Bojóvitch - A luta pela psicologia concreta e o estudo integrado da personalidade.pdf

7/28/2019 Bojvitch - A luta pela psicologia concreta e o estudo integrado da personalidade.pdf

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Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, vol. 47, no. 4,

JulyAugust 2009, pp. 2858. 2009 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved.ISSN 10610405/2009 $9.50 + 0.00.DOI 10.2753/RPO1061-0405470402

L.I. BozhovIch

The Struggle for ConcretePsychology and the IntegratedStudy of Personality

This chapter from L.I. Bozhovichs book Personality and Its Formation

in Childhood (1968) extends Vygotskys analysis of the general crisis inpsychology to personality-oriented pedagogical psychology. The historical

background of attempts to solve the challenge of pedagogical psychology

is analyzed. Two main dilemmas prevent the solution: how to relate (con-

tradictory) empirical results to a holistic model of personality and how this

model relates to the real life of each person.

The emergence and crisis of pedagogical psychology

The history o psychology shows what a long and dicult path child andpedagogical psychology had to travel beore it was able to oer any help

at all in solving the problems that conront pedagogy. Even today this help

is extremely inadequate, especially when it comes to working on the issues

aced by educators.

It is well known that psychology has long been primarily a theoretical

science. Only toward the end o the eighteenth century did it became an em-

pirical and, later, an experimental science. In 1879 Wilhelm Wundt set up an

experimental laboratory and in so doing essentially laid the groundwork or

the development o the new natural science o psychology.


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JULYAUGUST 2009 29

The introduction o experimental method into psychologywhich made

it possible to penetrate the inner structure o mental processes, to nd thecauses behind mental phenomena, and to establish the laws governing these

changesplayed a decisive role in transorming psychology into a true sci-

ence. At the same time, tremendously important or the science o psychology

were the ideas concerning development that had penetrated it, ushering in the

study o child psychology.

Nevertheless, a great deal o time passed beore child psychology was able

to begin serving pedagogical practice.

In the early twentieth century, the city o Paris asked the French psychologistAlred Binet to use his psychological research methods to select pupils or a special

school. This was one o the rst major tasks assigned to psychology in addressing

problems o practical lie. And Binet ullled his commission. O course, we know

today how fawed Binets aptitude tests were and that they served as a means o

discrimination against many children rom segments o society with ew cultural

or nancial resources. However, it is important to note here that, by this time, child

psychology was suciently well-developed and well-recognized by science that

it was asked or practical assistance and had been able to provide it.

At approximately the same timeduring the rst decade o the twentiethcenturypsychology had already made an organizational and structural entry

into pedagogical practice: a special branch o psychology had split o that

was now called pedagogical psychology.

This period saw the appearance o numerous works by West European,

American, and Russian scholars aimed at a particular problem: discovery o

the psychological oundations o the pedagogical process.

In 1906, the First All-Russia Congress o Pedagogical Psychology was

convened.1

It proclaimed that its primary mission was to nd a way to applypsychological knowledge in the classroom.

Speaking to the congress, Academic V.M. Bekhterev lavished praise on

the achievements o contemporary psychology. He elt that since psychology

had begun to rework itsel in the soil o experiment, it had rapidly acquired

theoretical stability that allowed it to apply the conclusions o this science to

various sectors o practical lie, among which pedagogy occupied a place o

particular importance.

However, Wundts experimental psychology was unable to nd the right

path or studying pedagogical phenomena and acts.

At rst pedagogical psychology was not engaged in conducting its own


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30 JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY

Typical along these lines was the book by William James, Talks to Teach-

ers on Psychology. But my main desire, he wrote, has been to make themconceive . . . the mental lie o their pupil . . . and it would have rustrated this

deeper purpose o my book to make it look, when printed, like a Baedekers

handbook o travel or a text-book o arithmetic. He also comments, Now, that

I have at last written out the lectures, they contain a minimum o what is deemed

scientic in psychology, and are practical and popular in the extreme.2

This sort o relationship between psychology and pedagogy was also evi-

dent at the 1906 All-Russia Congress o Pedagogical Psychology, where there

were almost no talks attempting to apply a psychological approach to solvingpractical problems associated with nurturing and teaching children. Most

papers were either on pedagogy (independent o psychology) or on general

and child psychology (independent o pedagogy), but the majority asserted

and argued the need or a connection between both sciences and proclaimed

hope or close collaboration between them. In the near uture, the congress

resolution stated, society will build the rational cultivation and education o

children on the ndings o experimental psychology.

However these hopes were not soon realized. Psychology remained on the

sidelines when it came to solving actual problems o pedagogy. It continuedto promote psychological knowledge and oer pedagogy ndings and laws

that, while solidly established through experimentation, were deprived o

concrete applicability. Such a situation could not satisy either psychologists

or pedagogues, and their dissatisaction soon made itsel known.

By the Second All-Russia Congress o Pedagogical Psychology, which was

convened just three years ater the rst (in 1909), some papers expressed disap-

pointment and doubt as to whether experimental psychology was capable o

helping solve real-lie problems posed by pedagogical theory and practice.3

One eatured presentation o the congress, a paper by proessor N.D.

Vinogradov, expressed dissatisaction with psychology particularly starkly.

Vinogradov said that i the results that psychology had given pedagogy in the

past years o intensive experimental work were to be summed up, it would

not amount to much:

[M]any o us, having heard our ll o papers rom the area o psychology

and experimental pedagogy, will leave here with a rather gloomy sense

that in our everyday practical work we will have to be guided by the sametraditional pedagogy that we practiced in the past.4


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JULYAUGUST 2009 31

o study; it was not supposed to pose and solve general questions o experi-

mental psychology. Its task was to address problems suggested by pedagogy.The words o G. Miunstenberg, who elt that pedagogical psychology should

not live o crumbs rom the table o experimental psychology, but instead

bake its own bread became a catchphrase at the congress.

The second reason that congress attendees attributed to the impotence o

pedagogical psychology was the inadequacy o its method. Many o them

spoke about the act that complex mental processes that arise in the course o

upbringing and learning cannot be studied the same way that isolated mental

unctions can. They have to be studied through combined activity.So even at that time a more or less correct course was being plotted in inves-

tigating what was preventing psychology rom providing real assistance to peda-

gogical theory and practice. O course the causes were not yet ully understood

(even today they are not always understood correctly), but the notion that the

study o isolated mental processes and unctions cannot help solve pedagogical

problems was very important. True, participants in the second congress were

not aware that pedagogical psychology cannot bake its own bread, or rather

nd its own object and method o study, until the general psychological theories

on which it was based underwent substantial changes.In other words, at that time it was still poorly understood that the ailures

o pedagogical psychology that were so clearly evident during the second con-

gress were merely a refection o the general crisis in psychology. This crisis

began in the early twentieth century and has still not been ully resolved.

The main problem with Wundts experimental psychology and all the other

psychological research that continued to bear its stamp was that in breaking

down the complex mental lie o man into its simplest elements so that it could

be experimentally investigated, psychology lost its most important object ostudythe actual living human personality.

Psychology as it has developed up to this point, wrote L.S. Vygotsky in

the 1930s, took a metaphysical approach to the internal world o man. . . . It

tore mental processes away rom real personality as a whole and investigated

them in this isolated orm. This is why it was doomed, willy nilly, to the study

o empty abstractions.5

Furthermore, it is important to note that psychologys ailure could be

traced back to principle. Psychology claimed, or example, that the content o

the mind (the content o interests, goals, intentions, human experience, etc.)

should not be the subject o psychological research: it relinquished its rights


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into their component elements and experimentally investigate regularities

in the connections between these elements. Gradually, however, this sort oempty abstraction ceased to satisy psychologists and pedagogues. Having

discovered their complete inability to understand and explain complex orms

o human mental lie, traditional psychology reached an impasse. This was

most evident when it came to pedagogical psychology. This is why the great

hope placed on pedagogical psychology during the rst congress vanished by

the second, even though only a ew years separated the two.

