes of the child's mental development and a change in the conception of the character of construction and course of these processes. All processes of child development are usually conceived as stereotypical processes. In this sense the sample of development, its model, as it were, with which all the other 37 forms are compared is embryonal development. This type of development depends the least on the external environment and to it may with good reason be applied the term ``development'' in its literal sense, i.e., unfolding in the embryo in a limited form of possibilities. And yet, embryonal development cannot be considered the model for any and all processes of development in the strict sense of the word. It may rather be conceived as its result or consequence. It is already a stabilised, completed and more or less stereotypical process.
Suffice it to compare with this process of embryonal development the process of evolution of the animal species, the real origin of the species, as it was disclosed by Darwin, to see that there is a fundamental difference between the former and the latter types of development. Species came into being and perished, were modified and developed in the struggle for existence, in the process of adaptation to their surroundings. If we were to draw an analogy between the process of child development and some other process of development, we should rather choose evolution of the animal species than embryonal development. Child development least of all resembles a stereotypical process screened from external influences; here the development of and changes in the child take place in an active adaptation to the external environment.
Ever new forms arise in this process, and it is not merely links of an already formed chain which are stereotypically reproduced. Any new stage in the development of the embryo, contained already in a potential form in the preceding stage, occurs by virtue of the unfolding of these internal potentials; it is not so much a process of development as a process of growth and maturation. This form, this type, is also represented in the child's mental development; but in the history of cultural development a much more important part is played by the second form, the second type, according to which the new stage arises not from the unfolding of the potentials contained in the preceding stage, but from actual clashes between the organism and its environment, and from living adaptation to the environment.
We regard the idea that the structure of the development of behaviour in some respect resembles the geological structure of the earth's crust as one of the theoretically 38 most fruitful ideas, which genetic psychology is mastering before our very eyes. Investigations have established the presence of genetically different strata in human behaviour. In this sense the ``geology'' of human behaviour is undoubtedly a reflection of the ``geological'' origin and development of the brain.
If we turn to the history of development of the brain, we shall see that, as the higher centres develop, the lower, older centres do not just move aside, but continue to work as subordinate instances under the direction of the higher centres so that in an intact nervous system they cannot usually be set apart.
Another regularity in the development of the brain is what may be called a passing of the functions upward. The subordinate centres do not fully retain the initial type of functioning they had in the history of development, but transfer an essential part of their former functions upward, to the new centres being constructed over them. Only when the higher centres are damaged or functionally weakened do subordinate centres become independent and show elements of their ancient type of functioning which they have retained.
Thus we see that, as the higher centres develop, the lower centres persist as subordinate centres and that the brain develops according to the laws of stratification and addition of new storeys over the old ones. An old stage does not die away when a new one arises, but is eliminated by the new one, is dialectically negated by it, passing into the new one and existing in it. Similarly an instinct is not destroyed, but is ``eliminated'' in conditioned reflexes as a function of the old brain in the functions of the new. Similarly a conditioned reflex is ``eliminated'' in intellectual action, simultaneously existing and not existing in it. Science is faced with two entirely equal problems. It must be able to disclose the lower in the higher, but it must also be able to reveal the maturation of the higher from the lower.
__b_b_b__The history of development of signs brings us to a much more general law governing the development of behaviour. The essence of this law is that in the process of development the child begins to practise with respect to himself the same forms of behaviour that others formerly practised 39 with respect to him. The child himself learns the social forms of behaviour and applies them to himself. With regard to the sphere under consideration we might say that this law does not anywhere prove so effective as in the use of the sign. The sign is always primarily a means of social relation, a means of influencing others, and only then a means of influencing oneself. Many factual relations and dependences which form this way have been established in psychology. By way of example we may point out the circumstance which was in its time mentioned by Baldwin and has now been developed in Piaget's investigation. This investigation has shown that there is an indubitable genetic connection between the child's arguments and his reflections. This is confirmed by the child's logic itself. The proofs first arise in the arguments between children and are then transferred within the child, connected by the form of manifestation of his personality. The child's logic develops only with the increasing socialisation of the child's speech and all of the child's experience. In this connection it is interesting to note that the genetic role of the collective changes in the development of the child's behaviour, that the higher functions of the child's thinking first manifest themselves in the collective life of children and only then lead to the development of reflection in the child's own behaviour. Piaget has found that precisely the sudden transition from preschool age to school age leads to a change in the forms of collective activity and that on this basis the child's own thinking also changes. ``Reflection,'' says this author, ``may be regarded as inner argumentation. We must also mention speech, which is originally a means of communication with the surrounding people and only later, in the form of inner speech, is a means of thinking, in order that the applicability of this law to the history of the child's cultural development should become perfectly justified.''
But we would say very little about the significance of this law if we could not show the concrete forms in which it manifests itself in the sphere of cultural development.
