Introduction
This article discusses specific features of a form of psychotechnics that emerged within activity-oriented psychology and deserves particular attention in light of the current demands of contemporary psychological practice. We attempted in one of our previous works (Sokolova, 2023) to show that, from a methodological standpoint, this form constitutes an alternative to two other types of psychotechnics, commonly referred to as manipulation and maieutics. However, our argument was presented in that work only in its most general form, with references to selected statements made by S.L. Rubinstein and A.N. Leontiev in their writings on the philosophy of psychology, without a special consideration of the rich empirical legacy of the founders of the activity approach.
A special place within this legacy is occupied by ontogenetic studies of A.N. Leontiev’s school conducted in the 1940s and 1950s. We analyzed one of these studies — Z.M. Istomina’s research (1948), which later became widely known — in a previous work (Sokolova, 2024) in light of the eight principles of psychotechnical cognition identified by F.E. Vasilyuk (Vasilyuk, 2003). However, our article did not address the rather acute debates concerning a number of fundamental propositions of the activity approach that also underlay specific psychotechnical tools. The debates in question primarily concerned the discussions between A.N. Leontiev and P.Ya. Galperin regarding the relationship between the motivational determination and the operational composition of mental activity.
The present article undertakes therefore a detailed historical and methodological analysis of another remarkable study of the same period: the work of Natalia Grigorievna Morozova (1906—1989), devoted to the problem of preschool children’s understanding of adults’ verbal instructions (Morozova, 1948). That study demonstrated that understanding adults’ instructions at the operational level was impossible without explicitly forming the motivational component of the activity of understanding in the child. N.G. Morozova’s study thus outlined a possible way of resolving the contradictions between A.N. Leontiev’s and P.Ya. Galperin’s positions, which, in the year N.G. Morozova’s article was published, had not yet been sufficiently explicated. We also propose to demonstrate how that long-standing study helps outline a possible solution to a broader and highly relevant problem: further development, under contemporary conditions, of a form of psychotechnics that could serve as an alternative to its two much more widespread variants, i.e. manipulation and maieutics (Puzyrei, 2005; Leontiev, 2012).
Activity-based psychotechnics and its controversial points
The activity-oriented psychotechnical approach developed within A.N. Leontiev’s school differed from other forms of psychotechnical practice from the very beginning of its emergence in the 1930s in that “working with the psyche” was understood as construction and transformation of the subject’s real activity. This follows from the conception of the psyche as an orienting and regulatory function (or functional organ) of activity, whose role is to optimize its executive component. In other words, no separate “working with the psyche” per se is envisaged outside the context of constructing, transforming, and correcting the corresponding activity, which is regarded as the substance (substantia) of the mental.
Despite this shared theoretical position underlying numerous studies that combined scientific inquiry, “working with the psyche”, education and instruction, significant disagreements emerged among proponents of this version of the activity approach concerning several fundamental issues in general psychology. The disagreements also affected specific psychotechnical methods employed. Different emphases were placed on the study and formation of mental activity in the research conducted under A.N. Leontiev’s supervision at the Department of Child Psychology of the Psychological Institute (1943—1960), and in P.Ya. Galperin’s work on systematic stage-by-stage formation of mental actions and concepts, initiated at the turn of the 1940s and 1950s.
It is worth recalling the differences between the positions of the two scholars, which were most explicitly articulated during the now well-known 1969 discussion and subsequently analyzed by V.P. Zinchenko, N.N. Nechaev, L.F. Obukhova, M.A. Stepanova, and others. P.Ya. Galperin emphasized in his contribution to that discussion what he regarded as insufficient attention that A.N. Leontiev and his collaborators paid to the “operational aspect of object-oriented activity”, rather than to its motivational aspect. According to P.Ya. Galperin, both theory and experimentation neglected the operational components (Galperin, 2004, p. 331). He therefore called for overcoming such one-sidedness in the study of mental activity.
We will discuss below to what extent that criticism was justified. For now, however, it is worth noting one important fact. Having voiced his criticism of A.N. Leontiev and his colleagues, P.Ya. Galperin also acknowledged, with considerable self-criticism, during the same discussion, “I could have said the same about myself: until recently, we treated motivation with the same indifference” (Galperin, 2004, p. 331). It seemed at that time unimportant how the child was to be engaged in an activity — for example, by the promise of a reward, competition, or similar incentives. However, turning to the study of motivational foundations of the “operational aspect” of thinking, P.Ya. Galperin came to recognize that motivation “has not only an energetic but also an orienting function; external motivation distorts the very task, and the more the task reflects a person’s enduring activity, the more significant this distortion becomes” (Galperin, 2023, p. 656).