Ater all, in order to correctly organize learning, it is not enough to know

the particular eatures o a childs attention, memory, or thinking. Pedagogyneeds inormation about the psychological structure o schoolchildrens learning

activity and what laws govern the process by which they assimilate knowledge

(all the more so as dierent laws govern the acquisition o dierent sorts o

content). And in order to organize education correctly, we must know the age-

specic eatures o childrens personality: we must know what they aspire to,

what kinds o emotions they are experiencing and how they experience them,

the eatures o their moral sphere and the laws governing its development. In

other words, pedagogy needs the sort o knowledge that cannot be obtained using

the study o individual mental processes and unctions, however painstakingthis study might be. The assimilation o knowledge and the process o orming

convictions have their own laws that are intrinsic to them as integrated processes,

and discovering these laws demands a particular approach, a particular method.

Furthermore, even when it is necessary to know how pupils attention, thinking,

or memory operates when they perorm a specic learning task, this cannot be

achieved with knowledge o the general laws governing these processes. hey

must be studied within the context o the learning activity being perormed, the

content and nature o which determine the specic eatures o these processesand the laws governing their perormance.

Traditional psychology had particularly little to oer in solving the prob-

lems o education. Thereore, the need to undamentally revise psychological

theory and the methodology o psychological research can be seen specically

in these problems.

The only way psychology can contribute to the solution o these problems

is i it adopts child personality as the object o its study. However, psychol-

ogy that ollows in the ootsteps o traditional Wundtian psychology in

understanding its object and designing its methods is not well equipped tostudy personality.


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tied into the overall structure o childrens personality and not dependent on

their directedness, on the lie experience that is determined by the speciccircumstances o their lives.

So, in order or pedagogical psychology to become not only an indepen-

dent science but also a science capable o solving vitally important practical

problems, it had to undamentally change its overall theoretical position.

It had to change rom a science ocused on the isolated study o separate

mental processes and unctions to a science ocused on childrens specic

mental activity during actual pedagogical processes and on the particular

eatures o the integrated personality o the child, who is, as A.S. Makarenkoput it, is not only the object but also the subject o education.

The approach to studying personality in general and

individual psychology

The struggle or verisimilitude and concreteness in the science o psychology,

and, consequently, the striving to nd new ways to study the psychology o

human personality, began around the dawn o the twentieth century; but it

really got under way in the 1920s and 1930s, when new psychological viewsand conceptions began to take shape.

During this period, all the great psychologists o the day (K.N. Kornilov,

L.S. Vygotsky, P.P. Blonskii here, and K. Bhler, E. Thorndike, E. Spranger,

S. Freud, K. Lewin, and many others abroad) spoke out with criticisms o

empirical psychology and attempted to come up with a new understanding

o both the object and method o psychological research. A great variety o

psychological schools emergedrefexology, reactology, cultural-historical

theory, behaviorism, gestalt theory, psychology o the spirit, Freudianism, andothers. All o them were aimed at nding new content or and new methods

o psychological investigation.

But not all o these works are o interest here. We will examine only those

that attempt to nd new approaches to the psychology o personality and the

problems o educational psychology. Analysis o psychological investigations

into personality, which will be the ocus o our discussion, is also not intended to

give an exhaustive description or even an exhaustive overview o this research.

Our intention is to look into the recent past in order to assess what has already

been achieved in this regard by our predecessors and to better understand the

eorts that even now must be made in order to break out o the connes o tradi-


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I we take even a cursory look at the history o research into the psychol-

ogy o personality, it becomes clear that, unlike other problems, which haveattracted more or less constant interest throughout the history o our science,

attention to the problems o personality has had its peaks and valleys. This

is partly related to the demands o society and partly to the logic governing

how the science o psychology has developed.

The interest in the psychological study o personality that arose during the

rst quarter o this century was rst and oremost a reaction to traditional experi-

mental psychology, which had become bankrupt in the eyes o practitioners.

The central problem o any psychology, wrote E. Stern in the 1920s,must be the problem o human personality. The psychology o elements has

proved itsel useless when it comes to human personality; this is why it has

thrust this problem, or the most part, into the background, believing that sci-

ence has not yet matured to the point where it would be able to solve it.

However, The reason or this, Stern stipulates, lies not in the immaturity

o science, but in its main mindset: it is never possible to build an integrated

personality out o simple component parts that are alien to meaning (Sinn-

fremden); we should instead begin with the whole, with the structure.6

Similar sentiments were expressed by O. Tumlirtz during this period.Experimental research, he writes, at least to the extent it has adhered to

Wundts ideal, is insucient since it has limited itsel to ormal examination and

urthermore to the study o mere ormal elements. True, he notes, experimen-

tal psychology has become . . . immeasurably more productive than it was not

long ago; nevertheless, it is natural that, having become weary o researching

elements, the results o which were disappointing, psychology began to strive

toward expanding its perspective and methodological boundaries.7

What Tumlirtz had in mind here was the emergence during this periodo many new psychological theories that attempted to incorporate into psy-

chological research the content-specic nature o processes and the study o

the psychology o human personality: eidetics, personalism, characterology,

gestalt psychology, as well as Freudianism, which had a tremendous infuence

on Tumlirtz himsel.

In Soviet psychology o this period, Vygotsky came out with the assertion

that personality is the main object o psychological science. He wrote that

or child psychology:

[T]he greatest problem in all o psychologythe problem o personality

d it d l t till i l d Child h l i th


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JULYAUGUST 2009 35

ing the problem o personality within the connes o those methodological

boundaries where child psychology arose and took shape. Only by steppingdecisively outside the methodological limits o traditional child psychology

will we be able to study the development o the higher mental synthesis

that can rightully be called the personality o the child.8

Along these same lines, there was a great deal o interest at the beginning

o this century in questions o individual psychology. Those working in this

direction elt that the study o human idiosyncrasies had the potential to be

the method able to overcome traditional psychologys lack o real-lie ap-

plicability and abstractness.G. Allport saw this clearly in his own approach. He believed that Wundtian

psychology was too ocused on explaining the uniormity o common psy-

chological phenomena. In so doing, it pushed to the side individual mental

eatures, viewing them as random bothers that interered with the study o

what was most importantthe generalized human mind.

And so, Allport continues, within psychological science there gradu-

ally arose a new movement, the goal o which was to add to this abstract

portrait another, more lie-like one. Through various means and rom many

perspectives it tries to draw and explain the individual nature o the mind.

This new movement soon became well-known (in America) as the psychol-

ogy o personality.9

Contemporaries have assigned tremendous signicance to all these attempts

to overcome the crisis o traditional psychology through study o personality,

its distinctive eatures and experiences.

Psychology, wrote the Freudian psychologist S. Berneld in 1926, is now

in a state o rapid transormation; it is breaking ree o the etters placed on it by

Wundt. It is no longer satised with the narrow eld o peripheral phenomenathat constitutes the sphere o experimental psychology, and it is beginning to

grab hold o genuine mental phenomena as the object o its research.10

However over time it would become clear that the psychological research

into personality and its theoretical basis that emerged during this period were

not able to save psychology rom the crisis that had beallen it. Furthermore,

some o these views even slowed scientic progress in studying personality

or quite a long time.

The inability to overcome the traditional atomistic way o studying person-ality was rst and most clearly seen in the area o individual psychology.

During the rst quarter o the twentieth century this direction (the various


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However, here as well, the approach to studying individual eatures re-

mains traditional.In some cases (this is typical o dierential psychology), researchers selected

some individual personality property that could somehow be isolated rom

the others (e.g., outgoingness or the lack thereo, aptitude, a tendency toward

perseveration, etc.), and research was done into the particular eatures o this

property among dierent people. Sometimes this was combined with study o

the interrelationship between eatures o this property and certain other proper-

ties and unctions that were studied with the same degree o isolation.