If we consider this law, we will see very clearly why all that is internal in the higher mental functions was at one time external. If it is true that the sign is initially a means of communication and only then becomes a means of behaviour of the personality, it is perfectly clear that the 40 cultural development is based on the use of signs and that their inclusion in the general system of behaviour initially occurred in a social, external form. In general we may say that the relations between the higher mental functions were at one time real relations among people. I act with respect to myself as people act with respect to me. As verbal thinking is a transfer of speech within, as reflection is a transfer of argumentation within, so can the mental function of the word, as Janet has shown, never be explained other than by using for the explanation a vaster system than man himself. The original psychology of the functions of the word is a social function, and, if we want to trace the function of the word in the behaviour of the personality, we must consider its former function in the social behaviour of people.
We are not deciding beforehand the question of how essentially correct the theory of speech suggested by Janet is. We merely want to say that the method of investigation suggested by bim is entirely incontestable from the point of view of the history of the child's cultural development. According to Janet, the word was originally a command for others, then it passed through a complex history consisting of imitations, change in functions, etc., and was only gradually separated from the action. Janet holds that it is always a command and that is why it is the principal means of mastering behaviour. That is why, if we want to elucidate genetically whence comes the volitional function of the word, why the word subordinates to itself the motor reaction, whence the power of the word over the behaviour, we shall inevitably arrive in the ontogenesis, as well as in the phylogenesis, at its actual commanding function. Janet says that behind the power of the word over the mental functions stands the actual power of a superior over an inferior and that the relations of the mental functions must be ascribed to the actual relations among people. Regulation of other people's behaviour by means of the word gradually leads to elaboration of verbalised behaviour of the personality itself.
But speech is the central function of social relations and of the cultured behaviour of the personality. That is why the history of the personality is particularly instructive, and the transition within from without, to the individual function from the social is here especially clear. 41 It is not without reason that Watson sees the essential difference between internal and external speech in that internal speech serves for individual and not for social forms of adaptation.
If we examine the means of social intercourse, we shall find that the relations among people are also of two kinds. Both direct and mediated relations among people are possible. The direct relations are those based on instinctive forms of expressive movement and action.
One animal influences another either by means of actions or by means of instinctive automatic expressive movements. Contact is established through touch, cries or looks. The entire history of the early forms of the child's social contact is replete with examples of this kind, and we see contact established by means of a cry, grasping at the sleeve, and looks.
On a higher stage of development, however, are the mediated relations among people, and their essential indication is the sign by means of which communication is established. It goes without saying that the higher form of communication mediated by the sign grows out of the natural forms of direct communication, but they are essentially different just the same.
Thus imitation and division of functions among people form the main mechanism of modification and transformation of the functions of the personality itself. If we examine the initial forms of labour, we shall see that in them the function of execution and the function of control are separated. The important step in the evolution of labour is that what the slave-driver and the slave do is combined in one person. This, as we shall see below, is the main mechanism of voluntary attention and labour.
In this sense all of the child's cultural development goes through three main stages which, by using the dismemberment introduced by Hegel, we may describe as follows:~
Let us examine, for example, the history of development of the pointing gesture which, as we shall see below, plays an extraordinarily important part in the development of the child's speech and is generally in large measure an old basis for all higher forms of development. By investigating its history we shall find that in the beginning the pointing gesture is merely an unsuccessful grasping movement aimed at an object and signifying forthcoming action. The 42 child tries to grasp too distant an object, but its hand reaching for the object remains hanging in the air and the fingers make grasping movements; this situation is the point of departure for the entire subsequent development. Here for the first time arises the pointing movement which we may with good reason conditionally call a pointing gesture in itself. Here is only the child's movement objectively pointing at the object and nothing else.
When the mother comes to the aid of the child and comprehends his movement as a pointing gesture the situation essentially changes. The pointing gesture becomes a gesture for others. The child's unsuccessful grasping movement gives rise to a reaction not from the object, but from another person. The original meaning to this unsuccessful grasping movement is thus imparted by others. And only afterwards, on the basis of the fact that the child associates the unsuccessful grasping movement with the entire objective situation, does the child himself begin to treat this movement as a pointing gesture. Here the function of the movement itself changes: from a movement directed toward an object it becomes a movement directed toward another person, a means of communication; the grasping is transformed into a pointing. Owing to this the movement itself is reduced and a form of pointing gesture is elaborated about which we may with good reason say that it is already a gesture for oneself. However, this movement becomes a gesture for oneself not otherwise than by being at first a pointing in itself, i.e., by objectively possessing all the necessary functions for pointing and a gesture for others, i.e., by being comprehended as a pointing by the surrounding people. The child is thus the last to realise his own gesture. Its meaning and function are created first by the objective situation and then by the people surrounding the child. Thus, the pointing gesture first begins to indicate by movement that which is understood by others and only later becomes a pointing gesture for the child himself.
Thus, we may say that we become ourselves through others and that this rule applies not only to the personality as a whole, but also to the history of every individual function. This is the essence of the process of cultural development expressed in a purely logical form. The personality becomes for itself what it is in itself through what 43 it is for others. This is the process of the making of the personality. Here for the first time in psychology the problem of correlations of the external and internal mental functions appears in all its enormous importance. Here, as was already mentioned, it becomes clear why all the internal was in the higher forms necessarily external, i.e., was for others what it is now for oneself. Any higher mental function necessarily goes through the external stage in its development because it is originally a social function. It is the centre of the whole problem of internal and external behaviour.
