It is not uncommon in history that certain problems get recognized and resolved at the grand, abstract level in philosophy only later to get their experimental verification and empirical substantiation in their micro-details. The oeuvre of Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky is an example, par excellence, of this phenomenon. That is, however, not to say that the latter simply shows, in a passive manner, what the former already knew. On the contrary, in fact, the new insights from the empirical sciences propel and give new direction to the development and sophistication of the philosophy itself. And so likewise it happens with Vygotsky–the pioneering Marxist psychologist of the last century.

Now, of course, the first issue as always is to where to begin when dealing with a coherent and systematic thinker like Vygotsky, considering not only the sheer volume and range of their work but also the complexity of their thought. Here perhaps lies the importance of having anthologies, concentrating the vast range and complexity in a capsule, as it were, at one place, acting as the entry point to their world.

A new anthology of Vygotsky’s writings, edited by Myra Barrs and John Richmond, and published in 2024, is intended to be such a book, aiming to “provide a selection of substantial extracts from Vygotsky’s main publications,”^[1] as the editors state in their introduction. The reason for a new anthology is the lack of easy accessibility to Vygotsky’s work, despite him being one of the most cited psychologists. Of course, Vygotsky is most famously known for his experiments and theories in the field of psychology, but little, if anything, is known of his contributions in various other fields of study, although closely related with psychology. One task which the anthology successfully accomplishes is to introduce the reader to the diverse range of matters into which Vygotsky intervened as a creative and innovative thinker and practitioner. The matters include theories and methods of psychology, art and emotion, “defectology,” higher mental functions, pedology, play and imagination, thinking and speech, and so on, as one can see from the table of contents.

The most remarkable thing about this collection, as proper of any serious anthology, is its careful selection of articles, chapters, and passages, sometimes even lines, from a vast range of Vygotsky's works, from the earliest to the latest, thereby, giving us a fundamental idea about most of Vygotsky’s important ideas and innovations. The efforts of the editors is deserving of appreciation, in that not only did they collect the excerpts from the extant translated works, but they also translated some portions into English for the first time. Additionally, they updated and modified some existing translations, making adjustments for accuracy and ambiguity of certain words and phrases. The editors also intend the anthology to form a coherent whole and it seems it does actualize this to a great extent;^[2] the book centers around the problem of consciousness and mind,^[3] broadly defined, its various aspects, and the development and interrelation among them.

In so doing, the book adequately represents both the abstract philosophico-theoretical sharpness of Vygotsky’s mode of thinking and the solid empirical and experimental foundations of the theory. One will constantly feel the undercurrent of this dialectical(-materialist) method of dealing with reality accompanied with moments of “epiphany,” so to speak. The book gives many glimpses of the range of interesting and new ideas that he develops directly concerning the discipline of psychology. The very first problem tackled, in the anthology’s first selection, concerns the very foundations of the discipline of psychology itself in delimiting its specific subject-matter, which is the development of consciousness in all its complexity of forms and interactions. The discussion of this perhaps constitutes the most directly philosophical questions addressed. He builds on Marx’s insight from the famous ‘spider-web’^[4] example from Capital, stating that:

Consciousness must be considered as consisting in the most complex forms of organisation of our behaviour, in particular, as Marx has shown, as a kind of doubling of experience, that makes it possible to predict in advance the results of labour and to direct one’s own reactions to this end. This doubled experience also constitutes the third and final distinctive feature of human behaviour.

He formulates it in the following way: human behavior = (1) inherited reactions + (2) inherited reactions x by individual experience (conditional reactions) + (3) historical experience + (4) social experience + (5) doubled experience (consciousness).^[5] According to Vygotsky, “[these] new forms of adaptation, which we encounter for the first time in man, are the most essential feature which distinguishes human behaviour from the behaviour of animals.”^[6]

Hence, by clearly defining the constitution of specifically human behavior, one would be able to analyze and develop its further complex, concrete form. It is striking that without always explicitly mentioning it, Vygotsky made use of the dialectical category of ‘concrete universal’^[7] as the unit at the start of his theory. In another selection, while unequivocally arguing against reductionism, Vygotsky also explicitly came up with the category of ‘unit,’ in contradistinction to that of ‘elements,’ defining the former as “the product of analysis possesses all the basic characteristics of the whole.”^[8] These sophisticated dialectical methodological steps helped him to delimit his subject-matter, criticizing other rival, one-sided, and abstract theories such as behaviorism and speculative idealist psychological theories. The philosophico-methodological awareness of Vygotsky in these parts of the book is palpable. His philosophical inspirations and influences, whether conscious or unconscious, have a great diversity, ranging from Aristotle and Spinoza to Hegel and Marx, of course, although he seems to rarely be appealing to philosophical authorities for validation of his views, always testing his theories on their own grounds.