In assessing dierential psychology rom the perspective o its role inovercoming the old Wundtian psychology, Allport rightly notes its shortcom-

ings. The interest in individual psychology, he indicates, just as in traditional

psychology, was ocused on isolated unctions, and not on the people who

possess these unctions.

This, he states, is a bottom up approach using categories o mental

elements rather than a top down approach using categories based on how

they are organized and structured.11

But we nd the same thing in other cases, where the object o study is the

individual personality with all its individual eatures. Ater all, it is not justa matter owhatto study, but ohow to study it, rom what position study is

approached.

In other words, however careully we might study all the separate properties

o personality, i we study them in isolation, as independent phenomena, we

will never be able to understand personality that combines them, that connects

these separate isolated properties. Neither dierent ways o interrelating them

nor dierent ways o combining them will help.

It is impossible to understand the psychology o personality rom aggregateso separate elements because no given property, unction, or aspect o personality

can ever be equated with itsel. The orgetulness or, or example, absentmind-

edness o one person is not the same as the orgetulness and absentmindedness

o another, since the etiology o these eatures, their maniestation and their

role in the mental lie o a subject can be absolutely dierent in one case as

compared with the other. Studying a particular property as something isolated

and independent, we are studying only the surace aspect o the phenomenon,

leaving its true psychological nature unstudied. This is why when we have

studied all the eatures o personality as such, we are still unable to assemblea living person out o them. G. Allport provides an eloquent illustration criti-


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that he displayed the highest level o auditory imagery, that he was plagued by

insomnia, loved music, loved hunting, and so on. Nevertheless, according toAllport, Toulouse, in assessing his own eorts, admitted that in the synthesis

o the qualities he identied the genius Poincar is demonstratively absent.

In this connection it can be said that however strange this may seem at rst

glance, in dierential psychology (all its varieties), the characterization o a

living, specic psychology is also absent, as it is in general psychology.

Personality is constituted here out o the aggregate o dierent properties,

while a true personality approach requires quite the opposite: examination o

each separate property in terms o personality as a whole.The need or this approach was expressed well by V. Keller, who said

that a given heart has more in common with a pair o lungs than with other

hearts. So, both in terms o its theoretical and its undamental methodologi-

cal approach, individual psychology was not able to escape the connes o

traditional psychology and bring the study o personality any closer to solving

specic real-lie problems.

So much space has been devoted to this question because even today we

see conusion between the psychological study o personality and the study

o individual human traits. Furthermore, many psychologists eel that thestudy o individual traits in and o itsel makes psychological research more

concrete, more substantive, and brings it closer to lie and to practice.

But at the same time, even in 1957, S.L. Rubinshtein correctly stated that

individual personality properties are not the same thing aspersonality prop-

erties of the individual, in other words, the properties that characterize his

personality.12 And in 1959, in a small popular book or parents that was well

written on a good scientic level, V.S. Merlin oers a convincing argument

against conusing personality and individual traits. In particular, he points tothe act that distinctive eatures o the mind are intrinsic not only to humans

but also to animals, who have dierent temperaments, dierent degrees o

intelligence, and so on.

Animals, Merlin writes, possess individuality, but not personality. Only

a human can be a personality. Individual eatures o the animal mind are a

result o animals adaptation to their environment. The environment leaves its

individual mark on the mind o each animal. But to the contrary, we understand

personality to be that which on its own leaves its impression on surrounding

reality as a result o the creative productive activity o a person.13

However, these are just individual assertions, individual points o view that


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and thereby sought to nd ways and means to study personality (true, by the

second edition o his book he was no longer pursuing this work).14

It deserves mention that in his time Lazurskii undoubtedly played a pro-

gressive role in this regard. He, like many other psychologists o the time,

strove to bring scientic psychology closer to real lie, to bring it down to

earth rom its metaphysical heights and treat psychology as the science o

human personality.15

The method o natural experimentation that Lazurskii designed was also

progressive or that time. He permitted ordinary experiments investigating

individual mental processes to be incorporated into actual pedagogical situ-ations and in so doing reed them o the articiality that they acquire in the

laboratory. Another undoubted achievement was Lazurskiis little star, which

vividly expressed the distinctive combination o the processes and unctions

(or inclinations as Lazurskii put it) considered most important rom the

perspective o empirical psychology. It could be said, thereore, that Lazur-

skiis characterology, while it did not overcome the traditional separation o

personality into individual unctions and did not aim to do so, it nevertheless

made it possible, within the ramework o empirical psychology, to provide a

description o individual traits o specic people and nd typical correlationsor dierent human characters.

But while we recognize the progressiveness o Lazurskiis work or early

twentieth-century psychologyhis natural experiments, including his little

starwe nevertheless eel that bringing his methods into the modern study

o personality does nothing to advance this research.

Psychology as science of the spirit* and its approach to

studying personality

Early in the century, the struggle or a concrete psychology and a psychol-

ogy o personality was also taking place in other arenas. In particular, E.

Spranger, E. Stern, and many other (primarily German) psychologists came

out with criticisms o the natural sciences approach and experimental method

o Wundtian psychology. They proclaimed study o the spiritual structure

o the integrated human personality to be the main object o psychological

investigation, but they were unable to nd either the correct methodology or

technical approach to achieve this. Having challenged traditional empirical

psychology and renounced its natural scientic approach to studying mental


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phenomena, they disengaged the spiritual rom the material and took a prin-

cipled stance against the possibility o scientic and especially experimentalstudy o the psychology o human personality.

Stern expressed this point o view clearly and concisely.

It seems to me that psychology that has an exclusively natural sciences

orientation is incapable o doing justice to the distinctiveness ospiritual

lie; the spiritual is somehow substantially distinct rom purely natural

existence and demands special examination. The natural sciences con-

stitute only one group o sciences, rom which sciences o the spirit are

unquestionably independent. They address dierent problems and involve

dierent methods. . . .

It is true both that human beings are tied to nature, being subject to its

laws, and that studying them rom this perspective using natural scientic

method is completely justied and essential. . . . However, the distinctive

eature o human beings is specically that this biological existence is not

all o their being, that they are in every way able to rise above nature, that

they are involved in another sphere, which we call the kingdom of the spirit.

On the oundation o what we dene as the natural principle, a special realm

rises up, the content o which can in no way be described as mere existence

in the natural sciences sense o this word.16

This is how the need or two psychologies emerged: one that approaches

the study o the mind rom a natural scientic perspective, and another, a new

psychology, psychology as the science o the spirit, o the spiritual structure

o human personality that has its own object and method o study.

In this way, Sternhaving been unable to identiy the essence o the human

minds social development and thereby nd a way out o the impasse by scien-tically restructuring Wundtian psychologyperormed an act o vivisection

on both psychologyseparating it into two dierent sciences (the psychology

o the body and the psychology o the spirit)and human beings themselves,

separating the natural, biological principle rom the social and spiritual one.

Spranger developed very similar views regarding the impossibility o

understanding purely mental, spiritual phenomena by studying them using

natural scientic experimentation.

However, having broken out o the connes o natural scientic psychology,

he, like Stern, ell into another captivity, no less restrictive: the metaphysics o

W Dilthey As Vygotsky put it he like Stern was in a hurry to render unto


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In summarizing these attempts to overcome the atomism o the old psychol-

ogy and turn to integrated experiences, incorporate a content-specic aspecto mental phenomena into psychological research, and, most important, to

place spiritual lie at the center o the psychological study o personality,

it is air to say that they were unsuccessul.

