The problem of the method of cultural-historical psychology

The author analyzes the multifaceted, contradictory and often tragic fate of cultural-historical psychology, the theory of V.V. Davydov, the history of the Psychological Institute of the RAE; the origial theories of the followers of L.S. Vygotsky are outlined. Considering the foundations of the works by Vygotsky, his disciples and followers, the author formulated the core question: how the exclusively subjective motivation of all the voluntary and goal-oriented activity of human beings becomes possible? The postulate of psychological theory, according to Mikhaylov, is as follows: all the bodily procedures ensuring the continuation of human life are motivated by voluntary goal-setting; but anyway they continue being bodily procedures per se, included into the circulation of substances, dependant upon common colds and bad habits. The subjective motivation of life activity of all species and sub-species of animals upon this Earth is nothing but objective self-determination of life as natural phenomenon. In science the common measures of meaning, of being able to think Being for theoretical awareness of subjective motivation of living being define the logic of development of psychological theory. This source must preserve itself in definitions of each step of theoretical meaning-making of intersubjective speech field, within which human being masters and appropriates the aptitude to motivate all his life actions subjectively. The unit of such aptitude is not a particular abstraction, such as inter-transitions of real forms into ideal forms and back again, but the tidings – the act of addressing others and oneself as other-in-oneself. The speech tools of addressing are reconsidered each time they are creatively transformed according to the goal, that’s why human being becomes the creator of linguistic forms, even the simplest ones, which may seem cliche. And this is not philosophy, deceiving, trying to insert itself instead of psychological investigation of the beginnings of the soul, this is the most profound psychology in its fundamental theoretical explanation.

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