Vygotsky, Child Development, and Education

The first chapter is also one of the most rich, and in a way condensed, as it touches upon many of the important themes which were to remain crucial to Vygotsky in the further development of his theories. These include child development, pedagogy, emotions and affections, language, social experience and self-identity, and so on. The reason seems to lie in the fact that the excerpts for this chapter are taken from “one of the few of Vygotsky’s books published in his lifetime. It was probably written between 1921 and 1923 and may have its origins in Vygotsky’s notes for the psychology course he taught at Gomel Teachers’ College,”^[9] and, hence, possessing the seeds of many ideas, making this selection an apt choice for the introductory chapter.

Vygotsky’s concern for children emerges early on in the book. He argues for taking special care of children as they emerge into a social being and places a particular emphasis on the role of schools in shaping the child’s development. But Vygotsky is not simply focused on the intellectual side in the old fashioned way of repetition and rote learning. He also demands emphatically that components of feeling and emotions be involved in the educational process; education has to be a lively human affair, lest it degenerate. He directly relates these theoretical considerations to their practical pedagogical implications and argues for an interconnected and holistic method of teaching, having it in close proximity with everyday life. Education begins with what is familiar, before diving into the unknown, deeper and more complex levels, but then again returns to the initial points in a spiral fashion with all the details, insights and generalizations that have been gathered in the process, hence making the education a never-ending spiral process. The philosophical echoes of Aristotle and Hegel are apparent in these selections.

Vygotsky further hints at the importance of development of language, a topic to which he will devote a great deal of his time, highlighting its two important functions: its role in the social coordination of our action and its function as the most important tool of our thought, as one always thinks in language. This immediately touches on the problem of social experience and self-identity, Vygotsky pronouncing that

…before learning to understand other people, and only then on the basis of this model, the child learns to understand himself. It would be more correct to say that we know ourselves insofar as we know other people, or, more precisely, that we are conscious of ourselves only to the extent we are other for ourselves, i.e. somehow alien to ourselves. This is why language, this tool of social intercourse, is, in addition, also a tool of inner communication between man and himself.^[10]

A simple yet elegant and profound solution of that philosophical conundrum popularly known as the “problem of the other mind.”

The Psychology of Art

The second chapter discusses Vygotsky's views on the psychology of art, taking excerpts from his doctoral thesis, titled “The psychology of art.” Art and literature remained an important arena of life to which Vygotsky time and again referred in the most creative of ways. The references include Pushkin, Shakespeare, Stanislavaski, ranging from poetry and drama to acting. In this he emphasizes emotion as being an integral part of human consciousness, which is affected by works of arts. Hence the interrelation needs attention, for it can reveal something not only about art but also human consciousness, providing a door, as it were, to the human psyche. He criticizes the psychology of art which focuses either on the author or the receptors, and argues for taking the work of art as an objective social artifact that presents a system of stimuli to excite aesthetic reactions. By knowing the objective structure of the stimuli, we can reconstruct the structure of reactions. The virtue of this method lies in its objective and impersonal nature. He presents its formula thus: “from the form of the work of art, via the functional analysis of its elements and structure, recreate the aesthetic reaction and establish its general laws.”^[11]

He takes examples from Krylov, Pushkin and Shakespeare to demonstrate his point, making excellent use of the category ‘contradiction’ in and among different aspects of artworks and their effects in the receptor. This leads him to expound his own concept of catharsis, a term taken from Aristotle, arguing for its generalized application to the work of art as such. Recognizing the indefiniteness of this Aristotelian term, he nevertheless acknowledges that there is no other expression of the central fact of aesthetic reaction. He says, “aesthetic reaction as such is nothing but catharsis; that is, a complex transformation of feelings… it comprises an affect that develops in two opposite directions but reaches annihilation at its point of termination.”^[12] He also underlines the social significance of art, criticizing the theory of contamination: “Art is the social within us. The melting of feelings outside us is performed by the strength of social feeling, which is objectivised, materialised, and projected outside of us, then fixed in external objects of art which have become the tools of society.”^[13] It can be observed that, in certain ways, Vygotsky conception is active and dynamic, leading to an “explosion,” rather than simple, linear completion.