In examining these attempts, which were particularly numerous during the

early twentieth century, certain Soviet psychologists and philosophers were

even inclined to assess them as reversing the achievements o psychology

during the previous stage. In particular, N.S. Mansurov in a critical essay

titled On Contemporary Psychological Science Abroad [O sovremennoipsikhologicheskoi nauke za rubezhom] presents things as ollows: he believed

that at the dawn o the twentieth century, psychology, under the pressures

created by the demands o production, had made a decisive leap orward

in its development.17 The most important thing rom his perspective, was

that branches o psychological research had started to develop on the basis

o Wundts physiological experimental psychology. The development o

applied branches o psychology were extremely important, in Mansurovs

opinion, since the ndings they generated reinorced materialism and promoted

triumph over idealistic thinking. He writes:

Idealist psychologists could not make peace with the situation taking shape.

Thereore, both as a reaction to physiological psychology on the one

hand and applied directions on the other, a number o idealistic schools

emerged within psychology at the end o the past centurythe Wrzburg

School, gestalt psychology, psychology as science o the soul and the

spirit, Freudianism, personalistic psychology, and so on. Adherents o

these schools actively spoke out against materialist ideas that have gained

acceptance among psychologists, in particular they object to the union opsychology and physiology and the natural sciences overall, to materialist

ideas concerning associations, and so on.18

For Mansurov, the act that psychology o this period had again returned to

the tight embrace o philosophical idealism served as evidence that these direc-

tions had taken a step backward in developing the psychology o thought.

However such an assessment o the psychological seekings character-

istic o the early part o the century seem to us to be unair in many ways,

not to mention the act that they are raught with inaccuracy and sweeping

accusations 19


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JULYAUGUST 2009 41

o practice. This is an issue we addressed in detail above, when we examined

the uselessness o pedagogical psychology and disappointment in it ater thesecond congress o pedagogical psychology.

Thus, attempts to nd a new object and means o investigation were not

a reaction to the practical successes o psychology, as Mansurov thinks, but,

quite the contrary, a reaction to its shortcomings.20

Specically in trying to overcome the ineectualness o the old psychol-

ogy, to bring it closer to lie, to the possibility o understanding ordinary

human suering and actions, psychology o this period constructed its own

theories. It strove, as Dilthey, who laid the philosophical oundation o psy-chology as the science o spirit, put it to go beyond the bounds o school

psychology and encompass the entire mighty reality o lie, and in so

doing achieve an understanding o the complex maniestations o the human

spirit. For this reason, in terms o its intentions, strivings, and demands to

advance toward studying the psychology o personality and the integrated

processes intrinsic to it, the strivings we reer to here might perhaps deserve

to be described as progressive rather than reactionary phenomena within the

history o psychology.

Indeed, Spranger does sound progressive within the context o how thescience o psychology developed when he says that within the whole o

mental experience each part and each separate unction carries out work

that is essential or this whole and that the structure and activity o every

unction, in turn, are conditioned by the whole and, consequently, can be

understood only in terms o this whole. Furthermore, whether or not these

ideas are progressive must be judged not rom todays perspective, but rom

the perspective o that time, when psychology was striving to view any, even

the most complex psychological phenomenon, as a mechanical aggregate oeelings, the diversity o which could be reduced to an insignicant number

o simple associations.

Consequently, Stern and Sprangers undoubted contribution is their asser-

tion that higher orms o mental lie cannot be reduced to more elementary

mental processes and that they identied specically human orms o mind

as the special object o psychological research. Furthermore (and this should

be emphasized), they were by no means supporters o subjective psychology.

On the contrary, one o Sprangers central theses was that however accurately

we might refect our subjective being in intro- and retrospection, we can-not explain the subjective world o human beings through such refection.


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determine subjective lie without penetrating subjective experience. Spranger

did not include physiologythe study o which, according to his own asser-tions, cannot explain complex mental phenomenaamong such extramental

connections; what he had in mind here was the dening infuence o ideol-

ogy and culture, ethics and philosophy, on a persons mind. According to his

views, mental development is a single minds growing in to the objective

and normative sprit o a particular epoch.

Bearing these points in mind, we are unable to agree with Mansurov re-

garding the reactionary role supposedly played by psychological theories that

emerged around the turn o the century in the development o the science opsychology. On the contrary, rom our perspective, they made certain contri-

butions to this development as pointed criticisms o Wundtian psychology, as

well as through a number o positive assertions, the most important o which

concerned the specic uniqueness o human psychology and the impossibil-

ity o reducing it to more elementary orms o mental lie, to say nothing o

physiological processes. Also important was their attempt to establish a link

between human psychology and the spiritual culture o their epoch.

O course those psychological teachings that recognize the substantiality o

the mind are prooundly idealist. But they stood or objective idealism and op-posed mechanistic materialism, and in this regard they were, in a sense, closer

to the truth than psychologists o the physiological school. By then, they had

already succeeded in seeing a psychological reality that could not be reduced

to the physiological and must be understood not so much in relationship to the

brain as in relationship to the historically emerging social environment and in

proclaiming this reality to be the central object o psychological research.

However, in recognizing a certain historical contribution to the develop-

ment o the science o psychology by early twentieth-century teachings onpersonality, we nevertheless must agree with Mansurov that in some ways

they were taking a step back rom the scientic research that distinguished

Wundtian associative psychology. And this step was by no means insignicant,

since it concerns the understanding o the main methods o psychological

science. Ater all, associative psychology was also experimental psychology;

this is actually why it became associativeit was attempting to approach the

study o complex phenomena o mental lie strictly scientically, observing,

thereore, the experimental method o the natural sciences. In advancing the

idea that complex processes cannot be reduced to elements and demandingthat the human mind must be studied as a whole, Spranger and Stern jetti-


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JULYAUGUST 2009 43

In summing up our description o the attempts by certain prominent early

twentieth-century psychologists to bring the study o mans spiritual worldto the oreront o psychology, we conclude that they did not achieve their

objective. They correctly pointed to the impossibility o reducing the human

mind to elementary processes or even to physiology; they correctly demanded

that personality be studied as a whole, and that every part o the whole can

be understood only in association with the unction that it perorms within

that whole. But they did not nd the correct methodology or understanding

the specicity o human psychology or the correct scientic path toward its

study.A very interesting attempt to surmount the problem o two psychologies

that emerged over the course o psychologys development as a science that

has yet to be adequately appraised was undertaken rom a Marxist perspec-

tive by Vygotsky. He set out to apply experimental research to closing the

gap between elementary and higher mental processes that was opened up

by empirical psychology. Empirical psychology, Vygotsky asserted, either

reused altogether to distinguish between lower and higher mental processes

and unctions, or mechanically divided the rst rom the second, creating a

separate psychology and research or each o these two layers.The dilemma that empirical psychology saw as atal and unavoidable,

Vygotsky wrote, consists in choosing between physiology o the spirit or

metaphysics. Psychology as a science is impossiblesuch is the historical

conclusion o empirical psychology.21

In conronting the crisis that had arisen in empirical psychology, Vygotsky,

unlike other psychologists, did not reject the spiritual world o personality

as completely unknowable or inaccessible to the tools o scientic psychol-

ogy. He also did not reject experimental method in psychology as beingsupposedly incapable o discovering the psychology o human personality.

He undertook the restructuring o the very science o psychologyits theory

and its methodso that it would be able to trace the path along which

child personality develops. Vygotskys entire scientic career consisted in

his using the most precise psychological experiments based on a specially

developed double stimulation method to demonstrate the law governing

the transition rom natural mental processes, which are also characteristic

o animals, to complex orms o mediated human mental activities. He thus

undamentally solved or psychology the same problem that Charles Darwinsolved or biology: he bridged the gap between the mind o the animal and


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have time to get to the bottom o the psychology o personality and did not

construct a nished theory o its ormation, his research into higher mentalunctions dealt a devastating blow to idealist theories o personality and at the

same time made it possible to overcome the atomistic approach o Wundtian

psychology. In so doing, he laid the theoretical groundwork or research into

the psychology o personality.

