Introduction to Psychology
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Lev Vygotsky

Soviet psychologist who developed cultural-historical psychology

1896 to 1934. Born in Orsha, Russian Empire (now Belarus). Chronology section: Born 1890 to 1919.

DevelopmentCognition

Soviet psychologist who argued that children's thinking develops through social interaction and language. He introduced the zone of proximal development and died of tuberculosis at 37, leaving his work unfinished.

Why this person matters

Vygotsky's emphasis on culture and language offered a counterweight to Piaget's account of development. He worked with Alexander Luria, Alexei Leontiev and others, and much of his work reached the English-speaking world only decades after his death.

Main contributions

  1. Higher psychological functions

    After the 1924 congress in Petrograd he moved to the Psychological Institute in Moscow. From 1926 to 1930 he led a group with Luria, Leontiev, Boris Varshava and Leonid Zankov on higher psychological functions, the basis of cultural-historical psychology.

  2. Zone of proximal development

    He described the gap between what a learner can do alone and what the learner can do with help from a more knowledgeable person. Later writers called that help scaffolding.

  3. Thought and speech

    Thinking and Speech (1934, also titled Thought and Language) was published after his death and appeared in English in 1962. Around 1929 to 1930 he disagreed with Piaget on egocentric speech, arguing that it becomes inner speech rather than fading away. The two never met.

Context and limits

After the 1936 condemnation of pedology his books were banned in the Soviet Union for roughly twenty years, so his work was little known in the West until the 1960s and later. Mind in Society was compiled by editors from several texts, and a 1982 edition of an unfinished 1927 manuscript involved editorial interventions and distortions. His early citations of Trotsky made his position politically unsafe under Stalin. The sources read do not report scholarly critiques of his theory.

In your introductory course

Lifespan development.Appears in the lifespan development chapter as the main social and cultural alternative to Piaget, especially through the zone of proximal development.

Related course reading: Psychology 2e, section 9.2. This is course context rather than a biographical source.

Years of active work

  1. 1924

    Moved to the Psychological Institute in Moscow after the Second All-Russian Psychoneurological Congress.

  2. 1925

    Finished his dissertation on the psychology of art.

  3. 1934

    Died in Moscow; Thinking and Speech was published the same year.

  4. 1936

    The Communist Party condemned pedology, after which his work was suppressed in the Soviet Union.

  5. 1978

    Harvard University Press published the compiled volume Mind in Society in English.

Sources