Vygotsky’s Theory of Defectology

Connected with his life-long interest in child development and pedagogy, Vygotsky came to another problem, which was at the time called defectology, dealing with the study of children with special educational needs. Here one sees perhaps the most sensitive and human side of Vygotsky. He recognizes the contributions of others, such as Stern, Adler, Binet and Rossolino, but subjects their theories to a scathing critique. These theories base themselves on an arithmetic and quantitative foundation that presumes a “normal” mode of development that the ‘defect’ falls outside of. In this framework, the ‘defect’ itself becomes the focus of study and education; the consequence of this is hyperfixation on the defect and closing off all other possible alternatives, resulting in trauma. However, Vygotsky’s starting point and central concern is the child itself, not the ‘defect’; he posits his own theory which sees the case of the so-called ‘defective’ child as one of simple difference, rather than a quantitative lack of ‘normality.’ This simple yet stunning move clears the way for all further richness of his theory which, as interesting as it is complex, is ever pregnant with practical consequences.

According to Vygotsky, a physical disability does not simply create a limitation, but simultaneously also creates heightened and intensified advancements. This is called by him the compensatory mechanism, which is not always successfully integrated as it depends on the severity of the ‘defect’ and the wealth of compensatory reserves, not to mention the enabling environment; nevertheless it always is there, no matter to whatever small a degree, as an active, creative process. It should be noted here that all this he was able to do not by sitting around like a speculative thinker in his study room, but actively working alongside his comrades with children with special needs, thus basing himself in the everyday life of experiences and experiments.

Hence he was able to show the validity of his views experimentally. In his experiments with deaf-blind children, he showed that they can learn language and use of signs and access higher mental functions, such as abstraction, concept formation, etc., though they lack so-called “normal” sensory perception. The philosophical implication of this is quite significant, in my opinion, in that it contributes to epistemology by critiquing any kind of crude empiricism which ascribes to a given number of senses an overdue value in explaining the process of rational, human thinking. It also, I believe, demolishes long-held skeptic arguments of the impossibility of any real and definite knowledge by resorting to the numbers and limitation of a given sensory organ; it does so by placing at the center not the crudely given sense-perceptions as such, but the activity of the specifically human kind. Students of philosophy again might find all these very interesting and helpful in dealing with the kind of questions they regularly deal with.

Vygotsky, Psychology, Signs, and Epistemology

In Chapter 4, the selections deal mainly with the methodological and theoretical problems associated with the constitution of the discipline of psychology. Vygotsky surveys other important theories, which include reflexology/behaviourism, psychoanalysis, gestalt psychology, personalism, etc., but expresses his dissatisfaction with them, considering them abstract and one-sided, and proposes his own positive statements. One can see in this chapter not only Vygotsky’s historical and theoretical erudition but also his active engagement with his predecessors and contemporaries, as well as his acute sense of judgement, in that he never simply rejects ideas, but subjects them a thorough critique, salvaging the ‘rational kernel’ in them and correctly accounting for the phenomena they rightly recognised but wrongly understood. He again returns to the idea of consciousness in all its complex development and interrelations as being the central concern of psychology. Seen as a unified structure, the mechanism of behaviour and consciousness are the one and the same according to Vygotsky. In a similar vein Spinoza said that "the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things"^[14] presented under only two different attributes. Ultimately the conclusion that Vygotsky reaches is one for arguing for having just one, unified, inclusive term ‘psychology’ denoting the subject matter. He again emphasises the importance of experiments and clinical studies, and once again appeals to the idea of ‘concrete universal’ being the starting point of theory.

In Chapter 5, the selections deal with the phenomenon of the discovery of the power of the use of the sign in children, associated with the use of tools. After critiquing others, Vygotsky’s own basic thesis is this: that the purely human form of practical and gnostic intellect begins when speech, as a sign, enters human activity as a mediating factor, as it helps humans “master the situation with the help of speech, after mastering his own behaviour,”^[15] forming the one and the same psychological complex along with tools or actions. The active role of speech becomes ever more significant with increasing complexity of thought, starts to precede action and acquire a planning role, and thus the mastery of speech also means mastery over objects and oneself. And yet it remains an integral historical process, involving reality, thought, and speech. Ilyenkov somewhere says the relationship between the three should be philosophically investigated, perhaps here one can find a best place to start.

