Bojóvitch - A luta pela psicologia concreta e o estudo integrado da personalidade

8/14/2019 Bojvitch - A luta pela psicologia concreta e o estudo integrado da personalidade

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Journal of Russian and East European Psychology,vol. 47, no. 4,

JulyAugust 2009, pp. 2858. 2009 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved.ISSN 10610405/2009 $9.50 + 0.00.DOI 10.2753/RPO1061-0405470402

L.I. BOZHOVICH

The Struggle for ConcretePsychology and the IntegratedStudy of Personality

This chapter from L.I. Bozhovichs book Personality and Its Formation

in Childhood(1968) extends Vygotskys analysis of the general crisis inpsychology to personality-oriented pedagogical psychology. The historical

background of attempts to solve the challenge of pedagogical psychology

is analyzed. Two main dilemmas prevent the solution: how to relate (con-

tradictory) empirical results to a holistic model of personality and how this

model relates to the real life of each person.

The emergence and crisis of pedagogical psychology

The history of psychology shows what a long and difficult path child andpedagogical psychology had to travel before it was able to offer any help

at all in solving the problems that confront pedagogy. Even today this help

is extremely inadequate, especially when it comes to working on the issues

faced by educators.

It is well known that psychology has long been primarily a theoretical

science. Only toward the end of the eighteenth century did it became an em-

pirical and, later, an experimental science. In 1879 Wilhelm Wundt set up an

experimental laboratory and in so doing essentially laid the groundwork for

the development of the new natural science of psychology.


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JULYAUGUST 2009 29

The introduction of experimental method into psychologywhich made

it possible to penetrate the inner structure of mental processes, to find thecauses behind mental phenomena, and to establish the laws governing these

changesplayed a decisive role in transforming psychology into a true sci-

ence. At the same time, tremendously important for the science of psychology

were the ideas concerning development that had penetrated it, ushering in the

study of child psychology.

Nevertheless, a great deal of time passed before child psychology was able

to begin serving pedagogical practice.

In the early twentieth century, the city of Paris asked the French psychologistAlfred Binet to use his psychological research methods to select pupils for a special

school. This was one of the first major tasks assigned to psychology in addressing

problems of practical life. And Binet fulfilled his commission. Of course, we know

today how flawed Binets aptitude tests were and that they served as a means of

discrimination against many children from segments of society with few cultural

or financial resources. However, it is important to note here that, by this time, child

psychology was sufficiently well-developed and well-recognized by science that

it was asked for practical assistance and had been able to provide it.

At approximately the same timeduring the first decade of the twentiethcenturypsychology had already made an organizational and structural entry

into pedagogical practice: a special branch of psychology had split off that

was now called pedagogical psychology.

This period saw the appearance of numerous works by West European,

American, and Russian scholars aimed at a particular problem: discovery of

the psychological foundations of the pedagogical process.

In 1906, the First All-Russia Congress of Pedagogical Psychology was

convened.1

It proclaimed that its primary mission was to find a way to applypsychological knowledge in the classroom.

Speaking to the congress, Academic V.M. Bekhterev lavished praise on

the achievements of contemporary psychology. He felt that since psychology

had begun to rework itself in the soil of experiment, it had rapidly acquired

theoretical stability that allowed it to apply the conclusions of this science to

various sectors of practical life, among which pedagogy occupied a place of

particular importance.

However, Wundts experimental psychology was unable to find the right

path for studying pedagogical phenomena and facts.

At first pedagogical psychology was not engaged in conducting its own


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Typical along these lines was the book by William James, Talks to Teach-

ers on Psychology.But my main desire, he wrote, has been to make themconceive . . . the mental life of their pupil . . . and it would have frustrated this

deeper purpose of my book to make it look, when printed, like a Baedekers

handbook of travel or a text-book of arithmetic. He also comments, Now, that

I have at last written out the lectures, they contain a minimum of what is deemed

scientific in psychology, and are practical and popular in the extreme.2

This sort of relationship between psychology and pedagogy was also evi-

dent at the 1906 All-Russia Congress of Pedagogical Psychology, where there

were almost no talks attempting to apply a psychological approach to solvingpractical problems associated with nurturing and teaching children. Most

papers were either on pedagogy (independent of psychology) or on general

and child psychology (independent of pedagogy), but the majority asserted

and argued the need for a connection between both sciences and proclaimed

hope for close collaboration between them. In the near future, the congress

resolution stated, society will build the rational cultivation and education of

children on the findings of experimental psychology.

However these hopes were not soon realized. Psychology remained on the

sidelines when it came to solving actual problems of pedagogy. It continuedto promote psychological knowledge and offer pedagogy findings and laws

that, while solidly established through experimentation, were deprived of

concrete applicability. Such a situation could not satisfy either psychologists

or pedagogues, and their dissatisfaction soon made itself known.

By the Second All-Russia Congress of Pedagogical Psychology, which was

convened just three years after the first (in 1909), some papers expressed disap-

pointment and doubt as to whether experimental psychology was capable of

helping solve real-life problems posed by pedagogical theory and practice.3

One featured presentation of the congress, a paper by professor N.D.

Vinogradov, expressed dissatisfaction with psychology particularly starkly.

Vinogradov said that if the results that psychology had given pedagogy in the

past years of intensive experimental work were to be summed up, it would

not amount to much:

[M]any of us, having heard our fill of papers from the area of psychology

and experimental pedagogy, will leave here with a rather gloomy sense

that in our everyday practical work we will have to be guided by the sametraditional pedagogy that we practiced in the past.4


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of study; it was not supposed to pose and solve general questions of experi-

mental psychology. Its task was to address problems suggested by pedagogy.The words of G. Miunstenberg, who felt that pedagogical psychology should

not live off crumbs from the table of experimental psychology, but instead

bake its own bread became a catchphrase at the congress.

The second reason that congress attendees attributed to the impotence of

pedagogical psychology was the inadequacy of its method. Many of them

spoke about the fact that complex mental processes that arise in the course of

upbringing and learning cannot be studied the same way that isolated mental

functions can. They have to be studied through combined activity.So even at that time a more or less correct course was being plotted in inves-

tigating what was preventing psychology from providing real assistance to peda-

gogical theory and practice. Of course the causes were not yet fully understood

(even today they are not always understood correctly), but the notion that the

study of isolated mental processes and functions cannot help solve pedagogical

problems was very important. True, participants in the second congress were

not aware that pedagogical psychology cannot bake its own bread, or rather

find its own object and method of study, until the general psychological theories

on which it was based underwent substantial changes.In other words, at that time it was still poorly understood that the failures

of pedagogical psychology that were so clearly evident during the second con-

gress were merely a reflection of the general crisis in psychology. This crisis

began in the early twentieth century and has still not been fully resolved.

The main problem with Wundts experimental psychology and all the other

psychological research that continued to bear its stamp was that in breaking

down the complex mental life of man into its simplest elements so that it could

be experimentally investigated, psychology lost its most important object ofstudythe actual living human personality.

Psychology as it has developed up to this point, wrote L.S. Vygotsky in

the 1930s, took a metaphysical approach to the internal world of man. . . . It

tore mental processes away from real personality as a whole and investigated

them in this isolated form. This is why it was doomed, willy nilly, to the study

of empty abstractions.5

Furthermore, it is important to note that psychologys failure could be

traced back to principle. Psychology claimed, for example, that the content of

the mind (the content of interests, goals, intentions, human experience, etc.)

should not be the subject of psychological research: it relinquished its rights


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into their component elements and experimentally investigate regularities

in the connections between these elements. Gradually, however, this sort ofempty abstraction ceased to satisfy psychologists and pedagogues. Having

discovered their complete inability to understand and explain complex forms

of human mental life, traditional psychology reached an impasse. This was

most evident when it came to pedagogical psychology. This is why the great

hope placed on pedagogical psychology during the first congress vanished by

the second, even though only a few years separated the two.

