The Collected Works of L.S. Vygotsky: The Fundamentals of Defectology (Abnormal Psychology and Learning Disabilities)

355 Pages·1993·20.59 MB·English

by  Jane E. Knox

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF
L. S. VYGOTSKY
Volume 2
The Fundamentals of Defectology
(Abnormal Psychology and Learning Disabilities)
COGNITION AND LANGUAGE
A Series in Psycholinguistics • Series Editor: R. W. RIEBER
Recent Volumes in this Series:
THE COLLECTED WORKS OF L. S. VYGOTSKY
Volume 1: Problems of General Psychology
Volume 2: The Fundamentals of Defectology (Abnormal Psychology and
Learning Disabilities)
Edited by Robert W. Rieber and Aaron S. Carton
DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLINGUISTICS: Three Ways of Looking at a
Child's Narrative
Carole Peterson and Allyssa McCabe
THE DISCURSIVE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF EVIDENCE
Symbolic Construction of Reality
Salomon Rettig
EXPERIMENTAL SLIPS AND HUMAN ERROR: Exploring the Architecture
of Volition
Edited by Bernard J. Baars
LANGUAGE AND COGNITION: Essays in Honor of Arthur J. Bronstein
Edited by Lawrence J. Raphael, Carolyn B. Raphael, and
Miriam B. Valdovinos
MEANING AND CONTEXT: An Introduction to the Psychology of Language
Hans Hormann
Edited and with an Introduction by Robert E. Innis
UNDERSTANDING MEXICANS AND AMERICANS: Cultural Perspectives
in Conflict
Rogelio Diaz-Guerrero and Lorand B. Szalay
THE USE OF WORDS IN CONTEXT: The Vocabulary of College Students
John W. Black, Cleavonne S. Stratton, Alan C. Nichols, and
Marian Ausherman Chavez
VYGOTSKY'S SOCIOHISTORICAL PSYCHOLOGY
AND ITS CONTEMPORARY APPLICATIONS
Carl Ratner
A Continuation Order Plan is available for this series. A continuation order will bring delivery of each
new volume immediately upon publication. Volumes are billed only upon actual shipment. For further in
formation please contact the publisher.
THE COLLECTED WORKS OF
L. S. VYGOTSKY
Volume 2
The Fundamentals of Defectology
(Abnormal Psychology and Learning Disabilities)
Translated and with an Introduction by
JANE E. KNOX
Bowdoin College
Brunswick, Maine
and
CAROL B. STEVENS
Colgate University
Hamilton, New York
Editors of the English Translation
ROBERT W. RIEBER and AARON S. CARTON
John Jay College of Criminal Justice Bureau of Educational Evaluation
and the Graduate Center Garden City, New York
City University of New York and State University of New York at Stony Brook (Emeritus)
New York, New York Stony Brook, New York
SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, LLC
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
(Revised for volume 2)
Vygotskil, L. S. (Lev Semenovich), 1896-1934.
The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky.
(Cognition and Language)
Translation of: Sobranie Sochineni'l.
Vol. 1- includes bibliographies and indexes.
Contents: v. 1. Problems of general psychology.
1. Psychology. I. Rieber, R. W. (Robert W.) II. Carton, Aaron S.
BFI21.V9413 1987 150 87-7219
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
This volume is published under an agreement with the
Russian Copyright Agency (V AAP)
ISBN 978-1-4613-6212-8 ISBN 978-1-4615-2806-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4615-2806-7
© 1993 Springer Science+Business Media New York
Originally published by Plenum Press in 1993
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1 st edition 1993
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmittec
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming,
recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher
FOREWORD AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Fundamentals of Defectology is Volume 2 of Plenum's English version of The
Collected Works of Lev Semenovich Vygotsky and it is a translation of Volume 5 of
Pedagogika's six-volume series published in Moscow between 1982 and 1984. The volume
contains Vygotsky's works on defectology originally published in the 1920's and 1930's as
well as some posthumous undated and hitherto unpublished manuscripts. They consist of a
variety of formal and informal texts. The Soviet Editorial Collegium for the publication of
Vygotsky's work collected them from a wide range of publications and Vygotsky's own
archives. An "Afterword" and notes were also supplied by the Soviet Collegium. The present
English version also offers an introduction by the translators.