In the next chapter, Vygotsky strives to achieve a unified psychological structure in a highly explicit dialectical fashion. The three basic concepts in relation to this problem he poses as higher mental functions, cultural development of behavior, and mastery of behavior by internal processes. He finds the Hegelian category of mediation extremely useful in delineating the use of tools and signs, which can be both seen as mediating activity, only that the former is directed outwardly and the latter inwardly, making this his point of departure. Firstly, then, in the development of higher mental functions, he again employs another Hegelian category–sublation–and shows how they develop neither in a plant or embryo-like manner in an evolutionist way, but are marked by ruptures, breaks, leaps, and revolutions. He says that lower mental functions are not done away with, but are present, with the development of higher ones, though now in a subordinated position, as for example, when voluntary attention is replaced with and as opposed to involuntary attention. One is here reminded of Aristotle's De Anima.

Secondly, the cultural development of behavior is thoroughly social in its nature. The pointing gesture illustration I shall leave for the reader to read for themselves, for I do not wish to take away the fascination of the description. The essential point, however, of course, is that the development of our behavior is always culturally and socially mediated that “we might say that through others we become ourselves.”^[16] Philosophically, it proves inimical to epistemological theories which establish a direct subject-object relation, excluding the essential social moment in the process. Speech, play, drawing, writing, are just so many ways in which it develops through a complex dialectical process, evolution, involution, ruptures, and revolutions, as a concrete whole. All this culminates into the appearance of will and self-control, in which the consciousness of necessity and acting in accordance with it constitutes, as it does for Engels, whom he cites, true freedom. Here, however, the editors point out one limitation of Vygotsky: they bring to the fore the fact that the promise of dealing with self-control is not fulfilled.

Pedology and the Brain

Chapter 7 presents to the reader Vygotsky the pedologist. In prominence in the early twentieth century, pedology, or child science, was an international movement in Europe and the US which advocated the study of the whole child. Vygotsky was one of its chief practitioners. He wrote and lectured regularly on the topic. He proposes several original concepts, but also modifies his position on and approach towards the study of the earlier discussed functions. He says that the

…idea is that in the process of development… it is not so much the functions which change (these we mistakenly studied before). Their structure and the system of their development remain the same. What is changed and modified are rather the relationships, the links between the functions. New constellations emerge which were unknown in the preceding stage… The development of such new flexible relationships between functions we will call a psychological system.^[17]

He also writes in a similar way about different parts of the brain working in a unified way, making an organic whole, as the bio-physical counterparts of the mental functions. Vygotsky sees the brain as that which physiologically corresponds to thinking in concept, and which also contains the possibilities and conditions for all the functions while not at all being structurally engraved beforehand.

Here it appears that the earlier idea of development has been complicated with that of interactions with given-ness of certain functions. However, his theory remains somewhat open-ended.^[18] He does provide an example to illustrate his new point by saying that, for the child to think means to recall, while for the adolescent to recall means to think. The development proceeds in this complex fashion and certain new features emerge which were absent earlier.

Related to this are Vygotsky’s discussions of the concept of transitional age(s), which are crucial from the standpoint of development. He takes notice of the sexual aspect as well, something to be underlined, as the domain of sexual aspects of development is more often than not almost axiomatically and exclusively assumed to be the sole province of psychoanalysis; it is refreshing to see an alternative view on the matter. Further, he considers the stage of concept-formation to be of perhaps the highest importance; it helps children become free from the immediacy of perception and know reality in a deeper way, gaining mastery over it and so over themselves as well. There is a further discussion of periodicity and turning points and critical ages, which he recognizes as three, seven, and fourteen.