After all, in order to correctly organize learning, it is not enough to know

the particular features of a childs attention, memory, or thinking. Pedagogyneeds information about the psychological structure of schoolchildrens learning

activity and what laws govern the process by which they assimilate knowledge

(all the more so as different laws govern the acquisition of different sorts of

content). And in order to organize education correctly, we must know the age-

specific features of childrens personality: we must know what they aspire to,

what kinds of emotions they are experiencing and how they experience them,

the features of their moral sphere and the laws governing its development. In

other words, pedagogy needs the sort of knowledge that cannot be obtained using

the study of individual mental processes and functions, however painstakingthis study might be. The assimilation of knowledge and the process of forming

convictions have their own laws that are intrinsic to them as integrated processes,

and discovering these laws demands a particular approach, a particular method.

Furthermore, even when it is necessary to know how pupils attention, thinking,

or memory operates when they perform a specific learning task, this cannot be

achieved with knowledge of the general laws governing these processes. hey

must be studied within the context of the learning activity being performed, the

content and nature of which determine the specific features of these processesand the laws governing their performance.

Traditional psychology had particularly little to offer in solving the prob-

lems of education. Therefore, the need to fundamentally revise psychological

theory and the methodology of psychological research can be seen specifically

in these problems.

The only way psychology can contribute to the solution of these problems

is if it adopts child personality as the object of its study. However, psychol-

ogy that follows in the footsteps of traditional Wundtian psychology in

understanding its object and designing its methods is not well equipped tostudy personality.


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tied into the overall structure of childrens personality and not dependent on

their directedness, on the life experience that is determined by the specificcircumstances of their lives.

So, in order for pedagogical psychology to become not only an indepen-

dent science but also a science capable of solving vitally important practical

problems, it had to fundamentally change its overall theoretical position.

It had to change from a science focused on the isolated study of separate

mental processes and functions to a science focused on childrens specific

mental activity during actual pedagogical processes and on the particular

features of the integrated personality of the child, who is, as A.S. Makarenkoput it, is not only the object but also the subject of education.

The approach to studying personality in general and

individual psychology

The struggle for verisimilitude and concreteness in the science of psychology,

and, consequently, the striving to find new ways to study the psychology of

human personality, began around the dawn of the twentieth century; but it

really got under way in the 1920s and 1930s, when new psychological viewsand conceptions began to take shape.

During this period, all the great psychologists of the day (K.N. Kornilov,

L.S. Vygotsky, P.P. Blonskii here, and K. Bhler, E. Thorndike, E. Spranger,

S. Freud, K. Lewin, and many others abroad) spoke out with criticisms of

empirical psychology and attempted to come up with a new understanding

of both the object and method of psychological research. A great variety of

psychological schools emergedreflexology, reactology, cultural-historical

theory, behaviorism, gestalt theory, psychology of the spirit, Freudianism, andothers. All of them were aimed at finding new content for and new methods

of psychological investigation.

But not all of these works are of interest here. We will examine only those

that attempt to find new approaches to the psychology of personality and the

problems of educational psychology. Analysis of psychological investigations

into personality, which will be the focus of our discussion, is also not intended to

give an exhaustive description or even an exhaustive overview of this research.

Our intention is to look into the recent past in order to assess what has already

been achieved in this regard by our predecessors and to better understand the

efforts that even now must be made in order to break out of the confines of tradi-


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If we take even a cursory look at the history of research into the psychol-

ogy of personality, it becomes clear that, unlike other problems, which haveattracted more or less constant interest throughout the history of our science,

attention to the problems of personality has had its peaks and valleys. This

is partly related to the demands of society and partly to the logic governing

how the science of psychology has developed.

The interest in the psychological study of personality that arose during the

first quarter of this century was first and foremost a reaction to traditional experi-

mental psychology, which had become bankrupt in the eyes of practitioners.

The central problem of any psychology, wrote E. Stern in the 1920s,must be the problem of human personality. The psychology of elements has

proved itself useless when it comes to human personality; this is why it has

thrust this problem, for the most part, into the background, believing that sci-

ence has not yet matured to the point where it would be able to solve it.

However, The reason for this, Stern stipulates, lies not in the immaturity

of science, but in its main mindset: it is never possible to build an integrated

personality out of simple component parts that are alien to meaning (Sinn-

fremden); we should instead begin with the whole, with the structure.6

Similar sentiments were expressed by O. Tumlirtz during this period.Experimental research, he writes, at least to the extent it has adhered to

Wundts ideal, is insufficient since it has limited itself to formal examination and

furthermore to the study of mere formal elements. True, he notes, experimen-

tal psychology has become . . . immeasurably more productive than it was not

long ago; nevertheless, it is natural that, having become weary of researching

elements, the results of which were disappointing, psychology began to strive

toward expanding its perspective and methodological boundaries.7

What Tumlirtz had in mind here was the emergence during this periodof many new psychological theories that attempted to incorporate into psy-

chological research the content-specific nature of processes and the study of

the psychology of human personality: eidetics, personalism, characterology,

gestalt psychology, as well as Freudianism, which had a tremendous influence

on Tumlirtz himself.

In Soviet psychology of this period, Vygotsky came out with the assertion

that personality is the main object of psychological science. He wrote that

for child psychology:

[T]he greatest problem in all of psychologythe problem of personality

d it d l t till i l d Child h l i th


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ing the problem of personality within the confines of those methodological

boundaries where child psychology arose and took shape. Only by steppingdecisively outside the methodological limits of traditional child psychology

will we be able to study the development of the higher mental synthesis

that can rightfully be called the personality of the child.8

Along these same lines, there was a great deal of interest at the beginning

of this century in questions of individual psychology. Those working in this

direction felt that the study of human idiosyncrasies had the potential to be

the method able to overcome traditional psychologys lack of real-life ap-

plicability and abstractness.G. Allport saw this clearly in his own approach. He believed that Wundtian

psychology was too focused on explaining the uniformity of common psy-

chological phenomena. In so doing, it pushed to the side individual mental

features, viewing them as random bothers that interfered with the study of

what was most importantthe generalized human mind.

And so, Allport continues, within psychological science there gradu-

ally arose a new movement, the goal of which was to add to this abstract

portrait another, more life-like one. Through various means and from many

perspectives it tries to draw and explain the individual nature of the mind.

This new movement soon became well-known (in America) as the psychol-

ogy of personality.9

Contemporaries have assigned tremendous significance to all these attempts

to overcome the crisis of traditional psychology through study of personality,

its distinctive features and experiences.

Psychology, wrote the Freudian psychologist S. Bernfeld in 1926, is now

in a state of rapid transformation; it is breaking free of the fetters placed on it by

Wundt. It is no longer satisfied with the narrow field of peripheral phenomenathat constitutes the sphere of experimental psychology, and it is beginning to

grab hold of genuine mental phenomena as the object of its research.10

However over time it would become clear that the psychological research

into personality and its theoretical basis that emerged during this period were

not able to save psychology from the crisis that had befallen it. Furthermore,

some of these views even slowed scientific progress in studying personality

for quite a long time.

The inability to overcome the traditional atomistic way of studying person-ality was first and most clearly seen in the area of individual psychology.

During the first quarter of the twentieth century this direction (the various


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However, here as well, the approach to studying individual features re-

mains traditional.In some cases (this is typical of differential psychology), researchers selected

some individual personality property that could somehow be isolated from

the others (e.g., outgoingness or the lack thereof, aptitude, a tendency toward

perseveration, etc.), and research was done into the particular features of this

property among different people. Sometimes this was combined with study of

the interrelationship between features of this property and certain other proper-

ties and functions that were studied with the same degree of isolation.

