Lev S. Vygotsky's Sociohistorical School - Essay Example

Lev S. Vygotsky (1896-1934) is an eminent Soviet psychologist. The key methodological concepts of Vygotsky’s scientific and psychological work are the socio-historical theory, concept of interiorization and higher mental functions. Socio-historical psychology was founded by Lev Vygotsky in the late twenties of the 20th century and developed by his students and followers around the world.Socio-historical psychology emerged as a response to Cartesian dualism between mind and body in psychology of those days, as a deliberate attempt to establish a new paradigm in psychological research, which would surpass narrow objectivism of behaviorism and subjectivism of James’ and Wundt’s introspective psychology.

It focuses on human development in order to make a general conclusion about the work of the mind in active state. Vygotsky and his followers focused on non-adaptive nature of character and mechanisms of development of higher mental functions. Defining the main purpose of psychological observations as the objective study of human consciousness, members of Vygotsky’s school discovered a role of cultural considerations and cultural mediators such as a word, sign, symbol, myth, in the development of higher mental functions, personality development and its phenomena.

According to his socio-historical theory, the main difference between a man and animal is conditionalism of human behavior and development due to socio-cultural factors. There are two types of human mental functions, “natural” - organic and “higher” - social and cultural. The first are predominantly determined by genetic factors, while the latter are formed on the basis of the first under the influence of a social impact.The importance of socio-historical conception of Vygotsky is not so much in justifying symbolic determination of human consciousness, as in the attempts to understand a sign, symbol, text as a tool for expanding consciousness into socio-historical perspective which is not imposed on a subject by society, but is chosen, in a varying degree of self-consistency, from culture.