Another interesting concept that he develops here is that of “lived-through” experience, which helps in explaining the different reactions of different people to the same set of conditions. This “lived-through” experience

...defines what will be the effect of this situation or this environment on the child. In this way, it is not in itself this moment or that moment, taken without regard to the child, but that moment, refracted through the [“lived-through” experience] of the child, which is able to define how that moment will affect the course of future development.^[19]

Play, Imagination, and Creativity

In Chapter 8, the broad topics discussed are play, imagination, and creativity. The phenomenon of play appears, according to Vygotsky, when long-lasting desires without the immediate possibility of realization emerge. Play provides an imaginative field where these desires can find their realization by separating thought from the immediate object and directing the action from the thought, rather than the object.^[20] A central Vygotskian idea makes its appearance for the first time here: the Zone of Proximate/Proximal Development or ZPD: “Play is the source of development and creates the zone of proximal development. Action in the imaginative field, in an imaginary situation, the creation of voluntary intentions and the formation of real-life plans and volitional motive.”^[21]

Next he dwells on imagination, saying that it is an active capacity of the mind developed along with thought and related to speech, freeing the mind from the given-ness and immediacy of perception. It is also closely connected with emotions. Most importantly perhaps is his remark that in active forms of activity, imagination is not subject to spontaneous emotional caprice but is consciously directed, leading him to directly relate it with conscious creativity, will and freedom, as it is through imagination that new things are consciously produced. Imagination, then, is an integral part of realistic thinker, but also different from it, and all of human culture could be said to be a product of human imagination, enabling human creativity with both feeling and thought as its drivers.

The Zone of Proximate/Proximal Development

Chapter 9 is completely devoted to the discussion of the zone of proximal/proximate development (ZPD). There is an interesting discussion by the editors as to the choice of words while translating the original Russian phrase. In coining this term, Vygotsky redefines the concept of ‘imitation’ as meaning a rational, imitative performance of a given intellectual operation based on understanding, rather than mere dull copying, though not independently but in collaboration with others. It provides the link to the zone of proximal development; what the child could do with a little guidance today, they can do independently tomorrow.

The idea, simply stated, is this: ZPD refers to the sphere existing between the hitherto developed and existing capabilities of the child and what the child could do in the (immediate) future; it is the space between the actual and the potential. Vygotsky explains the concept with a simple example: take, for instance, two eight-year-olds and give them tasks corresponding to their age, and one would see their real level of development. But if we proceed further and give them tasks which somewhat exceed their mental age and observe in what ways and to what extent they are able to solve them, we identify their ZPD. If it turns out that one child can handle tasks at, let us say, a twelve-year-old level and the other only ten-year-old level, this would give the ZPD of both as four years and two years respectively.

It is laden with immense practical pedagogical consequences. Vygotsky emphasized its significance for the ‘obucheniye,’ a Russian word combining dialectically the meaning of both teaching and learning. It can be a key to revolutionizing the whole process of development and learning, with a focus on the dynamic, potential future development and its actualization, as opposed to the traditional way, which focuses on testing and quantifying what the child can already do. The “future-directed” aspect of ZPD in pedagogical practices is certainly one of his greatest contributions, especially in the context where the old traditional ways of “teaching” are predominant.

Vygotsky on Thought and Speech

The last two chapters contain excerpts from Vygotsky’s magnum opus Thinking and Speech. It, however, centers around the concept of word meaning, which he takes as the unit of analysis, likening to the concrete universal referred earlier, as opposed to elements, which mean breaking and reduction of the organic phenomenon to the abstract elemental parts. Such a unit of verbal thinking he found in the word-meaning, which represents a basic dialectical unity of speech and thinking, whose manifold development and interrelations can provide a key to the understanding of many concrete phenomena of psychological developments of human beings.

He identifies three main sites of this development: namely, young children’s language development, concept formation and the internalization of language as inner speech. Very schematically and briefly, his idea is that the development of speech with word-meaning represents a major breakthrough in children as it is always a generalization which helps the child to form concepts and comprehend reality freed from the immediacy of perception. The process reaches its ultimate stage when language is fully internalized, resulting in inner speech, allowing the child to consciously think about his actions and his own self, mastering both the outer reality and his own nature. He also gives a lot of space to discussion of Piaget’s theory of language acquisition, critiquing it while also recognizing its empirical contribution. There is also an interesting discussion of everyday versus scientific concepts and their dialectical relationship.

Speech is then considered in its differential functional aspects–namely as written, oral, inner speech–with different structural determinations: the written lying at the one extreme characterized by most the elaborate form of speech and the written lying at the other extreme characterized almost solely by predicativity, with oral lying somewhere in between the two; the reason for this continuum lies in the difference in the targeted receptors and conditions.