In assessing differential psychology from the perspective of its role inovercoming the old Wundtian psychology, Allport rightly notes its shortcom-

ings. The interest in individual psychology, he indicates, just as in traditional

psychology, was focused on isolated functions, and not on the people who

possess these functions.

This, he states, is a bottom up approach using categories of mental

elements rather than a top down approach using categories based on how

they are organized and structured.11

But we find the same thing in other cases, where the object of study is the

individual personality with all its individual features. After all, it is not justa matter of whatto study, but of howto study it, from what position study is

approached.

In other words, however carefully we might study all the separate properties

of personality, if we study them in isolation, as independent phenomena, we

will never be able to understand personality that combines them, that connects

these separate isolated properties. Neither different ways of interrelating them

nor different ways of combining them will help.

It is impossible to understand the psychology of personality from aggregatesof separate elements because no given property, function, or aspect of personality

can ever be equated with itself. The forgetfulness or, for example, absentmind-

edness of one person is not the same as the forgetfulness and absentmindedness

of another, since the etiology of these features, their manifestation and their

role in the mental life of a subject can be absolutely different in one case as

compared with the other. Studying a particular property as something isolated

and independent, we are studying only the surface aspect of the phenomenon,

leaving its true psychological nature unstudied. This is why when we have

studied all the features of personality as such, we are still unable to assemblea living person out of them. G. Allport provides an eloquent illustration criti-


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that he displayed the highest level of auditory imagery, that he was plagued by

insomnia, loved music, loved hunting, and so on. Nevertheless, according toAllport, Toulouse, in assessing his own efforts, admitted that in the synthesis

of the qualities he identified the genius Poincar is demonstratively absent.

In this connection it can be said that however strange this may seem at first

glance, in differential psychology (all its varieties), the characterization of a

living, specific psychology is also absent, as it is in general psychology.

Personality is constituted here out of the aggregate of different properties,

while a true personality approach requires quite the opposite: examination of

each separate property in terms of personality as a whole.The need for this approach was expressed well by V. Keller, who said

that a given heart has more in common with a pair of lungs than with other

hearts. So, both in terms of its theoretical and its fundamental methodologi-

cal approach, individual psychology was not able to escape the confines of

traditional psychology and bring the study of personality any closer to solving

specific real-life problems.

So much space has been devoted to this question because even today we

see confusion between the psychological study of personality and the study

of individual human traits. Furthermore, many psychologists feel that thestudy of individual traits in and of itself makes psychological research more

concrete, more substantive, and brings it closer to life and to practice.

But at the same time, even in 1957, S.L. Rubinshtein correctly stated that

individual personality properties are not the same thing aspersonality prop-

erties of the individual, in other words, the properties that characterize his

personality.12And in 1959, in a small popular book for parents that was well

written on a good scientific level, V.S. Merlin offers a convincing argument

against confusing personality and individual traits. In particular, he points tothe fact that distinctive features of the mind are intrinsic not only to humans

but also to animals, who have different temperaments, different degrees of

intelligence, and so on.

Animals, Merlin writes, possess individuality, but not personality. Only

a human can be a personality. Individual features of the animal mind are a

result of animals adaptation to their environment. The environment leaves its

individual mark on the mind of each animal. But to the contrary, we understand

personality to be that which on its own leaves its impression on surrounding

reality as a result of the creative productive activity of a person.13

However, these are just individual assertions, individual points of view that


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and thereby sought to find ways and means to study personality (true, by the

second edition of his book he was no longer pursuing this work).14

It deserves mention that in his time Lazurskii undoubtedly played a pro-

gressive role in this regard. He, like many other psychologists of the time,

strove to bring scientific psychology closer to real life, to bring it down to

earth from its metaphysical heights and treat psychology as the science of

human personality.15

The method of natural experimentation that Lazurskii designed was also

progressive for that time. He permitted ordinary experiments investigating

individual mental processes to be incorporated into actual pedagogical situ-ations and in so doing freed them of the artificiality that they acquire in the

laboratory. Another undoubted achievement was Lazurskiis little star, which

vividly expressed the distinctive combination of the processes and functions

(or inclinations as Lazurskii put it) considered most important from the

perspective of empirical psychology. It could be said, therefore, that Lazur-

skiis characterology, while it did not overcome the traditional separation of

personality into individual functions and did not aim to do so, it nevertheless

made it possible, within the framework of empirical psychology, to provide a

description of individual traits of specific people and find typical correlationsfor different human characters.

But while we recognize the progressiveness of Lazurskiis work for early

twentieth-century psychologyhis natural experiments, including his little

starwe nevertheless feel that bringing his methods into the modern study

of personality does nothing to advance this research.

Psychology as science of the spirit* and its approach to

studying personality

Early in the century, the struggle for a concrete psychology and a psychol-

ogy of personality was also taking place in other arenas. In particular, E.

Spranger, E. Stern, and many other (primarily German) psychologists came

out with criticisms of the natural sciences approach and experimental method

of Wundtian psychology. They proclaimed study of the spiritual structure

of the integrated human personality to be the main object of psychological

investigation, but they were unable to find either the correct methodology or

technical approach to achieve this. Having challenged traditional empirical

psychology and renounced its natural scientific approach to studying mental


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phenomena, they disengaged the spiritual from the material and took a prin-

cipled stance against the possibility of scientific and especially experimentalstudy of the psychology of human personality.

Stern expressed this point of view clearly and concisely.

It seems to me that psychology that has an exclusively natural sciences

orientation is incapable of doing justice to the distinctiveness of spiritual

life; the spiritual is somehow substantially distinct from purely natural

existence and demands special examination. The natural sciences con-

stitute only one group of sciences, from which sciences of the spirit are

unquestionably independent. They address different problems and involve

different methods. . . .

It is true both that human beings are tied to nature, being subject to its

laws, and that studying them from this perspective using natural scientific

method is completely justified and essential. . . . However, the distinctive

feature of human beings is specifically that this biological existence is not

all of their being, that they are in every way able to rise above nature, that

they are involved in another sphere, which we call the kingdom of the spirit.

On the foundation of what we define as the natural principle, a special realm

rises up, the content of which can in no way be described as mere existence

in the natural sciences sense of this word.16

This is how the need for two psychologies emerged: one that approaches

the study of the mind from a natural scientific perspective, and another, a new

psychology, psychology as the science of the spirit, of the spiritual structure

of human personality that has its own object and method of study.

In this way, Sternhaving been unable to identify the essence of the human

minds social development and thereby find a way out of the impasse by scien-tifically restructuring Wundtian psychologyperformed an act of vivisection

on both psychologyseparating it into two different sciences (the psychology

of the body and the psychology of the spirit)and human beings themselves,

separating the natural, biological principle from the social and spiritual one.

Spranger developed very similar views regarding the impossibility of

understanding purely mental, spiritual phenomena by studying them using

natural scientific experimentation.

However, having broken out of the confines of natural scientific psychology,

he, like Stern, fell into another captivity, no less restrictive: the metaphysics of

W Dilthey As Vygotsky put it he like Stern was in a hurry to render unto


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In summarizing these attempts to overcome the atomism of the old psychol-

ogy and turn to integrated experiences, incorporate a content-specific aspectof mental phenomena into psychological research, and, most important, to

place spiritual life at the center of the psychological study of personality,

it is fair to say that they were unsuccessful.

In examining these attempts, which were particularly numerous during the

early twentieth century, certain Soviet psychologists and philosophers were

even inclined to assess them as reversing the achievements of psychology

during the previous stage. In particular, N.S. Mansurov in a critical essay

titled On Contemporary Psychological Science Abroad [O sovremennoipsikhologicheskoi nauke za rubezhom] presents things as follows: he believed

that at the dawn of the twentieth century, psychology, under the pressures

created by the demands of production, had made a decisive leap forward

in its development.17The most important thing from his perspective, was

that branches of psychological research had started to develop on the basis

of Wundts physiological experimental psychology. The development of

applied branches of psychology were extremely important, in Mansurovs

opinion, since the findings they generated reinforced materialism and promoted

triumph over idealistic thinking. He writes:

Idealist psychologists could not make peace with the situation taking shape.