In our view, however, the apparent opposition between those two positions disappears once we carefully examine the emergence and development of activity psychology in the preceding decades. The 1948 discussion of A.N. Leontiev’s book An Essay on the Development of the Psyche (Leontiev, 1947), for example, included serious accusations directed against the author for allegedly “overemphasizing” and “grossly exaggerating” the role of motives and, consequently, senses, at the expense of meanings, thus negating the “educational role of knowledge”. D.V. Antonov, L.I. Bozhovich, A.V. Zaporozhets, and M.N. Skatkin supported A.N Leontiev in that discussion. They emphasized that A.N Leontiev’s and his collaborators’ works demonstrated precisely the unity of the motivational aspect of activity and its operational components, while showing that primarily the former determined the latter. It implied, in the context of school education, the necessity of organizing students’ activity in such a way that knowledge they acquire becomes personally meaningful to them and, therefore, genuinely effective (for a more detailed discussion, see Speeches of A.N. Leontiev in the discussion…, 2023; Sokolova, 2023).
D.B. Elkonin, another participant in the same discussion, also noted, “Alexei Nikolaevich has been reproached here for overestimating the role of motives. Yet it is hardly possible to overestimate their role” (Elkonin, 1948, ff. 45—46). D.B Elkonin adduced extensive excerpts from a collection of works by American authors published in the same year as A.N. Leontiev’s book, who attached “enormous importance” to the study of motives, and, considering the conception of motivation presented in that volume unacceptable, emphasized the importance of investigating motivation on the basis of the activity theory developed in the Soviet Union, saying, “It seems to me that Alexei Nikolaevich’s book opens up opportunities for understanding the true driving forces of human behavior” (ibid., f. 47). D.B Elkonin noted much later in a diary entry dated October 20, 1967 that the operational aspect of thinking certainly needed to be developed; however, “this task must be addressed within a broader and more important context. The development of theoretical thinking is possible only when such tasks arise, and they can emerge only within an expanded world” (Elkonin, 1989, p. 488).
In our view, the empirical studies conducted by the staff of the Department of Child Psychology at the Psychological Institute demonstrated precisely this relationship. Two interrelated functions of motive — the meaning-making and the structuring functions — were examined in detail as early as the second half of the 1940s (Sokolova, 2024). Z.M. Istomina’s showed in her study, inter alia, that the child identified and realized mnemic goals (first the goal of recall and later that of memorization) directly depending on the motive underlying the activity, which made the goals meaningful. If a motive through which a given goal can only be identified “does not exist for the child, does not answer to any of its needs, then the goal itself does not exist for the child or exists only nominally: it remains senseless” (Leontiev, 1948, p. 6, emphasis added by Leontiev). The same study demonstrated that the structuring function of a motive extended to the identification of mnemic operations associated with a given goal. That finding proved that the operational component of mental activity could not be studied independently of its motivational aspects. N.G. Morozova examined in her study, which will be analyzed below, a similar relationship between those components in the context of children’s understanding of adults’ verbal instructions.
The study of the development of children’s attitudes toward verbal instructions within a psychotechnical framework
N.G. Morozova addressed a question that remains highly relevant today for researchers, parents, and educators alike: why do children understand adults’ instructions in certain situations, while in other situations they seem not to “hear” the adult at all, as if they were deaf. N.G. Morozova hypothesized that children’s meaningful understanding of adults’ verbal instructions depended on the motives that prompt them to listen and attend to such instructions. Whereas early preschool children may not yet have a motive to understand an adult’s instruction as a plan of actions and operations required to complete the task, development gradually gives rise to (or forms) a motivation to grasp the essence of what has been said — initially in terms of what has to be done and subsequently in terms of how it has to be done (Morozova, 1948, pp. 31—32).
The content of N.G. Morozova’s studies will be presented here in some more detail, for their certain features are important for understanding the issues under discussion. Understanding adults’ verbal instructions by children (1) was investigated using the following experimental tasks.