The relationship between word and thought is discussed in great detail that would be difficult to summarize here. But briefly put, the relationship between the two is a two-way, reciprocal and dynamic one, and the word is not merely the embodiment of thinking but completion of thinking itself, although that does not erase the difference between the two. This could account for a very common phenomenon that we encounter; sometimes we find ourselves to be more clear and articulate in our thinking when we are expressing it as we think or vice versa. One of the great pleasures of reading Vygotsky is precisely this: that we find the most everyday relatable of things in the most abstract of theoretical exposition, making it ever full of life and relevance. Next he discusses the functional unity of consciousness and argues that it is always active as a concrete whole. He also emphasizes the difference between thought and speech in this aphoristic fashion: “what is contained in thought simultaneously unfolds sequentially in speech.”^[22]

The complex concretization of this thought happens when speech is finally converted into inner speech, where it is evaporated in thought and thinking happens in pure meaning characterized by the predicativity and predominance of sense over meaning. He again goes to literature, this time Gogol, for an illustration of his argument. Beyond this plane of pure thought lies the motivating sphere of consciousness in the form of wishing, feeling and willing, whence it all originates, as it were: “Of course life defines consciousness. Consciousness is only one of its moments. But once it has emerged, consciousness itself starts to define life.” And thus the book ends by reiterating, in the words of Marx, the ‘active side’ of human praxis, as any intelligent materialism would and should do.

Conclusion

These are then the main ideas that the anthology presents before us, starting from the earliest to the last of Vygotsky’s writings, attempting to adequately represent his thinking in a holistic and coherent manner. But there is, it seems, one obstacle on the path hindering the actualization of this goal. One gets a sense of Vygotsky the person, the psychologist, the theorist, and so on, but feels the conspicuous absence of Vygotsky the socio-political man and thinker, who was actively engaging and struggling with socio-political problems, especially as they related to problems of psychology. The other available anthology of Vygotsky in English,^[23] Rene van der Veer and Jaan Valsiner’s The Vygotsky Reader, does not have this drawback, whatever else its limitation might be. It includes chapters on “the socialist alteration of man” and “fascism in psychoneurology,” for example. In the present book, however, the socio-political is almost entirely missing, which certainly does not seem to have a justification in an anthology intending to adequately represent an holistic picture of his complex thinking and personality, for Vygotsky was no less a socio-political being and thinker than anyone else.

Nevertheless, the book certainly does succeed in presenting a complex picture of Vygotsky in a matter of one hundred and fifty pages and includes a great range of topics. The book shall be of great interest and help not only to students of psychology and Vygotsky, but to pedologists, "defectologist," pedagogists, linguists, aestheticians, and, of course, philosophers.

1. Myra Burns and John Richmond, eds., The Vygotsky Anthology: A Selection from His Key Writings (Routledge, 2024), xii.

   ↩

2. “Our concern was to identify longer extracts which provided a coherent statement of each part of the overall argument of the book, and to group the extracts in such a way that, together, they gave as full as possible an idea of the thesis of the book as a whole.” See: Ibid, xii.

   ↩

3. As Vygotsky himself admits at a few places in the present book itself.

   ↩

4. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, (Penguin Books, 1990), 283-284.

   ↩

5. The Vygotsky Anthology, 4.

   ↩

6. Ibid, 2.

   ↩

7. See Evald Ilyekov, The Ideal in Human Activity, (Marxists Internet Archive, 2009), 225-252, https://www.marxists.org/admin/books/activity-theory/ilyenkov/ideal-activity.pdf.

   ↩

8. The Vygotsky Anthology, 135.

   ↩

9. Ibid, 1.

   ↩

10. Ibid, 8.

    ↩

11. Ibid, 11.

    ↩

12. Ibid, 20.

    ↩

13. Ibid, 21.

    ↩

14. Baruch Spinoza, Complete Works (Ethics), (Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2002), 247.

    ↩

15. The Vygotsky Anthology, 59.

    ↩

16. Ibid, 78.

    ↩

17. Ibid, 89-90.

    ↩

18. “I do not yet have a general theoretical view that encompasses all the material and I would consider it a mistake to theorise prematurely.” See: Ibid, 90.

    ↩

19. Ibid, 98.

    ↩

20. However, the structure of the object does not completely disappear at this stage, as it does when symbolization appears, but acquires a subordinate position: only a stick can be a horse, not some piece of paper, as it might be put.

    ↩

21. The Vygotsky Anthology, 127.

    ↩

22. Ibid, 161.

    ↩

23. Rene van der Veer and Jaan Valsiner, The Vygotsky Reader (Blackwell, 1994).

    ↩