Therefore, both as a reaction to physiological psychology on the one

hand and applied directions on the other, a number of idealistic schools

emerged within psychology at the end of the past centurythe Wrzburg

School, gestalt psychology, psychology as science of the soul and the

spirit, Freudianism, personalistic psychology, and so on. Adherents of

these schools actively spoke out against materialist ideas that have gained

acceptance among psychologists, in particular they object to the union ofpsychology and physiology and the natural sciences overall, to materialist

ideas concerning associations, and so on.18

For Mansurov, the fact that psychology of this period had again returned to

the tight embrace of philosophical idealism served as evidence that these direc-

tions had taken a step backward in developing the psychology of thought.

However such an assessment of the psychological seekings character-

istic of the early part of the century seem to us to be unfair in many ways,

not to mention the fact that they are fraught with inaccuracy and sweeping

accusations 19


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of practice. This is an issue we addressed in detail above, when we examined

the uselessness of pedagogical psychology and disappointment in it after thesecond congress of pedagogical psychology.

Thus, attempts to find a new object and means of investigation were not

a reaction to the practical successes of psychology, as Mansurov thinks, but,

quite the contrary, a reaction to its shortcomings.20

Specifically in trying to overcome the ineffectualness of the old psychol-

ogy, to bring it closer to life, to the possibility of understanding ordinary

human suffering and actions, psychology of this period constructed its own

theories. It strove, as Dilthey, who laid the philosophical foundation of psy-chology as the science of spirit, put it to go beyond the bounds of school

psychology and encompass the entire mighty reality of life, and in so

doing achieve an understanding of the complex manifestations of the human

spirit. For this reason, in terms of its intentions, strivings, and demands to

advance toward studying the psychology of personality and the integrated

processes intrinsic to it, the strivings we refer to here might perhaps deserve

to be described as progressive rather than reactionary phenomena within the

history of psychology.

Indeed, Spranger does sound progressive within the context of how thescience of psychology developed when he says that within the whole of

mental experience each part and each separate function carries out work

that is essential for this whole and that the structure and activity of every

function, in turn, are conditioned by the whole and, consequently, can be

understood only in terms of this whole. Furthermore, whether or not these

ideas are progressive must be judged not from todays perspective, but from

the perspective of that time, when psychology was striving to view any, even

the most complex psychological phenomenon, as a mechanical aggregate offeelings, the diversity of which could be reduced to an insignificant number

of simple associations.

Consequently, Stern and Sprangers undoubted contribution is their asser-

tion that higher forms of mental life cannot be reduced to more elementary

mental processes and that they identified specifically human forms of mind

as the special object of psychological research. Furthermore (and this should

be emphasized), they were by no means supporters of subjective psychology.

On the contrary, one of Sprangers central theses was that however accurately

we might reflect our subjective being in intro- and retrospection, we can-not explain the subjective world of human beings through such reflection.


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determine subjective life without penetrating subjective experience. Spranger

did not include physiologythe study of which, according to his own asser-tions, cannot explain complex mental phenomenaamong such extramental

connections; what he had in mind here was the defining influence of ideol-

ogy and culture, ethics and philosophy, on a persons mind. According to his

views, mental development is a single minds growing in to the objective

and normative sprit of a particular epoch.

Bearing these points in mind, we are unable to agree with Mansurov re-

garding the reactionary role supposedly played by psychological theories that

emerged around the turn of the century in the development of the science ofpsychology. On the contrary, from our perspective, they made certain contri-

butions to this development as pointed criticisms of Wundtian psychology, as

well as through a number of positive assertions, the most important of which

concerned the specific uniqueness of human psychology and the impossibil-

ity of reducing it to more elementary forms of mental life, to say nothing of

physiological processes. Also important was their attempt to establish a link

between human psychology and the spiritual culture of their epoch.

Of course those psychological teachings that recognize the substantiality of

the mind are profoundly idealist. But they stood for objective idealism and op-posed mechanistic materialism, and in this regard they were, in a sense, closer

to the truth than psychologists of the physiological school. By then, they had

already succeeded in seeing a psychological reality that could not be reduced

to the physiological and must be understood not so much in relationship to the

brain as in relationship to the historically emerging social environment and in

proclaiming this reality to be the central object of psychological research.

However, in recognizing a certain historical contribution to the develop-

ment of the science of psychology by early twentieth-century teachings onpersonality, we nevertheless must agree with Mansurov that in some ways

they were taking a step back from the scientific research that distinguished

Wundtian associative psychology. And this step was by no means insignificant,

since it concerns the understanding of the main methods of psychological

science. After all, associative psychology was also experimental psychology;

this is actually why it became associativeit was attempting to approach the

study of complex phenomena of mental life strictly scientifically, observing,

therefore, the experimental method of the natural sciences. In advancing the

idea that complex processes cannot be reduced to elements and demandingthat the human mind must be studied as a whole, Spranger and Stern jetti-


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JULYAUGUST 2009 43

In summing up our description of the attempts by certain prominent early

twentieth-century psychologists to bring the study of mans spiritual worldto the forefront of psychology, we conclude that they did not achieve their

objective. They correctly pointed to the impossibility of reducing the human

mind to elementary processes or even to physiology; they correctly demanded

that personality be studied as a whole, and that every part of the whole can

be understood only in association with the function that it performs within

that whole. But they did not find the correct methodology for understanding

the specificity of human psychology or the correct scientific path toward its

study.A very interesting attempt to surmount the problem of two psychologies

that emerged over the course of psychologys development as a science that

has yet to be adequately appraised was undertaken from a Marxist perspec-

tive by Vygotsky. He set out to apply experimental research to closing the

gap between elementary and higher mental processes that was opened up

by empirical psychology. Empirical psychology, Vygotsky asserted, either

refused altogether to distinguish between lower and higher mental processes

and functions, or mechanically divided the first from the second, creating a

separate psychology and research for each of these two layers.The dilemma that empirical psychology saw as fatal and unavoidable,

Vygotsky wrote, consists in choosing between physiology of the spirit or

metaphysics. Psychology as a science is impossiblesuch is the historical

conclusion of empirical psychology.21

In confronting the crisis that had arisen in empirical psychology, Vygotsky,

unlike other psychologists, did not reject the spiritual world of personality

as completely unknowable or inaccessible to the tools of scientific psychol-

ogy. He also did not reject experimental method in psychology as beingsupposedly incapable of discovering the psychology of human personality.

He undertook the restructuring of the very science of psychologyits theory

and its methodso that it would be able to trace the path along which

child personality develops. Vygotskys entire scientific career consisted in

his using the most precise psychological experiments based on a specially

developed double stimulation method to demonstrate the lawgoverning

the transition from natural mental processes, which are also characteristic

of animals, to complex forms of mediated human mental activities. He thus

fundamentally solved for psychology the same problem that Charles Darwinsolved for biology: he bridged the gap between the mind of the animal and


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have time to get to the bottom of the psychology of personality and did not

construct a finished theory of its formation, his research into higher mentalfunctions dealt a devastating blow to idealist theories of personality and at the

same time made it possible to overcome the atomistic approach of Wundtian

psychology. In so doing, he laid the theoretical groundwork for research into

the psychology of personality.

Freuds approach to the psychology of personality

An important attempt to study the psychology of personality around the turnof the century was made by Sigmund Freud and his followers. Although

Freudianism was remarkably consistent in ignoring everything that had been

established by psychology before him or without him and was completely

focused on Freuds own theories and findings, it nevertheless played and even

now plays an exceptional role in the construction of personality theory and

in how this theory is designed.