Defectology is a term not, at present, readily found in English dictionaries and it does
not designate a discipline at universities or a specialty at clinics in the English-speaking
world. Yet defektologia in the tradition of the Soviet Union is concerned with abnormal
psychology, learning disabilities, and what has been called special education in North
America. We have chosen to retain defectology in this volume. In the title it readily signals
its correspondence with the Russian volume from which it was translated. There are certain
historical reasons for retaining the term which the translators describe in their introduction.
Furthermore, the term is otherwise difficult to translate explicitly and elegantly.
As in the fIrst volume, the translators contributed the bulk ofthe work and assumed the
major responsibility for its scholarly quality. The translators for this English language series
are scholars whose understanding ofVygotsky's text goes far beyond the mere comprehen
sion of the Russian. Their work, therefore, is an effort to contribute both to Vygotskyan
scholarship and to the variety of academic fIelds to which Vygotsky had himself contributed.
The modem view oflanguage comprehension-in all modalities and within and across
languages-argues that both the linguistic signals one receives and an understanding of the
concepts underlying each message together contribute to comprehension. Vygotsky's own
discussions (see Volume 1 of the English language series) clearly anticipated this view and
accounted for it with theoretical ingenuity and subtlety. It is particularly appropriate here to
seek fastidiously accurate interpretations or renditions of his text. Such translations must be
informed by the kind of sophisticated comprehension which only scholarship in the fIeld of
v
vi Foreword
the text can engender. Of course, translations by scholars of advanced standing are not a
novelty in modern scholarship.
The Plenum translations ofVygotsky' s texts are appearing at a moment when authentic
and authoritative English versions oft hem are rare-a moment when the frequency of works
about Vygotsky threatens to outstrip the availability of work by Vygotsky. Since seminal
thinkers make their contributions by provoking further thought, admirers ofVygotsky will,
of course, welcome the spate ofi nterpretation, reinterpretation, revision, reconstruction, and
deconstruction which Vygotsky's work has invited and will participate with alacrity in the
activity. Yet, the translations appearing in these volumes are not offered as interpretations
in the sense that they are new analytic works about Vygotsky. They are offered to serve as
basic texts for readers of English who may be interested in what Vygotsky himself had to
say. They are offered to scholars and students, who will make their own interpretations (in
its broader sense) and who will evaluate the interpretations of others.
Having taken the view that a good translation is essentially an interpretation, the claim
that this volume is an accurate and authentic interpretation of Vygotsky's meanings and
intentions-and only of those meanings and intentions-must await hoped-for reassurances
from those reviewers and critics who are qualified to make such judgments. On their part,
the translators subjected their manuscripts of both the translation and their introduction to
critical reading by a number of scholars and in particular they wish thank the following for
their comments and discussions: James V. Wertsch (Clark University), Larry E. Holmes
(University of Southern Alabama), Addison Stone (Northwestern University), Alex Kozulin
(Boston University), William O. McCagg (Michigan State University), and their good friend
and colleague, Victor Golod (Scientific Research Institute ofDefectology, USSR Academy
of Pedagogical Sciences, Moscow, and Visiting Scholar at the Russian Research Center,
Harvard University) whose untimely death occurred on January 20, 1991. Although gratitude
is owed these colleagues for helping to reduce the number of errors and misinterpretations
which might have appeared in the volume, responsibility for those flaws which have not
been eliminated must, as always, remain with the editors and translators.
The basic work of collecting, arranging, and editing Vygotsky's work from among
Russian publications, personal. papers, and archives was carried out for this volume and all
others in the series by a collegium of Soviet scholars. The editor in chief was A. B.
Zaporozhets and the members of the editorial collegium were T. A. Vlasova, G. L.
Vygotskaia, V. V. Davydov, A. N. Leont'ev, A. R. Luria, A. V. Petrovskii, A. A. Smirnov,
V. C. Chelemendik, D. B. EI'konin and M. G. Yaroshevksii. The secretary of the editorial
collegium was L. A. Radzichovskii.
In addition to their respective academic institutions, the translators would like to
acknowledge the grants and fellowships that facilitated their work and gave them access to
research environments that were particularly conducive to the production of a scholarly
translation. These came from the International Research Exchange Board (which facilitated
visits to the Soviet Union), the National Academy of Sciences, the Russian and Ukrainian
Research Centers at Harvard University, and the Harriman Institute at Columbia University.
