SOCRATORIUM

[Alexander Surmava]

“DIALECTICAL PSYCHOLOGY” GROUP DECLARATION

The characteristic peculiarity of psychology is first of all the unique paradoxicality of its subject matter. A human is equally the summit of natural evolution and the subject of historical development so theoretic understanding of human nature requires from a researcher a special sophisticated theoretic and methodological knowledge. The second even more serious difficultness lies in the exceptional social responsibility of psychologist not merely theorizing about imaginary nature of human sole but putting forward and realizing some practical acts, affecting this very sole. At last, one more peculiarity of a human as a subject matter of psychological investigation consists in special characteristic of a human to be the most elusive subject matter so while he/she is alive he/she is in permanent movement, in permanent making so any finite opinion about him/her risks become false even early than it will be formulated.
It follows from this that the only possible way of comprehension of human nature can be delivered by dialectic in its modern materialistic redaction.

A dialectic is not an abstract methodology, it’s not a kit of formal rules, technologies and workarounds. Even less it is a sectarian ideological symbol or password. We, a group of investigators belong to theoretic tradition of Vygotsky, Leont’ev and Il’enkov and follow the dialectic tradition in philosophy and psychology, we insist, that without dialectic the psychology is doomed to remain not a rational humanistic discipline, but a cross between inhuman scientistic technology and applied magic.

Dialectic is opposed both in the history of psychology and now with dualism as an abstract metaphysical principle.

The history of CHAT displays the drama of successive attempts to overcome multilateral dualism as a nightmare of psychological theory. The key figures in those attempts in the past century were Vygotsky, Leont’ev and Il’enkov who did their best to find a resolution of psycho-physical problem in all its forms, as problem of interrelation of mind and body, of “external” and “internal”, of mind and affect, of culture and nature, of “free subjectivity” and “enforced depersonalized marionette”, of personality and society.

We entirely share Vygotsky’s idea that the logic of interaction (the interaction of mind and body) is prescientific logic. Leont’ev stood on the same theoretic position. Nevertheless both founders of CHAT failed in their bold attempt to overcome old Cartesian dualism despite the fact that both tried to be guided by Spinoza and Marx. Hence the special inconsistency and contradictoriness of some theoretic ideas of the same Vygotsky, e.g. his idea concerning the thinking of so called “primitives” allegedly differs from “genuine theoretic” or “scientific” thinking of modern literate Europeans and Americans.

The perspective of the fundamental leap forward towards overcoming this dualism and consequently to solving sharp social-psychological and social-pedagogic problems of the present was offered by Il’enkov who put forward basically new and in the same time authentic interpretation of Spinoza. The idea of “thinking body” not only overcomes the dead end of psychophysical problem, but opens a new breathtaking perspective for theoretic and practical psychology.

We don’t consider ourselves as a sect of followers of the next in turn popular guru anxious about “authentic interpretation” of his sacred texts. First of all we share with our teachers the preassurance in existence if objective truth and the attitude to search it. We share with predecessors the common understanding of social objectives and the human and social responsibility in achieving of these objectives. To realize in theoretic researches and practically the enormous heuristic potential of dialectic tradition, to target and concentrate our efforts on the most difficult problem of democratization of the educational system, on the problem of creating of basically new school, the school which doesn’t kills an alive thought, but contrary helps to develop it, a school which doesn’t crowns and “culturally” mount the process of taking children to the opposite sides of social fences, but energetically resist and oppose to social segregation – that is a little bit of tasks which join us in “Dialectical psychology group”.

The most part of the participants of our group are active ISCAR members. Others are going to join ISCAR recently. We consider our group as an inalienable part of “Dialectical psychology” section established during the first ISCAR Congress in Seville and invite all colleagues who share dialectic approach to cooperate with us.

Lev Naumenko – retiree, Ph.D., member of ISCAR from 2002

Elena Sokolova – Psychological Department of Moscow State University, Ph.D., member of ISCAR from 2002

Viktor Arslanov – University of Russian Academy of Education, Ph.D.

Vladimir Kudriavtsev - Vygotsky Institute Russian State University for Humanities, Ph.D., member of ISCAR from 2002

Sergey Mareev – Modern Univesity for the Humanities, Ph.D., member of ISCAR from 2002

Alexander Simakin - Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia, member of ISCAR from 2002.

Gennady Lobastov - Vygotsky Institute Russian State University for Humanities, Ph.D.

Alexander Surmava – Vygotsky Institute Russian State University for Humanities, Ph.D., member of ISCAR from 2002 - coordinator of the group. E-mail: monada@netvox.ru, avramus@gmail.com