At the same time, criticism of psychoanalysis continues, primarily from

the standpoint of those negative (philosophical and social) consequences of

Freuds theories, rather than from the perspective of the scientific inadequacyof the psychoanalytic conception of personality on which these theories are

based. Perhaps this is why our psychology does not make use of Freudian-

isms experience studying personality, both positive and negative, or take full

advantage of the essential lessons it offers.

However, psychoanalysis is perhaps the most important attempt to under-

stand and explain the psychology of an actual person. Therefore, regardless

of the fact that this explanation relates in essence (whatever the Freudians

themselves might say) only to pathological forms of human experience andbehavior, psychoanalysis cannot fail to have a tremendous influence on many

areas of science, art, and practical life, including, of course, education.

Of all the psychological research into personality that we have discussed

so far, Freudianism is distinguished by having a method that is appropriate to

its theory. This method permitted it to delve deeply into the complex web of

human experience, extract a system of psychological findings, and somehow

even test the accuracy of the theories being advanced in practice. Freudians

themselves were proud of the fact that they had a genuine research method, as

it seemed to them, and they constantly pointed to this advantage. When Alfred

Adler broke with Freud over a number of essential questions and attempted


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JULYAUGUST 2009 45

was harshly persecuted by official science and public opinion, Freud viewed

any disagreement among his followers as betrayal of scientifically establishedfacts and a sign of weakness and treachery.

This was also Freuds position when he was reproached for exaggerating

the role of sexual attraction and for his appalling portrayal of the wellsprings

of human behavior. He wrote:

Now it is inherent in human nature to have an inclination to consider a thing

untrue if one does not like it. . . . Thus society makes what is disagreeable

into what is untrue. It disputes the truths of psychoanalysis with logical and

factual arguments; but these arise from emotional sources and it maintainsthese objections as prejudices against every attempt to counter them. We,

however, Ladies and Gentlemen, can claim that in asserting this controver-

sial thesis we have had no tendentious aim in view. We have merely wished

to give expression to a matter of fact which we believe we have established

by our painstaking labors.22

In one of his lectures on the question of why he reassesses the etiological

role of sexual attraction in neurotic diseases and does not consider the role

of other feelings, Freud replied:I do not know why other, nonsexual mental disturbances should not lead to

the same results, and I would have nothing against this; but experience shows

that they have no such significance. . . . This position was not established

by me theoretically. . . . I was compelled to adopt this point of view when

my experience became richer and I penetrated the subject more deeply.23

Not only Freud himself, but his disciples were deeply convinced of the

scientific genuineness of the psychoanalytic method and in the full validity

and objectivity of its conclusions.Such was the attitude toward psychoanalytic method and the purity of

psychoanalysis as a scientific system among the Freudians themselves. And

in a certain sense they were right: whatever problems there might have been

with it, psychoanalysis studied integral mental experience rather than separate

elements devoid of real-life meaning, and, using active intervention, doctors

practicing psychoanalysis often helped people rid themselves of difficult

experiences and obsessive behavior. This gave Freudians a basis for believ-

ing that the ideas they were advancing (on the basis of which they built theirtherapeutic practice) were scientifically grounded and valid and to dismiss all

th h l i l th i f lit th t b d h th t


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Proud as Freudians were of their method, it is this method that in a certain

sense led Freudianism astray. Psychoanalysis turned out to be a deceptive re-search technique: it delivered into Freuds hands many valid facts regarding the

source of neurotic diseases and helped cure these diseases; he demonstrated that

even in a healthy mind, deep psychoanalytical probing can find foci of disease

that explain the pathology of daily life. Psychoanalysis thus created an illu-

sion that it had finally found an objective method for exposing the essence of

human experiences and behavior, their roots, deeply hidden from immediate

observation. The huge demand placed on this new psychology to create, on

the one hand, a psychological conception of personality and, on the other, ascientific research method appropriate to its tasks, led Freud and his follow-

ers to stretch their conclusions beyond what the science could support. As a

result, it was not that false psychological ideas about personality led Freud to

his distorted view of man, but rather that his ideas on personality were built on

a foundation of mistaken interpretations of findings derived using psychoana-

lytic methods. Having arisen as a way to treat and explain neurotic symptoms,

psychoanalysis eventually began to be viewed by Freud and his followers as a

method for exposing the inner world and behavior of healthy people, and later

as an all-encompassing principle explaining the course of humanitys social andcultural development. Psychoanalysis was thus transformed from a concrete

psychotherapeutic method into a biologically based mechanistic theory of hu-

man personality and then into a metaphysical philosophical system.

Once it became an ever-present theoretical conception, psychoanalysis

began to provide slanted interpretations of every possible phenomenon of

reality, to squeeze facts into the Procrustean bed of its theories and, in so

doing, it was gradually transformed from a science into an antiscientific,

speculative system, and its interpretation cast the human mental world inmonstrously distorted form.

And this is understandable: due to its origins and nature, when psycho-

analytic method was used to delve into the mental world of even healthy

people, it inevitably found only what constitutes the source of pathological

phenomena, specifically, the inappropriate needs and desires that people

themselves suppress.

Such a method led Freud to the sorts of errors that were characteristic of

him. Always dealing with needs and strivings taken from the depth of the

human subconscious and rejected by people themselves (needs and strivingsthat, evidently, really do play a significant role in mental and nervous disease),


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JULYAUGUST 2009 47

unappealing human essence or all those infantile emotions disguised through

mimicry that psychoanalysis is sooner or later bound to expose.Having constructed such a theory of human personality, Freud found him-

self in its clutches. He often encountered findings that obviously did not fit

into his system of psychoanalytic interpretations. But this could not change

Freuds overall perspective. Such findings were pointed to by his disciples

who subsequently left psychoanalysis (they had used them in an attempt to

dispute Freuds theory). It must be acknowledged that Freud himself never

challenged findings that contradicted his understanding: he was too honest and

great a scholar for that. But he performed a rather elaborate mental balancingact in order to reconcile these findings with his theory.

Among such findings should be included the fact that the unconscious

comprises not only those feelings and impulses that humans reject but also

very elevated and socially and morally valuable thoughts and experiences.

About this, Freud says:

Accustomed as we are to taking our social or ethical standard of values

along with us wherever we go, we feel no surprise at hearing that the scene

of the activities of the lower passions is in the unconscious; we expect,moreover, that the higher any mental function ranks in our scale of values

the more easily it will find access to consciousness assured to it. Here,

however,psychoanalytic experience disappoints us[emphasis added]. On

the one hand, we have evidence that even subtle and intricate intellectual

operations which ordinarily require strenuous concentration can equally be

carried out preconsciously and without coming into consciousness. Instances

of this are quite incontestable; they may occur, for instance, during sleep,

as is shown when someone finds, immediately after waking, that he knows

the solution of a difficult mathematical or other problem with which he hadbeen wrestling in vain the day before.

There is another phenomenon, however, which is far stranger. In our

analyses we discover that there are people in whom the faculties of self-

criticism and consciencemental activities, that is, that rank as exception-

ally high onesare unconscious and unconsciouslyproduce effects of the

greatest importance[emphasis original]. . . . But this new discovery, which

compels us, in spite of our critical faculties, to speak of an unconscious

sense of guilt, bewilders us far more than the other and sets us fresh

problems. . . . If we come back once more to our scale of values, we shallhave to say that not only what is lowest but also what is highest in the ego


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this? In his later works, Freud divided the ego into two parts: the ego and the

superego. Furthermore, he made the first part completely conscious, capableof reason, guided by the principle of reality, while the second part is fused,

by means of a complex and very doubtful series of assumptions, with the un-

conscious id. The superego, in Freuds opinion and in terms of its content and

function, is the very best, that which is highest within human beingstheir

ideal, their conscience. However it owes its origins to the Oedipus complex

and, therefore, remains unconscious.