The instruction was presented to the child, for example, in the following form: “Let’s draw a little house! Draw a house with a fence and a tree and then color it. I will tell you first how to draw and color it, and then you will do the drawing and coloring. Listen before you draw” (Morozova, 1948, p. 32, emphasis added by Morozova). The child was then given detailed instructions concerning specific features of the house, the fence, the tree, and the colors to be used. For example, the smoke coming out of the chimney was to be purple, whereas the fence was to be brown. Since neither crayons nor paints of these colors were available, it was explained to the child how to obtain them (brown by mixing green and red paint or using green and red crayons, and purple by mixing red and blue paint or using red and blue crayons).
The child’s attitude toward the experimenter’s verbal instructions and of the child’s activity in accordance with those instructions was analyzed during the performance of the task. That made it possible to determine how the children accepted and understood adults’ speech and what role their motives played in these processes.
N.G. Morozova carefully singled out seven developmental stages of children’s understanding of instructions in her experiments and grouped them into three broader phases, proposing the following sequence in the development of the process she was investigating.
At the first, initial phase, the children lacked any motive whatsoever to understand the meaning of the adult’s instructions. The children at that level of development (70%; 30%; 0%)2 readily accepted the experimenter’s proposal but failed to grasp the specific content of the task — i.e., what should be done and how it should be done. Those were merely the adult’s interesting suggestions for them to play, to model, and so forth. They had not yet developed any attitude toward the task as something obligatory. As a result, they either (1) listened to the explanation but proceeded to act in their own way (for example, drawing an airplane instead of a steamboat), thus treating the task only formally, or (2) interrupted the experimenter’s explanation and suggested drawing something else that interested them, such as flowers, tanks, or another object unrelated to the task. However, when the experimenter began describing the appealing features of the steamboat, the child might agree to draw or model the steamboat.
N.G. Morozova noted that children understood the meanings of the adult’s words and phrases (and were able to repeat them) in both cases, yet failed to grasp the task in its entirety. They perceived it merely as permission or encouragement to draw, to play etc., whereas the purpose of the task in the form of the verbal instruction, was to guide necessary actions in the course of drawing, modeling or play (Morozova, 1948, p. 34).
At the second phase of development which N.G. Morozova termed as “object-oriented” (32,4%; 62,2%; 5,4%), the children were motivated to understand what exactly needed to be done. They were ready to treat the instructions as guidance for action and began implementing it in practice, that is, drawing or modeling precisely what had been asked. The very execution process itself, however, could still distract them from the task at the early stages of that development phase. For example, a child might start drawing a house but fail to color it, or might add extra elements that had not been in the instructions, such as a girl, flowers, or other objects. In role-playing situations at the early stages of this development phase, the children accepted the proposed scenarios (for example, playing at keeping house), but many would gradually introduce storylines of their own as the game unfolded.
It took a special effort to have the children understand the instruction more fully and motivate them to listen more attentively to the experimenter’s directions. Whenever a child modified the subject of the task or slipped into another during actual performance, the experimenter would deliberately draw the child’s attention to the discrepancy by the questions, “What are you doing? And what did I tell you to do?”
The questions worked better for children encouraged to compare the outcome they produced with what had been set in the instructions. For example, the teacher of the middle group in one of the kindergartens where N.G. Morozova conducted her experiments, showed the pupils clay models or Christmas tree toys made strictly according to the instructions and were noticeably superior to the pupils’ products. The teacher would openly praise the exemplary works. As a result, the children’s willingness to fulfill the task as instructed would dramatically increase.
At the third phase of development — that of perception of the mode of action (4,1%; 32,6%; 63,3%) — the children began to focus not only on what was required by the instruction but also on how the required action was to be carried out. N.G. Morozova facilitated that shift in children’s attitudes toward instructions by specially designed tasks that the children could not complete without execution of specific operations strictly following the instructions. For example, the children were asked to build a toy garage using construction materials according to a prescribed method. Preschoolers would often attempt to build the garage in their own way; however, the structure would collapse because they had failed to follow the instructions. They would turn to the experimenter only after numerous unsuccessful attempts and ask again how it was supposed to be build.
The children would show desire to attend to such details of the instruction initially only during the performance of the task. The children would begin to realize the importance of the instructions on the mode of completing tasks only after experiencing failure and responding to the experimenter’s questions. They would then start asking and re-asking the adult how to mix the paint, how to punch holes, etc. The experimenter’s renewed explanations and guiding questions would help the children re-construct the instructions they had previously memorized and repeated at the experimenter’s request. However, they would begin to translate these instructions meaningfully into a “plan of action” only at that point. In other words, this stage marked “emergence of an internally motivated attitude toward the instructions per se” (Morozova, 1948, p. 42), as the adult’s verbal directions came to be perceived and understood as “something that determines the nature and mode of action and helps to carry it out” (ibid., emphasis added by Morozova)3.
