1925 Consciousness as a problem in the psychology of behavior
L.S. Vygotsky 1925
“Consciousness as a problem in the psychology of behavior”
First Published: 1925;
Source: Undiscovered Vygotsky: Etudes on the pre-history of cultural-historical psychology (European Studies in the History of Science and Ideas. Vol. 8), pp. 251-281;
Publisher: Peter Lang Publishing 1999;
Translated: Nikolai Veresov;
Transcription/Markup: Nate Schmolze;
Online Version: Vygotsky Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2000
See “Consciousness as a problem in the psychology of behavior”, by the translator, Nikolai Veresov.
“The spider makes operations resembling the operations of the weaver, and the bee creating its waxen cells disgraces some architects. But from the very beginning, the worst architect differs from the best bee in that before building the cell of wax, he already has built it in his head. The result, which is received at the end of the process of work, already exists in the beginning of this process in an ideal form in a representation of a person. The person does not only change the form given by nature, but in what is given by nature he, at the same time, realises his conscious purpose, which as a law determines the way and character of his actions and to which he must subordinate his will.” K. Marx
I
The question of the psychological nature of consciousness is persistently and deliberately avoided in our scientific literature. Attempts are made even to take no notice of it, as if it does not exist for the new psychology. Owing to this, the systems of scientific psychology, which are developing under our eyes, have from the very beginning a number of organic defects. We shall mention a few, which in our opinion are the main and most fundamental ones.
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Some translator’s comments on the new translation of Vygotsky's "Consciousness as a problem in the psychology of behavior"
Psychology and Marxism : Commentary: Nikolai Veresov
First Published: 1999
Source: Undiscovered Vygotsky: Etudes on the pre-history of cultural-historical psychology (European Studies in the History of Science and Ideas. Vol. 8), pp. 251-281.
Publisher: Peter Lang Publishing (1999)
Translated: Nikolai Veresov
Transcription/Markup: Nate Schmolze
Online Version: Psychology and Marxism (marxists.org) 2000
The article that follows was published in Russian in 1925 (Vygotsky,
This article is considered as one of the most important and significant in the early period of Vygotsky’s work (Davydov & Radzikhovskii, 1985; Leont’ev, 1967, and others). The necessity of a new translation of this article is caused due to lot of reasons and circumstances mostly connected with historical, methodological and terminological mistakes and misunderstandings. The comments represented below will be mainly concentrated around these mistakes and misunderstandings.
Thus, in his comments to the first English edition of the article, M. Cole wrote that “it is the written version of a speech delivered by Vygotsky at the Second All-Union Congress of Psychoneurologists, held in Leningrad in
The two articles were essentially different in their methodological orientations. Thus, “Methods of reflexological and psychological investigation” represented the reflexological concept of human consciousness and Vygotsky called himself a bigger reflexologist than Pavlov (Vygotsky,
In Soviet literature we can also find some comments and opinions concerning Vygotsky’s article that are not completely correct. It is absolutely true that the article was “programmatic” for Vygotsky and its content was a methodological rather than a theoretical one (Leont'ev, 1967, p. 27). But, on the other hand, I cannot agree with the opinion that in the article Vygotsky “formulated three programmes of studying the consciousness; (1) consciousness is a reflex of reflexes, (2) consciousness is the problem of the structure of behaviour, and (3) consciousness is a feature of human labour activity.” (Davydov & Radzikhovskii, 1985, pp. 45-48).
The text itself shows that only one scientific program was formulated - consciousness is the problem of the structure of human behaviour. Moreover, this position was represented as a working hypothesis and Vygotsky strictly wrote about it (Vygotsky, 1982b, p. 83). It does not correspond with the opinion of V. Davydov and L. Radzikhovskii that “Vygotsky did not clarify the formula ‘consciousness is the problem of the structure of behaviour’” (Davydov & Radzikhovskii, 1985, p. 48).
As for English translation of the article made in 1979 I must say that it is hardly possible to understand the content of that scientific program and the working hypothesis, because of essential terminological mistakes and errors that largely destroys the sense of Vygotsky’s position. Let us have a look at these mistakes.
In the article Vygotsky used the terms “irritant” and “reaction” that was typical for that time. In spite of that, in the English version of 1979, the term “irritant” and the term “irritation” (that is not, of course, the same as “irritant”) were translated as “stimulus”, so sometimes it is difficult to understand whether Vygotsky is speaking of “irritation” or “irritant.” I have nothing against the terminological modernisation of the texts, but in this case we must be very careful since in other articles of the same period Vygotsky used the term “stimulus” quite widely (Vygotsky, 1925b; Vygotsky, 1982d). Moreover, the term “reaction” which does not correspond with the modern term “response” was translated in some places as “reaction” but in some places as “response.”
The behaviouristic theoretical concept of human consciousness presented in the article was also deformed in the English version. Thus, speaking of the consciousness as a system of inhibited reactions, Vygotsky mentioned that “we know that they play a very influential and regulatory role in behaviour, because it is conscious” (Vygotsky,
There is one group of curious mistakes in the English version of Vygotsky’s article. For instance, the Sahara (Vygotsky, 1982b, p. 84) was translated as
The newest translation of the article of Vygotsky’s (Vygotsky, 1997) is free from such type of mistakes. Nevertheless, the term “irritant” was translated as “stimulus.” But what must be specially mentioned is that the term “reflex” in some places was translated as “reaction” (look, for example, Vygotsky, 1997, p. 74) and vice versa, the term “reaction” was translated as “reflex” (Vygotsky, 1997, p. 64). Discussing the point of an instinctive behaviour of animals Vygotsky wrote: “The spider that weaves his web and the bee that builds his cell out of wax do this out of instinct, mechanically, always in the same way, and in doing so they never display any more activity than in any other adaptive reactions.” (Vygotsky, 1982b, p. 84). Here “adaptive reactions” was translated as “adaptive activities.” (Vygotsky, 1997, p.68). Discussing the ideas of Ch. Sherrington, Vygotsky used the term “common motor field” (Vygotsky, 1982b, p. 86, p. 89) that was very close to the ideas developed by N. Bernshtein (1966) that was translated as a “path” (Vygotsky, 1997, p. 69) and in other place as a “field” (Vygotsky, 1997, p. 72).
I hope that the new translation of one of the most important articles of Vygotsky made in accordance with its original publication (Vygotsky,
Nikolai Veresov