To somewhat simplify it, but by no means distort its essence, we would

summarize the course of Freuds reasoning as follows. If erotic attractioncannot be satisfied through possession of its object, it can somehow imbibe

this object into itself, identifying with it and thus achieving satisfaction. The

emergence of the superego is attributable, in Freuds opinion, specifically to

this mechanism: it is formed as the result of childrens identification with the

parent toward whom a libidinous desire is felt. The person with whom children

identify thus becomes for them the highest moral authority, an example to be

imitated that constitutes the essence of their ideal ego. It was on the basis of

this analysis that Freud gave those critics who asserted that within man there

must be a higher principle the response cited below. This higher principle,from his point of view, is the superego (or the ideal ego), which expresses

childrens special relationship to their parents.

When we were little children, he wrote, we knew these higher natures,

we admired them and feared them; and later we took them into ourselves. The

ego-ideal, Freud continues, therefore, is the heir of the Oedipus complex

and thus it is also the expression of the most powerful impulses and most

important vicissitudes experienced by the libido in the id. By setting up this

ego-ideal the ego masters its Oedipus complex and at the same time placesitself in subjection to the id.26

Consequently, while the ego remains a representative of the external

world, the superego becomes the property of the unconscious. It is also its

internal and very despotic censor. Furthermore, the superego is not content,

according to Freuds thinking, with power over only the unconscious id. It is

no less severe and strict with the ego itself if the egos desires should come

into conflict with the moral strivings of the superego.

Such is the psychoanalytic theory of the origin of human ideals and convic-

tions, moral strivings and feelings. According to this theory, the role of the father

is eventually transferred to teachers and other authority figures, and sexual at-


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JULYAUGUST 2009 49

essence. It was a small, conscious island in the world of unconscious raging

passions, and the function of consciousness, in essence, was limited to that ofmere censor, consciousness served only as a means of inhibiting infantile desires.

Nevertheless, this was something taken from reality and contrasted with the hu-

man instinctive principle. Of course on this level as well, Freuds psychoanalysis

was deeply and essentially mistaken: it viewed people biologically, deprived

their mind of genuine development, presented their spiritual world in distorted

form. But findings that did not fit into Freuds initial conception forced him

subsequently to destroy the sole social island within his theory. His interpreta-

tion saw what is most socially valuable in peopletheir ideals, moral views,and convictionsas no more than a form of existence for those same infantile

sexual instincts, just a special means of satisfying them.

But given such an understanding, Freuds theory, which had been clear up to

this point and well-constructed in its own way, becomes absolutely muddled.

The understanding of the unconscious as a world of amoral, base emotions

becomes muddled, since moral motives for human behavior also start to enter

into it. The concept of censorship as a conscious antagonist of amoral needs

and impulses is muddled, since the subjects morality itself turns out to be

the property of the id. Understanding of conflicts that arise between differentaffective tendencies also becomes muddled, since it is by now impossible

to sort out from what reservoir of energy in the final analysis a particular

instinct draws its strength and just what people repress and in whose name

they repress it.

But Freud preferred to live with this lack of clarify and muddle rather

than have the edifice of psychoanalysis that he worked so hard to erect come

crashing down under the weight of facts.

What we describe here shows how Freud wound up being a slave to hisown system of ideas. One might think that, having been confronted with such

striking and indisputable findings as the presence in humans of very power-

ful moral motives of behavior, of which they themselves are not conscious,

and having uncovered another content of the unconscious sphere that has

no relationship to its instinctive impulses, Freud should have fundamentally

reevaluated the main tenets of his teachings, first and foremost everything

that relates to understanding the unconscious.

The facts introduced above ought to generate doubt in any unbiased scholar

concerning the original theory of the origins, content, and function of theunconscious and inspire them to develop new hypotheses: is it true that the


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moral motivations for behavior due to their decisive importance for people as

social beings are acquired so immediately and organically that they take onthe appearance of instinctive impulses that are independent or even resistant

to consciousness? If such is the case, there is no need to portray them as a

modification of biological urges in order to explain their power and autonomy.

Instead what we have is the need to discover the mechanism that forms them,

in other words to determine the circumstances and human behavioral and

activity structures that lead to their being assimilated without awareness or

acquire the characteristic of being unconscious.

The assumption suggests itself that perhaps no affective tendencies thatconflict with other such tendencies are allowed into consciousness if this

conflict is painfully experienced.

After all, we are well aware of instances when people, due to particular

circumstances or ideas, decide to commit a crime, but cannot carry it out due

to immediate inner resistance based on a deeply and organically assimilated

moral principle.27

In Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky offers a literary analysis of con-

scious amoral and unconscious moral urges, as do many modern writers who

portray Nazis unable to endure their own barbarity committed in the name ofFascist ideals. In the end, perhaps the realm of unconscious mental processes

and experiences is much broader and more multilayered than Freud imagined,

and the sphere of the unconscious that Freud probed using psychoanalytical

methods is just an insignificant portion of it that is not essential to normal

human behavior? If this is the case, then we would have to find some other

mechanisms and laws to explain the origins of unconscious mental processes

and discover what their content and function really are.

However, all these questions shake the very foundations of Freudian teach-ings and he does not even raise them. Confronted with findings that contradict

his views, Freud did not choose to reexamine his views, but to adapt them

to these findings.

In so doing he made assumptions that are absolutely not supported even by

the findings of psychoanalysis. For example, he was forced to assume that not

only neurotics, but all people are afflicted with the Oedipus complex. Freud

had absolutely no factual basis for making this assumption, but he was forced

to make it, since otherwise the theory he had advanced about the origins of

unconscious moral strivings and feelings (which, to a certain extent, all peoplepossess) could not hold together, and, consequently, the entire psychoanalyti-


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JULYAUGUST 2009 51

then why does it develop and form primarily during young adulthood and

even during adulthood, instead of during early childhood as might havebeen expected from the perspective of the explanations offered by Freud

himself? He also was completely silent about the fact that perfectly rational

and productive processes of thinking can be unconscious. We are left with a

pillar of psychoanalysisthe theory of the unconsciousthat is irreparably

undermined by facts.

But Freud had no desire, and was unable, to reject his idea about the origins

of the unconscious and its function and role in human life. He understood that

if that idea was destroyed, the entire psychoanalytic theory of personality andFreudianism in general as social and philosophical theory would follow.

Let us return now to analysis of the methods of psychoanalytical research

into personality and the scientific validity of findings that Freud used to justify

applying conclusions concerning neurotics to normal, healthy people.

It seems safe to say that he had no scientific grounds for this; this trans-

ference was baseless. However Freud himself was convinced that all his

conclusions were built on factually solid ground: first of all, on the basis of

interpretations of dreams, and second, on analysis of peoples errorsslips of

the tongue, slips of the pen, misplacement of things, stumbles, and so on.Let us look more closely at the first method, which is central to psycho-

analytic research.

Let us assume, for arguments sake, that we accept the premise that tech-

niques for interpreting dreams are legitimate and convincing and that we join

Freud in concluding that during sleep, when activity in the cortex is greatly

reduced, people truly are freer and some primitive needs and desires become

active.

But this begs the questiondoes this really justify the contention that thebehavior and activity of normal, healthy people in an awakened state will be

guided by these primitive needs and desires? What exactly is this deep, genu-

ine essence of humans? Freuds conclusion is not justified primarily from a

logical perspective, since it involves circular thinking: in order to prove that

conscious processes are not defining in human life and activity and that in

fact unconscious, instinctive processes predominate, people are studied in a

state where these very conscious processes are turned off.