According to N.G. Morozova, the motive for understanding instructions in their entirety arises from two sources: the child’s own activity and the child’s relationship with the experimenter. These two sources are inseparable because the adult both organizes the child’s activity and assists in correct execution. Consequently, N.G. Morozova’s study integrated what might be termed diagnostic and formative strategies into a single process. It was important for the experimenter not only to identify the child’s current stage in the development (that of meaningful understanding of verbal instructions), but also to facilitate the child’s transition to the next stage. It is precisely what allows N.G. Morozova’s studies to be regarded as psychotechnical both in conception and in implementation.
Fulfilling tasks in the presence of and in interaction with the adult would make children gradually — and indeed in a genuinely “stage-by-stage” manner — develop a desire to understand instructions accurately. That process occurred unobtrusively and within the context of an activity that was meaningful to the child. The adult, as the indispensable participant in all of N.G. Morozova’s experiments, displayed respect for each child as an active subject of meaning-making. When older children (6—7 years old) discovered that an object they had built without following the instructions had turned out “wrong” and ask and re-ask the adult, the experimenter would, rather than resorting to outright criticism (“You have made it wrong!”), ask guiding questions, “Are you really making a stick?” (while modeling a mushroom) and offer supportive hints when difficulties arose, for example, “The plasticine has cooled down, so it does not knead”.
The knowledge and skills that the subjects acquired were personality-focused, i.e. they enabled the children to understand not only what they were to make and how to make it or proceed following the adult’s instructions, but also to realize how far they themselves had gone in this understanding. One seven-year-old boy, for example, who drew and colored the fence in his drawing brown, was about to color the tree, but, short of the paint, suddenly exclaimed, “I have to make brown paint again!” He then slapped his forehead and said, “I forgot to color the tree! I have to mix it again now”, and set to mix brown paint by combining green and red (Morozova, 1948, p. 44).
Accordingly, children gradually developed motivation to understand adults’ verbal instructions in all their details. As a result, they eventually learned to structurize their activity in relation of not only its goal-related but also operational aspects. N.G. Morozova’s findings thus provided compelling evidence that motivation, to borrow P.Ya. Galperin’s formulation cited above, had not only an energetic but also an orienting function.
This raises an important question: which type of psychotechnics should such psychotechnical tools be referred to? If we adopt A.A. Puzyrei’s well-known distinction between manipulation and maieutics as the two principal types of psychotechnics, then N.G. Morozova’s psychotechnical approach belongs, in our view, to neither category. We will attempt to substantiate this claim in the next section.
Neither manipulation nor maieutics: in search for an appropriate term
Since the child’s and the adult’s joint activities in N.G. Morozova’s study were aimed at building in the children a previously absent ability to understand the meaning of verbal instructions, it necessarily involved influence on the child and assistance in that developmental process. Then, according to the criteria proposed by A.A. Puzyrei (2005, p. 333), such an approach could be classified as a form of manipulative psychotechnics4.
At the same time, however, N.G. Morozova’s research clearly displayed what A.A. Puzyrei described as the “presence of the psychological practitioner’s or psychotherapist’s personality” (ibid., p. 270) — that is, a genuinely dialogical interaction between the personalities which is typical of maieutics. This is evident from the examples discussed above. The adult participant in joint activity with the child acted as the facilitator and, in a certain sense, contributor to the “nascence” of phenomena that could not be “‘made’ or ‘produced’ for and instead of another person” (ibid., p. 322). Nevertheless, in our view, N.G. Morozova’s psychotechnical approach cannot justifiably be labeled as maieutic in the strict sense of the term. Her studies formed in children — albeit nonintrusively — motivation to attend to the details of the instructions given to them. According to the “classical version” of cultural-historical activity psychology, individuals are not born with the capacity to understand and accept other persons; consequently, no maieutic is possible here.
The children in the studies we are discussing grew aware of the need to attend carefully to what the adult was saying on their own, but as a result of skillfully organized interaction. E.Yu. Patyaeva, the author of a major monograph on the motivational structure and construction of human actions, referred to this type of interaction as a motivational dialogue, or a process of “joint action-plotting” (Patyaeva, 2018, p. 320). N.G. Morozova’s research jointly plotted actions in such a way that the children perceived the adult’s instructions not as unquestionable commands but as a means of structuring an activity meaningful to the child. According to E.Yu. Patyaeva, a dialogue of this kind “represents a way out of the situation of simple obedience or disobedience and a means of generating new intentions and decisions” (ibid., p. 324), thereby fulfilling an important educational function as well.