For us to say ``external'' about a process is to say ``social''. Any higher mental function was external because it had been social before it became an internal, mental function proper; it was formerly a relation between two people. The means of influencing oneself is originally a means of influencing others or a means of influencing the personality by others.
In a child it is possible to trace step by step the alternation of these three main forms of development in the function of speech. To begin with, the word must have meaning, i.e., a relation to a thing, there must be an objective relation between the word and what it means. If this is absent, further development of the word is impossible. Then this objective connection between the word and the thing must be functionally utilised by the adult as a means of communication with the child. Only then does the word become meaningful for the child itself. Thus the meaning of the word first objectively exists for others and only afterwards begins to exist for the child himself. All the main forms of speech communication between the adult and the child later become mental functions.
We might formulate the general genetic law of cultural development as follows: any function in the child's cultural development appears on the stage twice, on two planes, first on the social plane and then on the psychological, first among people as an intermental category and then within the child as an intramental category. This equally applies to voluntary attention and logical memory, formation of concepts and development of volition. We have good reason to consider this proposition a law in the full sense of the word, but it stands to reason that the passage within from without transforms the process itself, changes 44 its structure and functions. Behind all higher functions and their relations genetically stand social relations, real relations of people. Hence one of the main principles of our will is the principle of division of functions among people, division in two of that which is now blended in one, experimental unfolding of the higher mental process into the drama which is taking place among people.
We might therefore designate the main result to which we are brought by the history of the child's cultural development as a sociogenesis of the higher forms of behaviour.
The word ``social'' applied to our subject is very important. In the first place, it means in the broadest sense of the word that all the cultural is social. Culture is a product of man's social life and social activity, and the very statement of the problem of cultural development of behaviour therefore already brings us directly on to the social plane of development. We might further point out that the sign which is outside the organism is like a tool separated from the personality and is essentially a social organ or social agency. We might, furthermore, say that all the higher functions have formed not in biology, not in the history of pure phylogenesis, and that the very mechanism underlying the higher mental functions is a copy of the social. All the higher mental functions are interiorised relations of a social order, the basis of the social structure of the personality. Their composition, genetic structure and mode of action, in a word, all of their nature is social; even when transformed into mental processes it remains quasi-social. Even when alone man retains the functions of communication.
By changing Marx's well-known proposition we might say that man's psychological nature is a totality of social relations which have been transferred within and have become functions of the personality and forms of its structure. In this proposition we see the fullest expression of all to which we are brought by the history of cultural development.
[45] __ALPHA_LVL2__ PROBLEMS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORYThe act which determines the right of a new field of knowledge to existence consists in discovering or singling out a definite range of phenomena which develop or function in accordance with their own inner laws. Marxism has asserted itself as a science about social phenomena because it revealed the specific laws which govern them. This similarly applies to every discipline which rises to the level of a science.
The main task of any theory, including psychological theory, is to disclose the principal specific laws which govern the phenomena in question. Every theory is built on a certain conception of determination of phenomena.^^*^^ The theoretical basis for our approach to the construction
_-_-_^^*^^ Cybernetics, since it is a study of ``information'' or feedback, is a study of one type or aspect of determining processes. It is precisely this that accounts for its universal applicability to various fields. It is a study of determination of processes in the course of which each successive process is conditioned by the results of the preceding one. In precybernetic machines, machines without feedback, each action of a machine was conditioned by its structure and did not depend on its preceding actions; in cybernetic machines the ``information'' of the results of each action of the machine concerning the changes wrought by it is included in the conditions on which the next action of the machine depends. The claims of cybernetics that the most diverse fields of knowledge (theory of machines, physiology of the brain, social sciences) or types of processes studied by them are ``subordinate'' to it are based on the fact, or signify only the fact that in all these fields there are processes whose determination reveals this dependence of each successive action on the results of the preceding action; the changes wrought by the result of one process or action form part of the conditions which determine the successive process or action. Cybernetics, the study of information or feedback, is a study of one definite type or aspect of determination. This is, at any rate, its kernel, its essence; all the rest of it is engineering. Cybernetics is but a particular case of the general study of determination of processes and __NOTE__ Footnote cont. on page 47. 46 of psychological theory is the principle of determinism in its dialectical-materialist conception. It may be briefly formulated in a single proposition: external causes act through internal conditions. This removes the antithesis between the external conditionality and the internal development or self-development (self-motion). It is precisely the relationship between the external and internal connections that form the basis of all phenomena, including mental phenomena.