Freuds approach to the psychology of personality

An important attempt to study the psychology o personality around the turno the century was made by Sigmund Freud and his ollowers. Although

Freudianism was remarkably consistent in ignoring everything that had been

established by psychology beore him or without him and was completely

ocused on Freuds own theories and ndings, it nevertheless played and even

now plays an exceptional role in the construction o personality theory and

in how this theory is designed.

At the same time, criticism o psychoanalysis continues, primarily rom

the standpoint o those negative (philosophical and social) consequences o

Freuds theories, rather than rom the perspective o the scientic inadequacyo the psychoanalytic conception o personality on which these theories are

based. Perhaps this is why our psychology does not make use o Freudian-

isms experience studying personality, both positive and negative, or take ull

advantage o the essential lessons it oers.

However, psychoanalysis is perhaps the most important attempt to under-

stand and explain the psychology o an actual person. Thereore, regardless

o the act that this explanation relates in essence (whatever the Freudians

themselves might say) only to pathological orms o human experience andbehavior, psychoanalysis cannot ail to have a tremendous infuence on many

areas o science, art, and practical lie, including, o course, education.

O all the psychological research into personality that we have discussed

so ar, Freudianism is distinguished by having a method that is appropriate to

its theory. This method permitted it to delve deeply into the complex web o

human experience, extract a system o psychological ndings, and somehow

even test the accuracy o the theories being advanced in practice. Freudians

themselves were proud o the act that they had a genuine research method, as

it seemed to them, and they constantly pointed to this advantage. When Alred

Adler broke with Freud over a number o essential questions and attempted


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JULYAUGUST 2009 45

was harshly persecuted by ocial science and public opinion, Freud viewed

any disagreement among his ollowers as betrayal o scientically establishedacts and a sign o weakness and treachery.

This was also Freuds position when he was reproached or exaggerating

the role o sexual attraction and or his appalling portrayal o the wellsprings

o human behavior. He wrote:

Now it is inherent in human nature to have an inclination to consider a thing

untrue i one does not like it. . . . Thus society makes what is disagreeable

into what is untrue. It disputes the truths o psychoanalysis with logical and

actual arguments; but these arise rom emotional sources and it maintainsthese objections as prejudices against every attempt to counter them. We,

however, Ladies and Gentlemen, can claim that in asserting this controver-

sial thesis we have had no tendentious aim in view. We have merely wished

to give expression to a matter o act which we believe we have established

by our painstaking labors.22

In one o his lectures on the question o why he reassesses the etiological

role o sexual attraction in neurotic diseases and does not consider the role

o other eelings, Freud replied:I do not know why other, nonsexual mental disturbances should not lead to

the same results, and I would have nothing against this; but experience shows

that they have no such signicance. . . . This position was not established

by me theoretically. . . . I was compelled to adopt this point o view when

my experience became richer and I penetrated the subject more deeply.23

Not only Freud himsel, but his disciples were deeply convinced o the

scientic genuineness o the psychoanalytic method and in the ull validity

and objectivity o its conclusions.Such was the attitude toward psychoanalytic method and the purity o

psychoanalysis as a scientic system among the Freudians themselves. And

in a certain sense they were right: whatever problems there might have been

with it, psychoanalysis studied integral mental experience rather than separate

elements devoid o real-lie meaning, and, using active intervention, doctors

practicing psychoanalysis oten helped people rid themselves o dicult

experiences and obsessive behavior. This gave Freudians a basis or believ-

ing that the ideas they were advancing (on the basis o which they built theirtherapeutic practice) were scientically grounded and valid and to dismiss all

th h l i l th i lit th t b d h th t


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Proud as Freudians were o their method, it is this method that in a certain

sense led Freudianism astray. Psychoanalysis turned out to be a deceptive re-search technique: it delivered into Freuds hands many valid acts regarding the

source o neurotic diseases and helped cure these diseases; he demonstrated that

even in a healthy mind, deep psychoanalytical probing can nd oci o disease

that explain the pathology o daily lie. Psychoanalysis thus created an illu-

sion that it had nally ound an objective method or exposing the essence o

human experiences and behavior, their roots, deeply hidden rom immediate

observation. The huge demand placed on this new psychology to create, on

the one hand, a psychological conception o personality and, on the other, ascientic research method appropriate to its tasks, led Freud and his ollow-

ers to stretch their conclusions beyond what the science could support. As a

result, it was not that alse psychological ideas about personality led Freud to

his distorted view o man, but rather that his ideas on personality were built on

a oundation o mistaken interpretations o ndings derived using psychoana-

lytic methods. Having arisen as a way to treat and explain neurotic symptoms,

psychoanalysis eventually began to be viewed by Freud and his ollowers as a

method or exposing the inner world and behavior o healthy people, and later

as an all-encompassing principle explaining the course o humanitys social andcultural development. Psychoanalysis was thus transormed rom a concrete

psychotherapeutic method into a biologically based mechanistic theory o hu-

man personality and then into a metaphysical philosophical system.

Once it became an ever-present theoretical conception, psychoanalysis

began to provide slanted interpretations o every possible phenomenon o

reality, to squeeze acts into the Procrustean bed o its theories and, in so

doing, it was gradually transormed rom a science into an antiscientic,

speculative system, and its interpretation cast the human mental world inmonstrously distorted orm.

And this is understandable: due to its origins and nature, when psycho-

analytic method was used to delve into the mental world o even healthy

people, it inevitably ound only what constitutes the source o pathological

phenomena, specically, the inappropriate needs and desires that people

themselves suppress.

Such a method led Freud to the sorts o errors that were characteristic o

him. Always dealing with needs and strivings taken rom the depth o the

human subconscious and rejected by people themselves (needs and strivingsthat, evidently, really do play a signicant role in mental and nervous disease),


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JULYAUGUST 2009 47

unappealing human essence or all those inantile emotions disguised through

mimicry that psychoanalysis is sooner or later bound to expose.Having constructed such a theory o human personality, Freud ound him-

sel in its clutches. He oten encountered ndings that obviously did not t

into his system o psychoanalytic interpretations. But this could not change

Freuds overall perspective. Such ndings were pointed to by his disciples

who subsequently let psychoanalysis (they had used them in an attempt to

dispute Freuds theory). It must be acknowledged that Freud himsel never

challenged ndings that contradicted his understanding: he was too honest and

great a scholar or that. But he perormed a rather elaborate mental balancingact in order to reconcile these ndings with his theory.

Among such ndings should be included the act that the unconscious

comprises not only those eelings and impulses that humans reject but also

very elevated and socially and morally valuable thoughts and experiences.

About this, Freud says:

Accustomed as we are to taking our social or ethical standard o values

along with us wherever we go, we eel no surprise at hearing that the scene

o the activities o the lower passions is in the unconscious; we expect,moreover, that the higher any mental unction ranks in our scale o values

the more easily it will nd access to consciousness assured to it. Here,

however,psychoanalytic experience disappoints us [emphasis added]. On

the one hand, we have evidence that even subtle and intricate intellectual

operations which ordinarily require strenuous concentration can equally be

carried out preconsciously and without coming into consciousness. Instances

o this are quite incontestable; they may occur, or instance, during sleep,

as is shown when someone nds, immediately ater waking, that he knows

the solution o a dicult mathematical or other problem with which he hadbeen wrestling in vain the day beore.

There is another phenomenon, however, which is ar stranger. In our

analyses we discover that there are people in whom the aculties o sel-

criticism and consciencemental activities, that is, that rank as exception-

ally high onesare unconscious and unconsciouslyproduce effects of the

greatest importance [emphasis original]. . . . But this new discovery, which

compels us, in spite o our critical aculties, to speak oan unconscious

sense of guilt, bewilders us far more than the other and sets us fresh

problems. . . . I we come back once more to our scale o values, we shallhave to say that not only what is lowest but also what is highest in the ego


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this? In his later works, Freud divided the ego into two parts: the ego and the

superego. Furthermore, he made the rst part completely conscious, capableo reason, guided by the principle o reality, while the second part is used,

by means o a complex and very doubtul series o assumptions, with the un-

conscious id. The superego, in Freuds opinion and in terms o its content and

unction, is the very best, that which is highest within human beingstheir

ideal, their conscience. However it owes its origins to the Oedipus complex

and, thereore, remains unconscious.