Can this interaction therefore be described with the term psychagogy as used by A.A. Puzyrei? Perhaps it can, provided that one bears in mind that, “working with the psyche”, as noted earlier, always implies, within the context of the activity theory, building and correcting the child’s relevant activity.
Isn’t J. Bugental’s term ontogogics more appropriate for describing this type of psychotechnics? According to Bugental, contemporary psychotechnics, understood as a form of “enlightening activity”, involves the therapist’s or counselor’s effort to “support the patient’s or client’s intention to realize more fully the potentials of his or her being” (as cited in Leontiev, 2012, p. 172). Yet an important clarification is needed here. From the perspective of cultural-historical activity psychology, being (understood as the subject’s activity in the world) is not limited to what already exists, whether potentially or actually. It encompasses not only what is, but also what may be (Obukhova, 1996, p. 31). Moreover, this “may be” emerges in ontogenesis through the formation — whether spontaneous or systematic — of corresponding psychological processes in interaction with the Others.
D.A. Leontiev’s term “nootechnics” is, in our view, more felicitous. He defines it as “facilitating effect on the trajectory of human development, resulting in either a holistic or partial structural transformation, that is, the transition of the ‘human’ system itself to a new structural quality and/or a new developmental trajectory on the basis of processes of self-organization” (Leontiev, 2012, p. 170, emphasis added by Leontiev). It appears that N.G. Morozova’s work entailed precisely that. Her studies fostered in children the capacity for such self-organization, specifically, the ability to govern their own actions and operations within activities meaningful to them and in accordance with adults’ verbal instructions. This way led the children to higher developmental levels.
“Nootechnics” is particularly appealing to us (as it is to D.A. Leontiev) as the apter term because it definitely associates with V. Frankl’s logotherapy where the category of meaning (Sinn) occupies a central position. That clearly resonated with the ideas of A.N. Leontiev’s school concerning the decisive role of motive in the activity process, including its technical components. What gives us some pause, however, is a certain opposition between “stimulation (facilitation)” and “formation” that appears in D.A. Leontiev’s paper. This may reflect implicit critique of approaches to psychological influence that imply systematic stage-by-stage formation of certain actions with “preset properties”. As D.A. Leontiev argues, most forms of psychotherapy do not belong to this category because they are personality-centered and imply intensive work “whose end disappears into uncertainty” (Leontiev, 2012, p. 168). Nevertheless, in our view, N.G. Morozova’s “intensive work” was both personality-centered and explicitly aiming to form motivation that children previously lacked — in this case, to form motives for understanding the meaning of the other individual’s speech. The findings of her studies demonstrated that such formation of motives was the product of the elaborately organized interaction between the child and the experimenter.
For this reason, the term that seems most appropriate to us for describing this type of psychotechnics is life-enhancement (zhiznetvorchestvo), a concept also employed by D.A. Leontiev in the article5 we cited above. The term incorporates, in our view, the meanings conveyed by the three concepts referred to above: psychagogy, ontogogics, and nootechnics. It should be noted at the same time that D.A. Leontiev’s own conception of life-enhancement refers to a form of non-therapeutic psychological practice designed to help adults address their personal life problems and expand their lifeworld (Lebenswelt) while “emphasizing the anthropological ability to self-transcend” (ibid., p. 177). However, this ability is not given to humans from the outset; rather, it forms in the course of ontogenesis.
As S.L. Rubinstein once argued, the formation of such abilities is entirely within the scope of what he called “pedagogy on a grand scale”, because it implies not dull “making” but the subject’s creative self-activity (Rubinstein, 1986, p. 106). This process, in turn, is facilitated by the learner’s involvement in joint activity with the educator who lives a “genuine life” (Rubinstein, 1997, p. 97)6. A.G. Asmolov reiterated these ideas in a recent interview, describing psychology as a science of “life constructing”. One cannot simply approach a child and say, “You must understand this”. Rather, it is necessary to create a situation where adults do not merely stand over the children or overhang them. Asmolov draws a particularly radical conclusion: “One should not merely talk to the child; one should live together with the child” (Alexander Asmolov’s Worlds and Meanings, 2024, p. 134). N.G. Morozova’s research provided a compelling demonstration of this principle. In order for the child to truly “hear” the adult, it is not enough to speak louder or to repeat instructions many times. What is really needed is having the adult’s words acquire meaning for the child and thereby guide and govern the child’s own activity.