Attempts are often made to connect the concept of determinism with the mechanistic concept which dominated science in the 17th and 18th centuries. It was based on the conception of cause as an external impetus which directly determines the effect produced by it in another body or phenomenon. This mechanistic theory of determinism could only ostensibly, with a certain degree of approximation, be applied in classical mechanics to the mechanical motion of the point. It turned out that in this form it was not always applicable already in quantum mechanics. It is clearly unable to give an adequate explanation of organic life. Here the same action produces different effects in organisms with different properties and in the same organism under different conditions. The effect of an external action depends on the internal state of the organism on which this action is exerted. This circumstance applies to all organic phenomena and even more so to mental phenomena.
Thus the fundamental weakness of mechanistic determinism is that it endeavoured---unsuccessfully---to establish a direct dependence of the end result of an external influence on the influence itself, disregarding the internal conditions of the phenomenon (or body) on which this influence was exerted. The expression of the mechanistic conception of determinism in psychology is the original scheme of strict Watsonian ``stimulus-response'' behaviourism. The weakness of the mechanistic conception of determinism is utilised by indeterminism which has long since consolidated _-_-_ __NOTE__ Footnote cont. from page 46. phenomena. Elaboration of this latter case in all its multiformity is fraught with-enormous possibilities and offers unlimited prospects. Elaboration of the study of determination is one of the greatest tasks of science. Here we foresee fundamental possibilities of constructing a system of algorithms for various aspects or instances of determination of phenomena.
47 itself in idealist psychology and is now, as is well known, making inroads into physics---quantum mechanics.Surmounting the mechanistic conception of determinism dialectical-materialist determinism notes the importance of internal conditions and, by emphasising their connections with the external conditions, cuts the ground from under indeterminism, depriving it of its main arguments. I. P. Pavlov's theory may serve as an example of determinism of the new type. To make this clear, it is necessary (perhaps more than is usually done) to emphasise in Pavlov's conception one aspect which is not always clearly enough realised and properly elucidated.
It is usually said that Pavlov's theory proceeds from the external relations of the organism to its environment, with the conditions of its life, and that the very brain (its higher parts) serves to effect these external relations. But Pavlov was able to create a scientific theory, a true teaching on these external relations of the organism to its environment, to reveal the laws which govern them, only because he studied the internal laws of cerebral activity which mediate these external actions on the organism and its reactions. Pavlov's theory reveals the external relations of the organism to the conditions of its life in their regularities precisely because it discloses the internal interrelations of the processes by which these external relations are mediated.
Pavlov's theory found a specific form of expressing this, general principle which meets the requirements of physiological study of higher nervous activity.
The problem of psychology is to find for the same philosophical principles which underlie the theory of higher nervous activity a new form of their manifestation specific of psychology. The community of principles which would take part in the science of higher nervous activity and psychology is the only reliable basis on which psychology might ``fit'' the theory of higher nervous activity and lock with it without any detriment to the specificity of either of these sciences.
The ``reflex'' conception of mental activity means that mental activity is externally conditioned response activity; it is externally conditioned response activity of the human brain. This means that mental phenomena are determined by the interaction between man, as subject, and the 48 objective world. This proposition contains in a concise and particular form the idea which was given detailed and generalised expression in the dialectical-materialist conception of the principle of determinism.
This general principle is realised as multifariously as is multifarious the nature of the phenomena which enter into interaction. In this community, as a philosophical principle, it applies not to one special field of phenomena, but to all phenomena. In each special field of phenomena it must therefore receive its special form of manifestation in conformity with each special form of interaction. In building psychology on the basis of dialectical materialism it is necessary to find the special form of manifestation which the dialectical-materialist principle of determinism must assume in conformity with mental phenomena. The solution of the problem of this specific form of its manifestation rests on the problem of the relationship between the physiologic and the mental, the theory of higher nervous activity and psychology.
In the course of development of the reflex activity of the brain new, mental, phenomena---sensations, perceptions, etc.---emerge and thereby naturally give rise to a new object of study and new problems of its investigation---problems of psychology.
The reflex activity of the cortex is at the same time also nervous (physiologic) and mental activity (since it is the same activity viewed from different aspects). This reflex activity is studied therefore, first, as nervous activity determined by physiologic laws of neural dynamics (processes of excitation and inhibition, their irradiation, concentration and mutual induction) and, secondly, as mental activity (as perception and observation, memorisation, thinking, etc.). However, here, as in general, the determining subject matter of the science is its highest, i.e., more specific characteristic.
Each science studies the phenomena of reality in relations specific of the given science. For physiology reality is the aggregate of stimuli acting on the brain, on the analysers; for psychology it is the objects of cognition and action, objects with which man interacts as a subject.
__PRINTERS_P_49_COMMENT__ 4---1597 49At first, before the appearance of the organism capable of reacting to stimuli, being, reality exists as processes and things. With the appearance of organisms the phenomena of the material world (things, processes) also form stimuli correlatively with the organisms on which they act. This interaction takes place on an ``ontological'' plane. As long as things appear only as stimuli there is as yet no gnosiological plane; there are as yet neither objects nor subject in the proper sense of the word. When stimuli act on organisms which have receptors (analysers, sense organs) sensations arise in the response activity of the latter.
