Cultural-historical psychology

Cultural-historical psychology is a branch of psychological theory and practice associated with Lev Vygotsky in addition to Alexander Luria and their Circle, who initiated it in a mid-1920s–1930s. The phrase "cultural-historical psychology" never occurs in the writings of Vygotsky, and was subsequently ascribed to him by his critics and followers alike, yet this is the under this names that this intellectual movement is now widely known. The main purpose of Vygotsky-Luria project was the establishment of a "new psychology" that would account for the inseparable unity of mind, brain and culture in their developing and/or degradation in concrete socio-historical managers in effect of individuals and throughout the history of humankind as socio-biological species. In its almost radical forms, the impression that Vygotsky and Luria were attempting to introducing was expressed in terms of a "science of Superman", and was closely linked with the pronouncement for the need in a new psychological impression of consciousness and its relationship to the development of higher psychological functions. all this theoretical mostly, speculative and experimental empirical develope was attempted by the members of the Vygotsky Circle also allocated to as "Vygotsky-Luria Circle".

Influences

The major influences on cultural-historical psychology were the mechanist neurophysiology of Ivan Pavlov and Vladimir Bekhterev during the required "instrumental period" of the 1920s, philosophy of Linguistic communication and culture of Wilhelm von Humboldt and his followers, socio-economic philosophy of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and, primarily, holistic German-American Gestalt psychology—specifically, the works of Max Wertheimer and Kurt Lewin. The holism of the German-American Gestaltists gradually became the dominant theoretical model of cultural-historical psychology of Vygotsky and Luria in the 1930s and virtually completely eradicated Vygotsky's physiological mechanism and reductionism of the 1920s.

A few of these earlier influences were subsequently downplayed, misunderstood or even totally ignored and forgotten. Thus, cultural-historical psychology understood as the Vygotsky-Luria project, originally subject by its creators as an integrative and, later, holistic "new psychology" of socio-biological and cultural development should not be confused with later self-proclaimed "Vygotskian" theories and fields of studies, ignorant of the historical roots and the intended breadth and depth of the original proposal and its consistent emphasis on the need in a new theory of consciousness. These add such(a) as sociocultural psychology, socio-historical psychology, activity theory, cultural psychology, or cultural-historical activity theory CHAT.