To somewhat simpliy it, but by no means distort its essence, we would

summarize the course o Freuds reasoning as ollows. I erotic attractioncannot be satised through possession o its object, it can somehow imbibe

this object into itsel, identiying with it and thus achieving satisaction. The

emergence o the superego is attributable, in Freuds opinion, specically to

this mechanism: it is ormed as the result o childrens identication with the

parent toward whom a libidinous desire is elt. The person with whom children

identiy thus becomes or them the highest moral authority, an example to be

imitated that constitutes the essence o their ideal ego. It was on the basis o

this analysis that Freud gave those critics who asserted that within man there

must be a higher principle the response cited below. This higher principle,rom his point o view, is the superego (or the ideal ego), which expresses

childrens special relationship to their parents.

When we were little children, he wrote, we knew these higher natures,

we admired them and eared them; and later we took them into ourselves. The

ego-ideal, Freud continues, thereore, is the heir o the Oedipus complex

and thus it is also the expression o the most powerul impulses and most

important vicissitudes experienced by the libido in the id. By setting up this

ego-ideal the ego masters its Oedipus complex and at the same time placesitsel in subjection to the id.26

Consequently, while the ego remains a representative o the external

world, the superego becomes the property o the unconscious. It is also its

internal and very despotic censor. Furthermore, the superego is not content,

according to Freuds thinking, with power over only the unconscious id. It is

no less severe and strict with the ego itsel i the egos desires should come

into confict with the moral strivings o the superego.

Such is the psychoanalytic theory o the origin o human ideals and convic-

tions, moral strivings and eelings. According to this theory, the role o the ather

is eventually transerred to teachers and other authority gures, and sexual at-


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JULYAUGUST 2009 49

essence. It was a small, conscious island in the world o unconscious raging

passions, and the unction o consciousness, in essence, was limited to that omere censor, consciousness served only as a means o inhibiting inantile desires.

Nevertheless, this was something taken rom reality and contrasted with the hu-

man instinctive principle. O course on this level as well, Freuds psychoanalysis

was deeply and essentially mistaken: it viewed people biologically, deprived

their mind o genuine development, presented their spiritual world in distorted

orm. But ndings that did not t into Freuds initial conception orced him

subsequently to destroy the sole social island within his theory. His interpreta-

tion saw what is most socially valuable in peopletheir ideals, moral views,and convictionsas no more than a orm o existence or those same inantile

sexual instincts, just a special means o satisying them.

But given such an understanding, Freuds theory, which had been clear up to

this point and well-constructed in its own way, becomes absolutely muddled.

The understanding o the unconscious as a world o amoral, base emotions

becomes muddled, since moral motives or human behavior also start to enter

into it. The concept o censorship as a conscious antagonist o amoral needs

and impulses is muddled, since the subjects morality itsel turns out to be

the property o the id. Understanding o conficts that arise between dierentaective tendencies also becomes muddled, since it is by now impossible

to sort out rom what reservoir o energy in the nal analysis a particular

instinct draws its strength and just what people repress and in whose name

they repress it.

But Freud preerred to live with this lack o clariy and muddle rather

than have the edice o psychoanalysis that he worked so hard to erect come

crashing down under the weight o acts.

What we describe here shows how Freud wound up being a slave to hisown system o ideas. One might think that, having been conronted with such

striking and indisputable ndings as the presence in humans o very power-

ul moral motives o behavior, o which they themselves are not conscious,

and having uncovered another content o the unconscious sphere that has

no relationship to its instinctive impulses, Freud should have undamentally

reevaluated the main tenets o his teachings, rst and oremost everything

that relates to understanding the unconscious.

The acts introduced above ought to generate doubt in any unbiased scholar

concerning the original theory o the origins, content, and unction o theunconscious and inspire them to develop new hypotheses: is it true that the


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moral motivations or behavior due to their decisive importance or people as

social beings are acquired so immediately and organically that they take onthe appearance o instinctive impulses that are independent or even resistant

to consciousness? I such is the case, there is no need to portray them as a

modication o biological urges in order to explain their power and autonomy.

Instead what we have is the need to discover the mechanism that orms them,

in other words to determine the circumstances and human behavioral and

activity structures that lead to their being assimilated without awareness or

acquire the characteristic o being unconscious.

The assumption suggests itsel that perhaps no aective tendencies thatconfict with other such tendencies are allowed into consciousness i this

confict is painully experienced.

Ater all, we are well aware o instances when people, due to particular

circumstances or ideas, decide to commit a crime, but cannot carry it out due

to immediate inner resistance based on a deeply and organically assimilated

moral principle.27

In Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky oers a literary analysis o con-

scious amoral and unconscious moral urges, as do many modern writers who

portray Nazis unable to endure their own barbarity committed in the name oFascist ideals. In the end, perhaps the realm o unconscious mental processes

and experiences is much broader and more multilayered than Freud imagined,

and the sphere o the unconscious that Freud probed using psychoanalytical

methods is just an insignicant portion o it that is not essential to normal

human behavior? I this is the case, then we would have to nd some other

mechanisms and laws to explain the origins o unconscious mental processes

and discover what their content and unction really are.

However, all these questions shake the very oundations o Freudian teach-ings and he does not even raise them. Conronted with ndings that contradict

his views, Freud did not choose to reexamine his views, but to adapt them

to these ndings.

In so doing he made assumptions that are absolutely not supported even by

the ndings o psychoanalysis. For example, he was orced to assume that not

only neurotics, but all people are aficted with the Oedipus complex. Freud

had absolutely no actual basis or making this assumption, but he was orced

to make it, since otherwise the theory he had advanced about the origins o

unconscious moral strivings and eelings (which, to a certain extent, all peoplepossess) could not hold together, and, consequently, the entire psychoanalyti-


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JULYAUGUST 2009 51

then why does it develop and orm primarily during young adulthood and

even during adulthood, instead o during early childhood as might havebeen expected rom the perspective o the explanations oered by Freud

himsel? He also was completely silent about the act that perectly rational

and productive processes o thinking can be unconscious. We are let with a

pillar o psychoanalysisthe theory o the unconsciousthat is irreparably

undermined by acts.

But Freud had no desire, and was unable, to reject his idea about the origins

o the unconscious and its unction and role in human lie. He understood that

i that idea was destroyed, the entire psychoanalytic theory o personality andFreudianism in general as social and philosophical theory would ollow.

Let us return now to analysis o the methods o psychoanalytical research

into personality and the scientic validity o ndings that Freud used to justiy

applying conclusions concerning neurotics to normal, healthy people.

It seems sae to say that he had no scientic grounds or this; this trans-

erence was baseless. However Freud himsel was convinced that all his

conclusions were built on actually solid ground: rst o all, on the basis o

interpretations o dreams, and second, on analysis o peoples errorsslips o

the tongue, slips o the pen, misplacement o things, stumbles, and so on.Let us look more closely at the rst method, which is central to psycho-

analytic research.

Let us assume, or arguments sake, that we accept the premise that tech-

niques or interpreting dreams are legitimate and convincing and that we join

Freud in concluding that during sleep, when activity in the cortex is greatly

reduced, people truly are reer and some primitive needs and desires become

active.

But this begs the questiondoes this really justiy the contention that thebehavior and activity o normal, healthy people in an awakened state will be

guided by these primitive needs and desires? What exactly is this deep, genu-

ine essence o humans? Freuds conclusion is not justied primarily rom a

logical perspective, since it involves circular thinking: in order to prove that

conscious processes are not dening in human lie and activity and that in

act unconscious, instinctive processes predominate, people are studied in a

state where these very conscious processes are turned o.