Stimuli reflected in sensation may act as signals which are not realised as objects. Experimental proof of this is found in experiments which attest that the subject may correctly react to a sensory signal without being aware of the signal to which it responds (E. Thorndike, L. I. Kotlyarevsky and others). Phenomena (things, processes) which are stimuli and act on the organism, its organs (analysers) as such are realised when they act as objects. Realisation of a thing or phenomenon as an object is connected with the transition from sensation, which serves only as a signal to action, to reaction, to sensation and perception as an image of the object (or phenomenon).
Consciousness proper (as distinct from the mental in general) begins with the appearance of the image of the object in the special gnosiological sense of this term.
Stimuli reflected in sensation, in consciousness, act as objects. The concept of object is a gnosiological category; the concept of stimulus is a physiological category. Since all of the scientific consideration of the world cannot be reduced to a physiological consideration of the world, but necessarily includes the gnosiological and psychological aspects, the concept of object cannot be reduced to the concept of stimulus.^^*^^
_-_-_^^*^^ This differentiation of the concepts of stimulus and object associated with the differentiation of the physiological, on the one hand, and the gnosiological and psychological aspects of scientific consideration of the interrelations between the individual and his environment, on the other hand, is a matter of principle. That is why a mere failure to understand the meaning of this differentiation of concepts and aspects would be attested by an attempt, recognising a possibility of substituting a simple stimulus for an object, to substitute a complex stimulus for it. The latter is in the same plane of physiologic relations as a simple stumulus; just as a simple stimulus it cannot replace __NOTE__ Footnote cont. on page 51. 50
The relation to the object is important from both the gnosiological and psychological standpoints. The difference between the gnosiological and psychological points ol view is that gnosiology makes the object of its study this very relation to the object, while psychology deals with the mental process in this relation to the object.
The specific tasks of psychology begin in connection with the transition to the study of man's mental activity performed by the brain. Psychology studying mental activity is one of the sciences about man. It is the science which reveals the laws governing man's mental activity performed by the brain.
Two fundamental propositions determine our approach to human psychology. They are, first, the conception of mental phenomena in general as a product of development of the material world and, secondly, the conception of human psychology in its specific features as a sociallyconditioned product of history.
The problem of the place of psychology in the system of sciences is usually complicated by the attempts to solve it on the basis of opposing the natural sciences to the social sciences, excluding any connections between them. Moreover, in the term ``social sciences" the finer differences between the social sciences proper and the sciences dealing with socially-conditioned phenomena, which include human psychology, are effaced. Psychology is one of the sciences about the nature of man, a socially-conditioned _-_-_ __NOTE__ Footnote cont. from page 50. and eliminate the gnosiological aspect of the problem (which is also connected with its psychological aspect).
Nor can this proposition be altered by the fact that Pavlov's physiology deals not only with stimuli as such, hut also with their signalling role. This latter circumstance is really very important for it reveals the physiological mechanism of perception of the most important ``functional'' properties of the object, which characterise it in its practical relations to the life and activity of the individual. But here, too, we remain in the sphere of physiologic relations and physiological study of perception of the object. But must an explanation of a fact serve to liquidate it? Of course, there are cases when an explanation of something, which was accepted as fact, reveals the illusoriness of the supposed fact. But a physiological explanation of the perception of an object cannot be transformed into a negation of the gnosiological relations which are analysed by physiology. The true scientific meaning of Pavlovian concepts and laws does not, of course, consist in replacement and, consequently, disaffirmation of the gnosiological categories (and the psychological categories associated with them).
__PRINTERS_P_51_COMMENT__ 4* 51 product of history. This conditions the connection of psychology with the sciences about nature (primarily the theory of higher nervous activity) and with the social and historical sciences.Since mental activity is an activity performed by the brain it is subject to all laws of neurodynamics; without these laws mental phenomena cannot be fully explained. Psychological investigation cannot be opposed to the physiologic study of neurodynamics or be isolated from it; explanations of mental phenomena must take into consideration and utilise all the results of physiologic investigation of neurodynamics. At the same time the products of this neurodynamics, the resultant new mental phenomena, condition the new plane of psychologic investigation in which the processes studied by the physiologic theory of higher nervous activity appear in a new specific quality. Taken in this quality they are determined by the relations from which physiology is abstracted.
For example, learning, i.e., memorisation organised in a definite manner, examined on the physiological plane, is organised presentation of stimuli which act on the brain. It is therefore subject to all laws of neurodynamics of the cortical processes. But when we explain the result of learning by the action of these laws we abstract ourselves from a number of relations which are characteristic of learning as a special form of mental activity. When the same process, which on the physiological plane is a response of the brain to the presentation of stimuli organised in a definite manner, is regarded as learning in a psychologic investigation, new dependences inevitably appear---a dependence on man's activity, on the relations into which man enters in the course of this activity, on what he memorises (for example, material taught at school, other people, the teacher, the school collective, etc.). It is in these new dependences that the given process is studied by psychology. Each psychological investigation discloses one of the dependences of this type, whereas physiology abstracts itself from them. To organise man's activity, it is particularly important to know precisely these dependences and laws which govern them. It is the task of psychology to reveal them.