Inasmuch as Vygotsky cited not only writers who are well-known to the mainstream of
European and American psychology and philosophy but also many who may be obscure or
completely unknown for the modern (English-language) reader, the translators have under
taken to identify correctly all names, including those not identified by the author or the Soviet
editors. Thus special thanks are due not only for the support provided by the aforementioned
research foundations and institutes but also to the staff of Special Collections at Milbank
Foreword vii
Library in Teachers' College at Columbia University and to many friends, students and other
associates who helped with the manuscript, in particular to Joyce Gracie, Todd Breslow,
Shamu Fenyvesi, Jennifer Andich, and Wilford Saunders (Bowdoin College).
Some issues in the selection of English renditions of the technical terminology used in
this volume bear mentioning. Vygotsky himself wrote extensively about the intimacy-per
haps the unity-ofw ords with concepts, and he participated fully in the European intellectual
community that gave his words their meanings and which gave scientific terms their special
significance. Nevertheless he wrote at a time, with an orientation, and in a milieu which may
seem a bit alien to the reader of this translation. Additional complications are encountered
because intellectual progress is often manifested through the reorganization of concepts and
the refinement of the meanings ofterms. In psychology and philosophy, the various schools
and orientations add to the complications.
Furthermore, fields which deal with human distress, like defectology, are also plagued
by continuous cycles of semantic pejoration and amelioration and the coining of fussy
euphemisms that reflect perhaps the emotional intensity ofthe mainstream person's response
to these problems regardless of whether that response is brutish or, like Vygotsky's, humane
and optimistic. Because (as Vygotsky's discussions of Adlerian psychology argue) the very
basis of successful compensation for defects consists of encouraging the ability to surmount
feelings of inferiority and the establishment of self-esteem, researchers and practitioners in
defectology are also constrained by a concern for the feelings of the individuals suffering
from defects.
Thus terms like mental backwardness (umstvennaia otstalost'), feeble mindedness
(slaboumie) and oligophrenia with its three gradations of mental retardation (debility,
imbecility, and idiocy) were, perhaps, appropriately descriptive and decorous in the 1920' s
but they can seem somewhat obsolete, unscientific or even a touch unseemly and unkind
today. Faced with the dilemma of preserving the historical atmosphere or of making it more
accessible to the contemporary English reader, the translators sought, wherever possible, to
contribute an English terminology which, at least in the scientific community, would reflect
as far as possible Vygotsky's intended meanings and his realistic acceptance of abnormali
ties, and which would, perforce, follow the usages already established by earlier Vygotskyan
translators or scholars. Therefore, the translators frequently followed James Gallagher's
usage in Windows on Russia (1974) and used the terms debile, imbecile, and idiot where a
contemporary writer might have used the more euphemistic mildly retarded, moderately
retarded, and severely retarded.
Vygotsky himself saw the issue of shifts in meaning as one of the basic technical
problems in the field of defectology (see, in particular, "Diagnostics of Development and
the Pedological Clinic" in this volume). He also notes, alas, that the terms Hilftschule or
Sonderschule (in German, a "helping school" or a "special school"), which may seem
positive or neutral enough in their connotations, were quickly perceived as designating
"fools' schools" and unfit for helping children with defects. And the contemporary reader
will be aware of the fact that the guidance counselor's once carefully selected, seemingly
neutral terms such as slow or retarded are eventually construed as insults for justifying
brawls on American playgrounds while the teachers of children who have been thus labeled
must labor valiantly not only to preserve these children's self-esteem but also to change
society'S perceptions of what the terms designate.
In the interest of contributing to the formation of a coherent English terminology for
Russian psychological texts, this series has joined in the use of the term conditional reflex
viii Foreword
for the older conditioned reflex both in Volume 1 and in the present volume. By the time
Watson adopted the Pavlovian formulation as a cornerstone for behaviorist psychology in
the 1910's, Pavlov's uslovnyi had been mis-translated "conditioned" (as a Russian passive
past participle), and the whole process was designated as "conditioning" (see Boring, 1950).
