On L.S.Vygotsky's Conception of Concrete Human Psychology

Abstract

A manuscript written in 1929 by L.S. Vygotsky contains the conception of Concrete Human Psychology as a drama which was not developed further in Vygotsky's later works. Vygotsky got the conception from G.Politzer's idea of concrete psychology. Why did not Vygotsky develop this conception further in his later works? The main reason we have found is that Politzer constructed the concrete psychology based on his own psychoanalysis, not on Marxism. Politzer had not yet become a Marxist when he published his work entitled "Critique des Fondements de la Psychologie" (1928), which Vygotsky obtained and read. Already at the beginning of 1930s in the USSR, under the reign of Stalin, a national demand for immediate construction of Marxist psychology did not allow Vygotsky to abundantly create it by adopting any useful ideas based on non-Marxist principles. After all, Vygotsky did not develop the conception of Concrete Human Psychology based on Politzer's idea. However, in a theory of inner speech which is Vygotsky's latest work, we can find a good possibility that he might have been able to realize his original Concrete Human Psychology. Because we can regard the system of semantics of inner speech as a concrete from of personal psychological functions of the particular individual.