We have mentioned the fact that physiology abstracts itself from the relations which are essential to mental 52 phenomena as such. This means that physiologic phenomena are polysemantic with respect to mental phenomena taken in properties and relations specific of them. Different in their concrete expression mental phenomena are subject to the selfsame physiologic process. Moreover, there is no point correlation between mental and physiologic processes or phenomena; each concrete mental process in its physiologic expression is represented by a rather complex dynamic system or an aggregate of various physiologic processes. In virtue of this it is entirely impossible, without losing the specific differences between one mental process or phenomenon and others, to substitute for some mental phenomenon a ``corresponding'' physiologic phenomenon as its adequate equivalent capable of differentiating the given mental phenomenon from others, differing from it on the psychological plane. A whole scale of various psychologic values always corresponds to the selfsame value of variable physiologic laws figuring in formulas. That is why, while remaining inseparable from physiologic processes, mental phenomena differ from them just the same. Physiologic and psychologic laws cannot be directly brought to coincidence by the use of physiologic terms in psychologic laws. Physiologic terms are not adequate to the relations expressed in psychologic laws.
Governed by physiologic laws of higher nervous activity (laws of dynamics of nervous processes) mental phenomena appear as the effect of the action of physiologic laws just as physiologic, or generally biologic, phenomena, which are subject, for example, to laws of chemistry, are the effect of the action of chemical laws. However, physiologic processes are a new specific form of manifestation of chemical laws, and it is precisely this new, specific form of their manifestation that appears in the laws of physiology. Mental phenomena are similarly a new, specific form of manifestation of the physiologic laws of neurodynamics, and this specificity is expressed in the laws of psychology. In other words, mental phenomena remain specific mental phenomena and at the same time are a form of manifestation of physiologic laws just as physiologic phenomena rem'ain physiologic, but, as a result of biochemical investigation, also appear as a form of manifestation of laws of chemistry. The lower laws are included in the higher spheres, but only as a subordinate factor which does not 53 determine their specificity. Such is in general the correlation between the ``lower'' and ``higher'' spheres of scientific investigation. The more general laws of the lower spheres apply to the higher spheres, but do not exhaust the laws of the latter. The leading laws of each sphere are its specific laws which determine the leading specific properties of the given sphere of phenomena.
As a result of the disclosure of the biochemical nature of physiologic phenomena these phenomena do not disappear as specific phenomena, but the knowledge of them is deepened. Reflexes do not cease to be reflexes however deeply the biochemical laws governing the coupling of cortical connections may be revealed. The same thing must be said about any physiologic phenomena. For example, the progress made by biochemistry of digestion will deepen the knowledge of this process and the latter will appear as a specific effect of chemical reactions, but it will remain a specific form of their manifestation---a process of digestion---just the same, characterising in this specific form the life of living beings and not the reactions of chemical elements. The nature of phenomena is always determined by the specific laws which govern them.
Similarly, as a result of neurodynamic analysis, mental phenomena appear as the effect of the action of neurodynamic laws governing the reflective activity of the brain. But this does not eliminate the specificity of mental phenomena. The knowledge of the laws established by psychological investigation does not lose its significance merely because mental phenomena appear as the effect produced by the action of the laws governing higher nervous activity. The interrelation between psychology and the theory of higher nervous activity fits in the general frame\vork of the interrelation between the ``lower'' and ``higher'' spheres of scientific knowledge.
The relation between psychology and the theory of higher nervous activity is analogous not to that between biology and chemistry, but to that between biology and biochemistry. The theory of higher nervous activity also studies mental activity, but it does so in a special aspect. The laws governing higher nervous activity play an important role in explaining mental activity. However, they do not exhaust its laws and are not its specific laws, i.e., 54 laws determining its leading specific properties. Such are the laws of psychology.
This concept of correlation of the physiologic and psychologic laws, the physiologic and psychologic characteristics of cerebral activity shows the untenability of a number of current formulations.
The first obviously untenable formula is the one in which the mental and the physiologic are regarded as two coordinated aspects of one process. Its erroneousness consists in the fact that it disguises the hierarchy of the primary and the derivative, the basis and the forms of its manifestation which express the essence of the relations between the physiologic and psychologic characteristics and erroneously conceives them as equally correlated, coordinated, parallel. Its error consists in the fact that it shows the various ``aspects'' and does not show the correlation between these ``aspects''.
Untenable also is the proposition which was sometimes opposed to this formula. According to this proposition, the physiologic and psychologic characteristics are serial ``components'' of the characteristic given to mental phenomena by psychology, while physiology limits itself to their specific (physiologic) characteristic. By its theoretical content this proposition expresses the concept of old ``physiologic psychology'', simultaneously mechanistic and idealist. The arrangement of the physiologic and psychologic characteristics in series, or the inclusion of the former in the latter leads to the fact that the physiologic characteristic of phenomena loses its effectiveness since in such serial arrangement of the physiologic and psychologic data mental phenomena do not appear in their specificity as a new, specific form of manifestation of physiologic laws which is expressed in the laws of psychology. The search for the specificity of psychologic laws from this point of departure is therefore expressed in a fundamentally wrong opposition of psychologic laws to physiologic laws. This uneven opposition of these laws and their separation from each other are but another expression of their initial external serial combination.