At mid-century, however, Osgood (1953) suggested that "Pavlov meant that the occurrence
of the reflex to a novel cue was literally conditional [sic] upon certain operations" and
observed that in "contemporary American psychology ['conditioned' had] become practi
cally synonymous with 'learned. "The fifties also saw the formulation of statistical theories
oflearning (see, for example, Estes, 1950; Bush and Mosteller, 1955) and an interest in the
probabilistic nature of many forms of behavior. "Mathematical psychology" (see Laming,
1973, for a concise review) provided methods by which the Pavlovian [mdings (among
others) could be interpreted in terms of equations describing their probabilities and that
seemed consistent with Pavlov's attempts to constrict the sensory experience of his experi
mental organisms in order to enhance the likelihood of the effectiveness of his experimental
stimuli. Because some types of probabilities are "conditional," the expressions conditional
stimulus and conditional reflex might acquire for some students connotations suggesting
dual probabilities (i.e., the probability of A in the context of its occurrence under the
probabilistic condition B). Translators are now left to ponder whether such connotations
were intended by Pavlov and whether Vygotsky, in his use of the terms, understood them in
that way. Because at least one English-Russian dictionary (Mueller, 1959) glosses condi
tioned with obuslovlennyi but reserves uslovnyi for a "conditional sentence" (and makes a
special note of "conditioned reflex"), recent translations, such as Kozu!in's (1986) and the
ones in this series can justifY the usage of conditional as being more nearly correct renditions
than conditioned. Yet eighty years of psychological writings and the students trained during
those years will not disappear overnight. And new English language readers who will
encounter both "conditioned" and "conditional" reflexes may be inclined to resolve whatever
confusions they encounter by a process well known to students of diachronic semantics: they
may adduce a useful, if unintended, distinction between the two terms. Thus, as a practical
matter, those future generations of readers are owed this justification for the choice of usage
in this volume.
Because there are often standard English renderings for certain terms in Western
European literature (such as sublation for Hegel's Aujhebung and damming up for Lipps'
Stauung), Vygotsky's Russian renderings of such terms-sometimes coinings with very
telling connotations-frequently seemed to merit explanations; these have been supplied by
Vygotsky himself, by his Russian editors, or by his translators. (For sublation, Vygotsky
used sniatie, that is, "taking down," "reaping," or, perhaps, "relieving" and for damming up
he used zapruda, which is a "dam" or "weir").
In transliterating terms and names from the text, this volume follows the compromise
used by most scholars in Russian and Soviet studies: For commonly known and well-estab
lished names, such as Vygotsky, the usual popular English spelling has been maintained. The
Library ofC ongress transliteration system has been used to transcribe all other Soviet names
or Russian terms.
As in the previous volume, we have marked notes introduced by translators or English
editors differently from those provided by the Soviet Editorial Collegium. Notes not
otherwise marked are Vygotsky's.
Foreword
References
Boring, E. G. A History ofE xperimental Psychology. New York: Appleton, Century, Crofts, 1950.
Bush, R.S. and Mosteller, F. Stochastic Models for Learning. New York: Wiley, 1955.
Estes, W. K. Toward a statistical theory ofleaming. Psychological Review 57, 94-107, 1950.
Gallagher, J. Windows on Russia: A Report of the United States-USSR Seminar on Instruction ofH andicapped
Children U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 1974.
Kozulin, A. (Translator). Vygotsky, L.S. Thought and Language Cambridge, Mass.:MIT Press, 1986.
Laming, D. Mathematical Psychology. London and New York: Academic Press, 1973.
Mueller, V. K. (Compiler). English-Russian Dictionary, Sixth Edition. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1959.
Osgood, C. Method and Theory ofE xperimental Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1953.
CONTENTS
Vygotsky and Soviet Russian Defectology: An Introduction
Jane Knox and Carol B. Stevens
Part I: General Problems of Defectology
Introduction: Fundamental Problems ofDefectology 29
Chapter 1: Defect and Compensation . . . . . . . . 52
Chapter 2: Principles of Education for Physically Handicapped
Children ..................... . 65
Chapter 3: The Psychology and Pedagogy of Children's
Handicaps .................... . 76
Part II : Special Problems of Defectology
The Blind Child 97
Principles of Social Education for the Deaf-Mute Child 110
Compensatory Processes in the Development of the Retarded
Child ..... 122
The Difficult Child . 139
Moral Insanity . . . 150
The Dynamics of Child Character 153
xi