And this conclusion is even less justified when examined from the per-

spective of facts.In introducing the results of his analysis of those few dreams of normal


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What? says one of them, you want to convince me from this dream

that I regret the money I have spent on my sisters dowry and my brotherseducation? But that cannot be so. I work entirely for my brothers and sisters;

I have no other interest in life but to fulfill my duties to them, which, as

the eldest of the family, I promise our departed mother I would do. Or a

woman dreamer would say: You think I wish my husband was dead? That

is a shocking piece of nonsense! It is not only that we are most happily

marriedyou would probably not believe me if I said thatbut his death

would rob me of everything I possess in the world.

In other words, Freud himself claims that those to whom he tried, basedon analysis of their dreams, to attribute certain unconscious desires felt in

themselves the precise contrary of the wish we have interpreted to them and

. . . are able to proveto us by the lives they lead that they are dominated by

this contrary wish.29

It follows that Freud himself understood perfectly well that people in their

real lives do not feel that which dream analysis exposes in them, and, most

important, they live and act not in accordance with the laws of unconscious

needs and impulses, but in accordance with absolutely different laws: they are

guided by social motivations and perfectly realistic, practical considerations.

And truly, if people in a state of wakefulness began to act on the affective logic

that governs their dreams, they would very quickly be confined to psychiatric

hospitals, since under the conditions of normal life in society they follow (and

can do nothing but follow!) absolutely different motivations. So why must we

consider the true human essence to be that which, let us assume, really does lurk

in the realm of the unconscious, rather than that which constitutes real human

life? And why should we view the reluctance Freuds subjects feel to acknowl-

edge that they have the base impulses he attributes to them based on dreamanalysis as something other than the natural protestation of normal people who,

through their entire way of life, demonstrate that they have different motivations

that really condition their behavior, rather than as resistance that supposedly

serves to confirm the truth of psychoanalytic interpretation?

Even if we follow the logic of the material that Freud had at his disposal, we

must reach the exact opposite conclusions to those that he himself reaches. A

normal, healthy person in a state of wakefulness lives and acts in accordance

with absolutely different laws than a sleeping person or someone afflicted

with neurosis or in some other pathological state (Freud had good reason to

call his work analyzing erroneous actions The Psychopathology of Everyday


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JULYAUGUST 2009 53

an essential role either in shaping personality or in shaping behavior. Freud

had no scientific basis for claiming that in relation to the id, the ego is likea horseman who must rein in the superior strength of the horse and who, if

he does not want to part with that horse, is forced to lead it where it wants to

go.30The primacy of the deep-seated pathology of infantile feelings over all

conscious life in humans, its decisive role in forming human character and

moral worldviewthis is a Freudian myth that has no scientific basis. Allport

was right when he said that Traits and interests, like plants, are capable of

casting aside the shell of the seed from which they grew. Their direction of

growth is upward into the future and downward into the past. And he was rightin three ways when he claimed that the full complexity of personal motives

and traits cannot be understood simply by the art of deep-sea diving.31

However those who adhere to Freuds theories have always had and still

have one last argument: if psychoanalytic theory is false, then how does psy-

choanalysis that is based on these theories cure the ill and rid healthy people

of painful pathological feelings?

In this context, let us examine Freuds therapeutic successes and the extent

to which they serve as proof of the correctness of his psychoanalytic theories.

One wonders: what could possibly be more convincing proof of a theory thantesting it in practice? However for such practice to be convincing it has to

be proved that it is unambiguously associated with the theory on which it is

supposedly based, that is, that this practice realizes specifically this system

of views and its success cannot be attributed to any other factors that have

not been sufficiently taken into account.

Before we analyze Freuds psychotherapy from this perspective, it should

be noted that Freuds treatment success, while significant, has nevertheless

been greatly exaggerated. It deserves mention that psychoanalytic treatmentcan take years and that it by no means always ends with a cure, and in those

cases where a cure is achieved, it often does not last. Freud himself had good

reason for reaching the pessimistic conclusion that the instincts on which

neurosis is based are so strong and untamable that no psychoanalysis is ca-

pable of changing them.

The first thing one notices upon examining psychotherapeutic practice treat-

ing neurosis is that it achieves a positive treatment result both in cases where

erotic impulses are supposedly repressed and in cases where some other sort

of feeling is the presumed cause. Two conclusions can be drawn here: eitherin both cases we are really dealing with feelings of a different nature (which


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although Freud himself tried to dispute it, marshaling completely arbitrary

explanations to this cause.However what seems more interesting to us are certain ideas associated

with possible explanations of his therapeutic success that differ from those

offered by Freud. Some of these considerations have been pointed out by J.B.

Furst.32According to Furst, any system of psychotherapy involves inculcating

certain attitudes in patients toward the environment, toward themselves, and

toward those phenomena that are disturbing them. The doctor-psychotherapists

are able to cure their patients suffering from neurosis because they help them

adopt a certain attitude toward their suffering, that is, shape how they feelabout its cause in order to eliminate the difficulties that confront them.

The patient, Furst writes, is sent to the doctor specifically to hear an

assessment and receive help in solving his personal problems.33

If we approach psychoanalysis from this perspective, if we take its tech-

niques into account (specifically the fact that psychoanalysts are constantly

and persistently interpreting for their patients the true meaning of what they

are saying and gradually impose a certain understanding of the causes and

sources of their suffering on them) and if we take into account that Freuds

psychotherapy often takes years, then it becomes obvious that here we aredealing with a certain reeducation of the patient. Recovery may come due

to the fact that psychoanalysts instill in their patients their own view of the

life situation that triggered the corresponding affective conflict and provide

them the opportunity, although at times by following a false path, to escape

their conflicted state. In short, perhaps the cure offered by psychoanalysis

is analogous to the cure religion might offer. Psychoanalysis becomes

something akin to patients religion, a religion that offers a way out of inner

conflict. This sort of treatment mechanism is supported by the followingtestimony from Furst.

According to Furst, a patient who undergoes a course of psychoanalytic

treatment as a rule becomes more individualistic and egocentric than he

was beforehand. He has much less understanding of the outside world and its

people; he is convinced of male superiority, obsessed with a mythical under-

standing of gender, he has been inculcated with a philosophy and worldview

that has focused his attention inward.34

In Other words, the patient who has been subjected to long-term psycho-

analysis becomes a person with a particular mindset: it is as if he embodies

the traits of Freuds image of man.35


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JULYAUGUST 2009 55

approach to study of human personality as a whole. As we continue, in con-

junction with discussion of our own research findings, we will refer back tovarious aspects of the teachings of Freud and his followers. For now we would

merely like to emphasize that analysis of just one methodological aspect of

psychoanalytic research and treatment convinces us that neither Freud nor

his comrades-in-arms had any basis for vaunting the scientific validity and

soundness of their claims. From this perspective, psychoanalysis is extremely

uneven. Freud undoubtedly succeeded, mainly through clinical practice, in

identifying a certain system of psychological phenomena and their mecha-

nisms specific primarily to people afflicted with neurosis. Freuds main con-tribution, it seems to us, is his effort to discover the dynamic of motivational

forces governing human behavior, their interdependence and conflict. Also

very important is the discovery of a realm of unconscious mental processes

and their effect on behavior.

Of course, neither the presence of intense affective tendencies and the

pathogenic nature of their conflict nor the significance of unconscious pro-

cesses for human mind and behavior were anything new.

Even before Freud and, most important, independent of him, certain find-

ings were known relating to this area that were achieved both in experimentalclinical research and through hypnosis. However the systematic development

of this entire set of questions, the consolidation and generalization of materials

obtained in the process, the discovery of a number of specific psychologi-

cal laws, and, most important, the attempt to understand everyday human

experience from the perspective of these laws are undoubted contributions

of Freud. And however we might criticize psychoanalytic theory overall, in

our specific psychological ideas, Freuds theories have played a positive role

in the search for a scientific approach to the psychological study of humanpersonality and what people actually experience in life.