Very widespread, but fallacious, is also the formula according to which the physiologic laws of neurodynamics apply only to the material basis of mental phenomena, while the psychologic laws apply to mental phenomena 55 which form a ``superstructure'' on this material physiologic basis. This formula is particularly harmful and dangerous because, by characterising the physiologic laws governing higher nervous activity as the ``basis'' of psychology, it appears, by its external expression, close to the true concept of the correlation between the physiologic and psychologic laws. In reality, however, according to its inner meaning and actual trend, it expresses emphatic dualism. It establishes, as it were, in the vertical direction (from the physiologic ``basis'' to mental phenomena which form a ``superstructure'' on it) the same external serialness between them as the preceding formulas establish in the ``horizontal'' direction. According to the meaning of this formula, the laws governing higher nervous activity do not at all apply to mental phenomena, but only to their physiologic ``basis'', to physiologic phenomena. According to this formula, mental phenomena do not at all appear as a form of manifestation of neurodynamic laws. The connection between them is severed. This is a restoration of the old scheme, at the same time mechanistic and idealist. The entire content of Pavlov's theory of higher nervous activity, the entire course of development of science disproves the conception concealed in this formula.
The ways of psychological investigation, as also any scientific investigation in general, are always more or less consciously determined by the theoretical conception which underlies it. This theoretical conception determines the structure of the investigation. What must the structure and ways of psychological investigation be?
The decisive factor here must be the dialectical-- materialist conception of determinism. The direct expression of this conception is the proposition that external causes act through internal conditions.
It is not difficult to show that precisely this proposition determines the ``model'' of investigation which was realised by Pavlov in his theory of higher nervous activity. It is usually---and very correctly---emphasised that Pavlov conceived the activity of the brain as effecting the external relations between the organism and the conditions of its life. But it is no less important to emphasise that Pavlov 56 was able to disclose the laws governing these external relations only because by studying them he discovered the internal laws of neurodynamics of the cortical processes, the laws of their own operation (laws of irradiation and concentration) and their interrelation (law of induction). Without knowledge of these internal laws it would have been possible to state only descriptively that such and such external action caused in the given case such and such reaction (directly correlating them according to the stimulus-response scheme). At best it would have been possible to indicate groups or types of actions, correlating with them also descriptively chosen groups or types of reactions. This, as is well known, is the course pursued by behaviourism. Unlike Pavlov, it follows the mechanistic stimulusresponse scheme. Description of external correlations between the stimulus and response answers the purpose of the pragmatic, generally posilivist methodology from which the behaviourists proceed. This course does not lead to disclosure of the actual laws. In the course of Pavlovian investigations the phenomena being studied (secretion of saliva in response to a stimulus, formation of a conditioned bond) are transformed into indicators of the regularities which underlie them. Refracted through the internal relations, through the internal regularities of cerebral activity, the external correlations between the organism and the conditions of its life appear in Pavlov's theory in their actual regularities. Only this course leads to real scientific knowledge. Only by disclosing the internal laws governing the neurodynamics of the cortical processes did Pavlov create a scientific, theory---the theory of higher nervous activity.
Nor must it be different in psychology. The science of psychology cannot be built in any other way, on the basis of any other ``model''. The fundamental weakness of psychological theory is precisely that psychology has not yet consciously followed the course of such construction of its investigations.
By way of example let us take the study of thinking. In literature, particularly that devoted to the thinking of schoolchildren, we find indications of cases of presence or absence of transfer of a solution from one problem to another, analogous problem. These are facts which the teacher encounters in his day-to-day work with pupils in 57 school, and they are very important facts for judging of their thinking. Presentation of the problem under modified conditions is usually given as the cause of transfer or nontransfer. The result of such investigations may be roughly, schematically and therefore, of course, in an oversimplified manner expressed as a dependence of transfer on modification of conditions. But transfer is, in fact, a metaphorical description of some external occurrence without disclosure of its inner psychological content. Psychologically transfer is generalisation, whereas modification of the conditions under which the pupil is given the problem is a description not of the pupil's, but of the teacher's action. To connect transfer with modification means directly to correlate the external action (the teacher's activity of modifying the conditions of the problem) with the result of the pupils' thinking and omit the latter, i.e., to construct the explanation according to the stimulusresponse scheme without disclosing the inner content of thinking, its inner regularities.
What meaning can modification of conditions have with respect to the pupil's thinking? Only one meaning: modification creates favourable conditions for analysis, for distinguishing the essential conditions from the nonessential conditions, i.e., the conditions of the problem in their proper, exact meaning from the attendant circumstances under which the problem appears in the particular case. Behind the modification-transfer dependence we encounter another dependence---an analysis-generalisation dependence.