Conclusion
Our analysis of a study conducted as early as the 1940s within the then cultural-historical activity tradition shows that both its methodology and its findings were fully consistent with those of L.S. Vygotsky, A.N. Leontiev’s and many contemporary psychotechnicians’ goals and aspirations to create a genuinely life-oriented psychology concerned not with a “laboratory specimen” but with living human beings and their real-life problems.
The study once again confirmed the idea repeatedly emphasized by Vygotsky: in order to understand fully developed psychological processes, it is necessary to examine the process of their emergence — that is, their formation in ontogenesis. N.G. Morozova’s work fully implemented this required condition: diagnosis and formation of psychological processes integrated into a single unity, while the experiment served not only as an instrument of investigation but also as a means of development, education, and instruction.
Moreover, N.G. Morozova’s study bears, in our view, upon even more fundamental issues within psychological science and practice. In particular, it indirectly addresses a problem that has become the subject of intense contemporary debates concerning the “spiritual dimension” of the human being and the nature of human freedom. The claims advanced by certain philosophers and psychologists that freedom “has no foundation” and is determined by no external factors7, but results instead from the action of an innate force or agency that impels individuals to realize their own spiritual values and goals — and that no formation in relation to such free phenomena as consciousness, moral action etc. is therefore possible — appear to us to constitute a rejection of the scientific explanation of the higher forms of human activity. In contrast, Vygotsky and, following him, his collaborators argued, “Freedom is not given but preset. It is not innate but achieved through difficult inner struggle. […] It is not at the beginning but at the end of the human path. It is inaccessible to the child. It sits not in the depths but on the heights of the spirit” (Zavershneva, van der Veer, 2017, p. 435).
The researchers of A.N. Leontiev’s school subsequently demonstrated through numerous empirical studies of ontogenetic development that the individual does not attain these “heights” of the spirit or acquire “freedom of will” on his or her own, without interaction with Others: “The development of arbitrariness and will starts with compliance with external demands (whether strict or soft). The child’s first arbitrary actions are responses to adults’ demands. However, if the child comes over time to accept these demands as personal values, those values begin to govern its behavior. Complying with the demands of others and directing others, the child learns to direct itself” (Ivannikov, 2021, p. 294).
It is noteworthy that N.G. Morozova’s research we examined in the present article also contributed to these conclusions. N.G. Morozova belonged both to L.S. Vygotsky’s well-known “group of five” disciples and to A.N. Leontiev’s collaborators at the Department of Child Psychology. This fact, together with attentive reading of her study, invites consideration of another important issue within the cultural-historical activity tradition, the relationship between Word and Deed, which has become the subject of intense debate in recent years. A detailed examination of this issue, however, is beyond the scope of the present article and requires a separate analysis drawing on additional empirical studies and practical developments by A.N. Leontiev’s school in the 1940s and the decades that followed.
1 Children aged 4—7 years (junior, middle, and senior kindergarten groups) were involved in the study.
2 The percentages in parentheses represent the proportion of children from the three age groups (relative to the total sample) who demonstrated forms of understanding adults’ verbal instructions characteristic of each developmental phase.
3 The same children demonstrated substantially better and faster comprehension of adults’ verbal instructions in contexts that were especially meaningful to them — most notably, role-playing activities — than in drawing or modeling tasks.
4 According to Puzyrei (2005), this type of psychotechnics is consistent with both the classical version of Vygotsky’s cultural-historical theory (as opposed to his earlier formulations) and the “general psychological activity theory” (p. 319).
5 It is hardly coincidental that, at approximately the same time — about fifteen years ago — E.Yu. Patyaeva developed a specialized practicum “The art of being: the basics” for students of the Faculty of Psychology at Lomonosov Moscow State University and, somewhat later, introduced an original next-generation course entitled “Psychology of creative life”. The objectives of the courses which continue to be taught at the Faculty today extend beyond introduction of various approaches to life-enhancement. They also train students in deeper understanding of themselves and other persons and introduce them to a range of psychotechnical self-development exercises.
6 As is well known, a similar dialectic of formation and self-development of the child underlies the education of deafblind children through dosed jointly shared activities with the adult (Suvorov, 1999).