And this conclusion is even less justied when examined rom the per-

spective o acts.In introducing the results o his analysis o those ew dreams o normal


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What? says one o them, you want to convince me rom this dream

that I regret the money I have spent on my sisters dowry and my brotherseducation? But that cannot be so. I work entirely or my brothers and sisters;

I have no other interest in lie but to ulll my duties to them, which, as

the eldest o the amily, I promise our departed mother I would do. Or a

woman dreamer would say: You think I wish my husband was dead? That

is a shocking piece o nonsense! It is not only that we are most happily

marriedyou would probably not believe me i I said thatbut his death

would rob me o everything I possess in the world.

In other words, Freud himsel claims that those to whom he tried, basedon analysis o their dreams, to attribute certain unconscious desires elt in

themselves the precise contrary o the wish we have interpreted to them and

. . . are able to proveto us by the lives they lead that they are dominated by

this contrary wish.29

It ollows that Freud himsel understood perectly well that people in their

real lives do not eel that which dream analysis exposes in them, and, most

important, they live and act not in accordance with the laws of unconscious

needs and impulses, but in accordance with absolutely different laws: they are

guided by social motivations and perectly realistic, practical considerations.

And truly, i people in a state o wakeulness began to act on the aective logic

that governs their dreams, they would very quickly be conned to psychiatric

hospitals, since under the conditions o normal lie in society they ollow (and

can do nothing but ollow!) absolutely dierent motivations. So why must we

consider the true human essence to be that which, let us assume, really does lurk

in the realm o the unconscious, rather than that which constitutes real human

lie? And why should we view the reluctance Freuds subjects eel to acknowl-

edge that they have the base impulses he attributes to them based on dreamanalysis as something other than the natural protestation o normal people who,

through their entire way o lie, demonstrate that they have dierent motivations

that really condition their behavior, rather than as resistance that supposedly

serves to conrm the truth o psychoanalytic interpretation?

Even i we ollow the logic o the material that Freud had at his disposal, we

must reach the exact opposite conclusions to those that he himsel reaches. A

normal, healthy person in a state o wakeulness lives and acts in accordance

with absolutely dierent laws than a sleeping person or someone aficted

with neurosis or in some other pathological state (Freud had good reason to

call his work analyzing erroneous actions The Psychopathology of Everyday


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JULYAUGUST 2009 53

an essential role either in shaping personality or in shaping behavior. Freud

had no scientic basis or claiming that in relation to the id, the ego is likea horseman who must rein in the superior strength o the horse and who, i

he does not want to part with that horse, is orced to lead it where it wants to

go.30 The primacy o the deep-seated pathology o inantile eelings over all

conscious lie in humans, its decisive role in orming human character and

moral worldviewthis is a Freudian myth that has no scientic basis. Allport

was right when he said that Traits and interests, like plants, are capable o

casting aside the shell o the seed rom which they grew. Their direction o

growth is upward into the uture and downward into the past. And he was rightin three ways when he claimed that the ull complexity o personal motives

and traits cannot be understood simply by the art o deep-sea diving.31

However those who adhere to Freuds theories have always had and still

have one last argument: i psychoanalytic theory is alse, then how does psy-

choanalysis that is based on these theories cure the ill and rid healthy people

o painul pathological eelings?

In this context, let us examine Freuds therapeutic successes and the extent

to which they serve as proo o the correctness o his psychoanalytic theories.

One wonders: what could possibly be more convincing proo o a theory thantesting it in practice? However or such practice to be convincing it has to

be proved that it is unambiguously associated with the theory on which it is

supposedly based, that is, that this practice realizes specically this system

o views and its success cannot be attributed to any other actors that have

not been suciently taken into account.

Beore we analyze Freuds psychotherapy rom this perspective, it should

be noted that Freuds treatment success, while signicant, has nevertheless

been greatly exaggerated. It deserves mention that psychoanalytic treatmentcan take years and that it by no means always ends with a cure, and in those

cases where a cure is achieved, it oten does not last. Freud himsel had good

reason or reaching the pessimistic conclusion that the instincts on which

neurosis is based are so strong and untamable that no psychoanalysis is ca-

pable o changing them.

The rst thing one notices upon examining psychotherapeutic practice treat-

ing neurosis is that it achieves a positive treatment result both in cases where

erotic impulses are supposedly repressed and in cases where some other sort

o eeling is the presumed cause. Two conclusions can be drawn here: eitherin both cases we are really dealing with eelings o a dierent nature (which


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although Freud himsel tried to dispute it, marshaling completely arbitrary

explanations to this cause.However what seems more interesting to us are certain ideas associated

with possible explanations o his therapeutic success that dier rom those

oered by Freud. Some o these considerations have been pointed out by J.B.

Furst.32 According to Furst, any system o psychotherapy involves inculcating

certain attitudes in patients toward the environment, toward themselves, and

toward those phenomena that are disturbing them. The doctor-psychotherapists

are able to cure their patients suering rom neurosis because they help them

adopt a certain attitude toward their suering, that is, shape how they eelabout its cause in order to eliminate the diculties that conront them.

The patient, Furst writes, is sent to the doctor specically to hear an

assessment and receive help in solving his personal problems.33

I we approach psychoanalysis rom this perspective, i we take its tech-

niques into account (specically the act that psychoanalysts are constantly

and persistently interpreting or their patients the true meaning o what they

are saying and gradually impose a certain understanding o the causes and

sources o their suering on them) and i we take into account that Freuds

psychotherapy oten takes years, then it becomes obvious that here we aredealing with a certain reeducation o the patient. Recovery may come due

to the act that psychoanalysts instill in their patients their own view o the

lie situation that triggered the corresponding aective confict and provide

them the opportunity, although at times by ollowing a alse path, to escape

their conficted state. In short, perhaps the cure oered by psychoanalysis

is analogous to the cure religion might oer. Psychoanalysis becomes

something akin to patients religion, a religion that oers a way out o inner

confict. This sort o treatment mechanism is supported by the ollowingtestimony rom Furst.

According to Furst, a patient who undergoes a course o psychoanalytic

treatment as a rule becomes more individualistic and egocentric than he

was beorehand. He has much less understanding o the outside world and its

people; he is convinced o male superiority, obsessed with a mythical under-

standing o gender, he has been inculcated with a philosophy and worldview

that has ocused his attention inward.34

In Other words, the patient who has been subjected to long-term psycho-

analysis becomes a person with a particular mindset: it is as i he embodies

the traits o Freuds image o man.35


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JULYAUGUST 2009 55

approach to study o human personality as a whole. As we continue, in con-

junction with discussion o our own research ndings, we will reer back tovarious aspects o the teachings o Freud and his ollowers. For now we would

merely like to emphasize that analysis o just one methodological aspect o

psychoanalytic research and treatment convinces us that neither Freud nor

his comrades-in-arms had any basis or vaunting the scientic validity and

soundness o their claims. From this perspective, psychoanalysis is extremely

uneven. Freud undoubtedly succeeded, mainly through clinical practice, in

identiying a certain system o psychological phenomena and their mecha-

nisms specic primarily to people aficted with neurosis. Freuds main con-tribution, it seems to us, is his eort to discover the dynamic o motivational

orces governing human behavior, their interdependence and confict. Also

very important is the discovery o a realm o unconscious mental processes

and their eect on behavior.

O course, neither the presence o intense aective tendencies and the

pathogenic nature o their confict nor the signicance o unconscious pro-

cesses or human mind and behavior were anything new.