Let us take another example with a different run of thoughts. Thinking is treated as a totality of mental actions and the mental actions themselves as a series in the process of development of scientific knowledge of socially-elaborated methods of solving mental problems learned in the process of instruction, etc. (we designate this run of thoughts again as roughly, schematically and in as oversimplified a manner as the former). In this theory of thinking, learning, i.e., acquisition of knowledge and skills (methods of solving problems) in the process of instruction, is pushed into the foreground. It goes without saying that acquisition of knowledge and skills is a matter of capital importance and formation of thinking outside of it is impossible. But what does this learning occurring 58 in the process of instruction actually mean? It is a certain pedagogical fact. Remaining on the plane of studying but this fact, investigation naturally turns upon the description of the stages of learning and the conditions on which its success depends as its main task. The investigation is in danger of remaining essentially in the sphere of pedagogical problems. In order to pass on to the plane of psychological investigation proper, it is necessary to establish what learning means psychologically, i.e., to disclose the internal psychological content, the inner regularities of the pupil's thinking as a result of which learning takes place. Psychologically acquisition of knowledge is thinking ---analysis, synthesis, abstraction and generalisation--- taking place under conditions of instruction.
Elementary thinking operations take place on the plane of practical action (counting with the hands) and later on the mental plane (counting in the head); but this is a mere statement of fact. In a psychological investigation it must be psychologically analysed. Psychologically the transition from ``external action" to ``internal action" is a process of generalisation and abstraction whose movement must be traced.
Thinking directly appears in the form of numerous and various operations. Each of them must be given special study and explanation, taking its specificity into account. In order that all these specific explanations of specific operations may finally lock up in one general theory of thinking, it is necessary that all specific operations should occur, without losing their specificity, as the acts of analysis and synthesis,- as well as the processes of generalisation and abstraction, under different conditions, on different material, and on different levels. They are, as it were, ``common denominators" of multifarious thinking, which make it possible to give thinking a generalised interpretation. Analysis and synthesis and their derivatives--- generalisation and abstraction---are necessary concepts of the general theory of thinking. In studying thinking it is necessary to trace their movement.
To characterise any mental activity in psychology means, in the final analysis, to show it as a derivative of the activity of analysis, synthesis, etc. In their turn, analysis, synthesis and generalisation assume various forms and produce different results, depending on the system of concrete 59 thinking in which they appear. The law-governed correlations between analysis and synthesis and their derivatives---generalisation and abstraction---constitute the basic inner regularities of thinking.
The task of psychological investigation is to reveal these main internal regularities which do not exhaust what is required to explain thinking, but which are absolutely necessary to explain it. Thinking, like any other human activity, must be conceived on the basis of external relations forming in man in the process of instruction, acquisition of the knowledge accumulated by mankind, the correlation with the tasks encountered by man in the course of social life, studies, etc. But without disclosing the internal regularities, the internal correlations through which these external relations are refracted, it is impossible to understand human thinking or these very relations in their regularity.
There are no two ways of constructing a psychological theory: one resting on internal thinking correlations, and another, oriented on the external relations of thinking to the object. There is one---and only one---way of psychological investigation and construction of a true theory of thinking. It consists, through studying the external relations between thinking and the object, and the tasks encountered in these cases, in disclosing the inner laws of thinking and, by refracting the external relations through these inner laws of thinking, in understanding these very relations in their regularity.
On the basis of the internal laws of generalisation alone it is impossible to determine what will be generalised and according to what principles. It depends on the special features of the objects and the external relations which will form between the subject and the object. But without the internal regularities it is impossible to understand how the generalisation will take place and what result it will produce. The external relations appear as regular only when the internal relations, their regularities are disclosed.
Such is in principle also the question concerning psychological theory; it is necessary to express the vital phenomena in psychological concepts, singling out the aspect which constitutes the special subject of psychological in vestigation; it is necessary to express the dependence between them by means of internal psychological 60 regularities and thus to proceed to a psychological understanding of the regularities of initial external relations of man to the objective world and other people, his relation to social experience, the system of knowledge acquired in the process of instruction, etc.
We have outlined the structure of psychological theory. The question is: what forms its content? It is necessary to sketch at least the main features of it.
The central place in the system of psychology must be occupied by the mental as a process, as activity. (This Sechenov proposition remains valid.) By mental, as activity, we imply the mental process or totality of processes which satisfy some vital human requirement and are directed towards a definite goal more or less directly connected with the satisfaction of this requirement. It is therefore a question of the activity of man, subject, personality, and not merely of some organ (even the brain), of human activity performed by the brain. Such activity may be, for example, esthetic perception or thinking since they satisfy the esthetic or cognitive requirements of man and are directed toward this goal. A mental process, which is itself not human activity in this sense, always forms part of some other activity and depends on it. The study of the mental, as a process or activity, is the first task of psychology. It also includes the study of consciousness as a process of realisation of the world.
A properly conceived study of the mental, as a process or activity