We have analyzed and criticized Freuds theories in such detail because of

the tremendous popularity Freudianism has gained. It is no longer simply a

current in psychiatry or psychology, it is a school of philosophy that determines

the worldview of its adherents, their views on humanity and its activity, on

the fate of society, their attitude toward everything that surrounds them and

toward themselves and the entire structure of their sense of the world. And

even though Freud considered himself only a scientist and nowhere explic-

itly formulated his ideological and political positions, they are objectivelycontained in his teachings, which are deeply reactionary in essence, pessi-


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from Freudianisms findings or even learning from its mistakes. Furthermore,

Freudianism turned many scholars against not only psychoanalysis itself butalso the problems associated with these theories. For a long time, the problems

of the affective life of human beings was forgotten in the Soviet Union, along

with the problems of the unconscious and its relationship to consciousness.

Human beings were represented in one dimensionthe dimension of con-

scious mental processes and actions, and for this reason they were studied

rather one-sidedly. And peoples conscious activity, due to the fact that it was

being viewed in isolation from needs and impulses, from feelings, from the

entire sphere of the mental processes that take place outside of awareness,was incorrectly interpreted. The genuine and mighty role of consciousness as

a source of specifically human activity was not sufficiently fully psychologi-

cally discovered; the result was an intellectualization of mans entire mental

life divorced from the laws that govern it.

Only now, in recent years, research has begun to appear in Soviet psychol-

ogy that is focused on the study of the unconscious, affective phenomena that

Freud interpreted in his own unique way. However, these studies have been

very limited in number. Analogous separate studies are being conducted in

other areas, primarily psychopathology. So far, this research is proceedingpiecemeal, unsystematically, and has yet to be united by a common psycho-

logical theory of personality. It is therefore difficult for it to stand up to the

onslaught of theories and facts coming from foreign psychologists.

This situation in psychology has a negative effect on pedagogical theory

and practice. Pedagogy has overemphasized the influencing of childrens

conscience, exaggerated the role of the word and verbal persuasion, and

underemphasized the organizing of childrens experience, the formation of

their needs, impulses, and feelings.

Notes

1. Trudy Pervogo Vserossiiskogo sezda po pedagogicheskoi psikhologii (St.Petersburg, 1906).

2. U. Dzhems [W. James],Besedy s uchiteliami o psikhologii(Petrograd: Mir,1919), pp. 34 [quoted from Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students onSome of Lifes Ideals, http://mirror.pacific.net.au/gutenberg/1/6/2/8/16287/16287-h/16287-h.htm].

3. Trudy Vtorogo Vserossiiskogo sezda po pedagogicheskoi psikhologii(1909),(St. Petersburg, 1910).


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JULYAUGUST 2009 57

7. O. Tumlirts [Tumlirtz], Edinstvo psikhologii i ego znachenie dliia teorii pe-

rekhodnogo vozrasta, trans. from German, in Pedologiia iunosti, p. 174.8. L.S. Vygotskii, Razvitie vysshikh psikhicheskikh funktsii (Moscow: APN

RSFSR, 1960), p. 60.9. Gordon Willard Allport, Personality and Social Encounter([Boston: Beacon

Press], 1960) [retranslated from Russian].10. Z. Bernfeld [S. Bernfeld], Psikhologiia iunosti E. Shpangera, in Pedologiia

iunosti(Moscow, Leningrad, 1930), p. 122.11. Allport, Personality and Social Encounter [retranslated from Russian].12. S.L. Rubinshtein,Bytie i soznanie(Moscow: ANSSR, 1957), p. 309.13. V.S. Merlin, Ocherk psikhologii lichnosti (Perm: Permskoe knizhnoe

izdatelstvo, 1959), p. 12.

14. A.G. Kovalev, Psikhologiia lichnosti: Uchebnoe posobie,2d ed. (Moscow:Prosveshchenie, 1965).

15. A.F. Lazurskii, Estestvennyi eksperiment i ego shkolnoe primenenie (St.Petersburg, 1918), p. vi.

16. Shtern, Psikhicheskaia struktura podrostka, pp. 7778.17. Sovremennaia psikhologiia v kapitalisticheskikh stranakh(Moscow: AN SSSR,

1963), p. 9.18. Ibid.19. For example, one should not lump together such different schools of psychol-

ogy as the psychology of spirit and Freudianism, as personalism and the experimentalpersonality studies of K. Lewin. It should also not be claimed that all these directionshad a disdain for physiology and did not want a union with the natural sciences. Wundthimself probably did not want a union between psychology and the natural sciences,as Mansurov mentions elsewhere (Sovremennaia psikhologiia v kapitalisticheskikhstranakh,p. 8); Freud, on the other hand, can sooner be accused of biologism thanphilosophical idealism.

20. This, incidentally, was pointed to by many adherents of gestalt psychology. Inparticular its most prominent representative, M. Wertheimer, lamented how fruitless as-sociationist psychology was, stating that you can read hundreds of pages on psychology,

get from them information about how associations are built, but not learn in the processthe meaning of something as simple as the pupil understood. Furthermore, even therapid pace of societys capitalist development demands practical usefulness from psy-chology, and it is unlikely that we can assume that idealist directions in psychology werereactions to practical successes of branches engaged in applied psychology.

21. L.S. Vygotskii, Razvitie vysshikh psikhicheskikh funktsii (Moscow: APNRSFSR, 1960), p. 25.

22. Z. Freid [Freud], Lektsii po vvedeniiu v psikhoanaliz (Moscow, Petrograd:Gosizdat, 1923), p. 30 [quoted from Sigmund Freud, James Strackey, and Peter Gay,Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis(New York: 1989), pp. 2728].

23. Z. Freid, Vlecheniia i ikh sud

ba [Instincts and Their Vicissitudes], inPsikhologicheskaia i psikhoanaliticheskaia biblioteka,3d ed. (Moscow, Petrograd:Gosizdat 1923) p 47


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26. Ibid., pp. 3435 [pp. 4748].

27. See V.G. Korolenkos marvelous pages on this topic (Istoriia moego sovremen-nika,books 1 and 2 [Moscow, 1948], pp. 38990) [available in English as The Historyof My Contemporary]. He describes and analyzes the phenomenon of a person whocannot raise his hand to commit an act that seems correct and necessary to him, butthat contradicts unconsciously assimilated moral experience. It has often occurredto me, he writes on this subject, that much would be different in our world if therewas more of that unconscious, nonlogical, but deeply rooted moral culture that doesnot permit certain feelings too easily, almost without resistance, to go the way ofRaskolnikovs formulas.

28. Freid,Lektsii po vvedeniiu v psikhoanaliz,p. 150 [p. 177] [emphasis added].

29. Ibid. [emphasis added].30. Freid,Ia i Ono,p. 22 [p. 30].31. Gordon Willard Allport, Personality and Social Encounter,p. 13 [quoted from

John Cuthbert Ford, Depth Psychology, Morality, and Alcoholism (Weston, MA:Weston College, 1951), p. 30].

32. J.B. Furst,Nevrotik, ego sreda i vnutrennii mir(Moscow: Inostrannaia literatura,1957) [originally in English as The Neurotic, His Environment and Inner World].

33. Ibid., p. 266.34. Ibid., p. 204.35. It should be emphasized that Fursts testimony can be completely trusted since

his opinions are based on significant experience. As a well-known practicing Americanpsychiatrist, Furst has had extensive experience treating patients who had previouslybeen treated by doctors practicing psychoanalysis.


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Bojóvitch - A luta pela psicologia concreta e o estudo integrado da personalidade

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