Even beore Freud and, most important, independent o him, certain nd-

ings were known relating to this area that were achieved both in experimentalclinical research and through hypnosis. However the systematic development

o this entire set o questions, the consolidation and generalization o materials

obtained in the process, the discovery o a number o specic psychologi-

cal laws, and, most important, the attempt to understand everyday human

experience rom the perspective o these laws are undoubted contributions

o Freud. And however we might criticize psychoanalytic theory overall, in

our specic psychological ideas, Freuds theories have played a positive role

in the search or a scientic approach to the psychological study o humanpersonality and what people actually experience in lie.

We have analyzed and criticized Freuds theories in such detail because o

the tremendous popularity Freudianism has gained. It is no longer simply a

current in psychiatry or psychology, it is a school o philosophy that determines

the worldview o its adherents, their views on humanity and its activity, on

the ate o society, their attitude toward everything that surrounds them and

toward themselves and the entire structure o their sense o the world. And

even though Freud considered himsel only a scientist and nowhere explic-

itly ormulated his ideological and political positions, they are objectivelycontained in his teachings, which are deeply reactionary in essence, pessi-


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rom Freudianisms ndings or even learning rom its mistakes. Furthermore,

Freudianism turned many scholars against not only psychoanalysis itsel butalso the problems associated with these theories. For a long time, the problems

o the aective lie o human beings was orgotten in the Soviet Union, along

with the problems o the unconscious and its relationship to consciousness.

Human beings were represented in one dimensionthe dimension o con-

scious mental processes and actions, and or this reason they were studied

rather one-sidedly. And peoples conscious activity, due to the act that it was

being viewed in isolation rom needs and impulses, rom eelings, rom the

entire sphere o the mental processes that take place outside o awareness,was incorrectly interpreted. The genuine and mighty role o consciousness as

a source o specically human activity was not suciently ully psychologi-

cally discovered; the result was an intellectualization o mans entire mental

lie divorced rom the laws that govern it.

Only now, in recent years, research has begun to appear in Soviet psychol-

ogy that is ocused on the study o the unconscious, aective phenomena that

Freud interpreted in his own unique way. However, these studies have been

very limited in number. Analogous separate studies are being conducted in

other areas, primarily psychopathology. So ar, this research is proceedingpiecemeal, unsystematically, and has yet to be united by a common psycho-

logical theory o personality. It is thereore dicult or it to stand up to the

onslaught o theories and acts coming rom oreign psychologists.

This situation in psychology has a negative eect on pedagogical theory

and practice. Pedagogy has overemphasized the infuencing o childrens

conscience, exaggerated the role o the word and verbal persuasion, and

underemphasized the organizing o childrens experience, the ormation o

their needs, impulses, and eelings.

Notes

1. Trudy Pervogo Vserossiiskogo sezda po pedagogicheskoi psikhologii (St.Petersburg, 1906).

2. U. Dzhems [W. James],Besedy s uchiteliami o psikhologii (Petrograd: Mir,1919), pp. 34 [quoted rom Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students onSome o Lies Ideals, http://mirror.pacic.net.au/gutenberg/1/6/2/8/16287/16287-h/16287-h.htm].

3. Trudy Vtorogo Vserossiiskogo sezda po pedagogicheskoi psikhologii (1909),(St. Petersburg, 1910).


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JULYAUGUST 2009 57

7. O. Tumlirts [Tumlirtz], Edinstvo psikhologii i ego znachenie dliia teorii pe-

rekhodnogo vozrasta, trans. rom German, in Pedologiia iunosti, p. 174.8. L.S. Vygotskii, Razvitie vysshikh psikhicheskikh funktsii (Moscow: APN

RSFSR, 1960), p. 60.9. Gordon Willard Allport, Personality and Social Encounter([Boston: Beacon

Press], 1960) [retranslated rom Russian].10. Z. Berneld [S. Berneld], Psikhologiia iunosti E. Shpangera, in Pedologiia

iunosti (Moscow, Leningrad, 1930), p. 122.11. Allport, Personality and Social Encounter[retranslated rom Russian].12. S.L. Rubinshtein,Bytie i soznanie (Moscow: ANSSR, 1957), p. 309.13. V.S. Merlin, Ocherk psikhologii lichnosti (Perm: Permskoe knizhnoe

izdatelstvo, 1959), p. 12.

14. A.G. Kovalev, Psikhologiia lichnosti: Uchebnoe posobie, 2d ed. (Moscow:Prosveshchenie, 1965).

15. A.F. Lazurskii, Estestvennyi eksperiment i ego shkolnoe primenenie (St.Petersburg, 1918), p. vi.

16. Shtern, Psikhicheskaia struktura podrostka, pp. 7778.17. Sovremennaia psikhologiia v kapitalisticheskikh stranakh (Moscow: AN SSSR,

1963), p. 9.18. Ibid.19. For example, one should not lump together such dierent schools o psychol-

ogy as the psychology o spirit and Freudianism, as personalism and the experimentalpersonality studies o K. Lewin. It should also not be claimed that all these directionshad a disdain or physiology and did not want a union with the natural sciences. Wundthimsel probably did not want a union between psychology and the natural sciences,as Mansurov mentions elsewhere (Sovremennaia psikhologiia v kapitalisticheskikhstranakh, p. 8); Freud, on the other hand, can sooner be accused o biologism thanphilosophical idealism.

20. This, incidentally, was pointed to by many adherents o gestalt psychology. Inparticular its most prominent representative, M. Wertheimer, lamented how ruitless as-sociationist psychology was, stating that you can read hundreds o pages on psychology,

get rom them inormation about how associations are built, but not learn in the processthe meaning o something as simple as the pupil understood. Furthermore, even therapid pace o societys capitalist development demands practical useulness rom psy-chology, and it is unlikely that we can assume that idealist directions in psychology werereactions to practical successes o branches engaged in applied psychology.

21. L.S. Vygotskii, Razvitie vysshikh psikhicheskikh funktsii (Moscow: APNRSFSR, 1960), p. 25.

22. Z. Freid [Freud], Lektsii po vvedeniiu v psikhoanaliz (Moscow, Petrograd:Gosizdat, 1923), p. 30 [quoted rom Sigmund Freud, James Strackey, and Peter Gay,Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (New York: 1989), pp. 2728].

23. Z. Freid, Vlecheniia i ikh sud

ba [Instincts and Their Vicissitudes], inPsikhologicheskaia i psikhoanaliticheskaia biblioteka, 3d ed. (Moscow, Petrograd:Gosizdat 1923) p 47


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26. Ibid., pp. 3435 [pp. 4748].

27. See V.G. Korolenkos marvelous pages on this topic (Istoriia moego sovremen-nika, books 1 and 2 [Moscow, 1948], pp. 38990) [available in English as The Historyof My Contemporary]. He describes and analyzes the phenomenon o a person whocannot raise his hand to commit an act that seems correct and necessary to him, butthat contradicts unconsciously assimilated moral experience. It has oten occurredto me, he writes on this subject, that much would be dierent in our world i therewas more o that unconscious, nonlogical, but deeply rooted moral culture that doesnot permit certain eelings too easily, almost without resistance, to go the way oRaskolnikovs ormulas.

28. Freid,Lektsii po vvedeniiu v psikhoanaliz, p. 150 [p. 177] [emphasis added].

29. Ibid. [emphasis added].30. Freid,Ia i Ono, p. 22 [p. 30].31. Gordon Willard Allport, Personality and Social Encounter, p. 13 [quoted rom

John Cuthbert Ford, Depth Psychology, Morality, and Alcoholism (Weston, MA:Weston College, 1951), p. 30].

32. J.B. Furst,Nevrotik, ego sreda i vnutrennii mir(Moscow: Inostrannaia literatura,1957) [originally in English as The Neurotic, His Environment and Inner World].

33. Ibid., p. 266.34. Ibid., p. 204.35. It should be emphasized that Fursts testimony can be completely trusted since

his opinions are based on signicant experience. As a well-known practicing Americanpsychiatrist, Furst has had extensive experience treating patients who had previouslybeen treated by doctors practicing psychoanalysis.


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