The “Word” and “Deed”: Toward a History of the Academic Relationship Between Aleksei Leont’ev and Lev Vygotskii

ABSTRACT

The article presents a comprehensive analysis of the academic relationship between two leading Russian psychologists, Aleksei Leont’ev and Lev Vygotskii. The initial relationship between the teacher (Vygotskii) and the attentive student and follower (Leont’ev) changed, such that the two scholars eventually sought to differentiate themselves from each other and to seek out and defend their own approaches. The author describes how the psychological ideas of these two scholars changed over time. The two scholars pursued different approaches to the problem of activity and personality over their careers. The article devotes particular attention to the academic work of Leont’ev, which was produced under socialism and thus was subjected to certain ideological pressures. Leont’ev, the founder of activity theory, came to realize that personality needed to be studied across its moral and value dimensions despite working in an environment that frowned upon this approach. Other Soviet scholars gave no place for moral principles, since a person was equated to being a “product.” By citing specific works by Leont’ev, the author shows how the ideas of the “leader of Marxist psychology” evolved and sheds light on the internal context of his scientific investigations. We see that he eventually resolved a question of fundamental disagreement with Vygotskii concerning the problem of experiences and activity. During the last years of his life, Aleksei Leont’ev approached the late Vygotskii in his views, taking the side of his teacher, old friend and, at the same time, main internal opponent, which is not all that uncommon a phenomenon in academic circles. This can be seen by the fact that two years before his death (in 1977), Leont’ev actually resolved a fundamental disagreement he had with Vygotskii concerning the problem of experiences and activity.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

^1. At the end of his life, Leont’ev intended to write an autobiography and drafted a synopsis for it, in which he reflected on the matters that he considered were the most important for himself at different points in his life. Next to the year 1960, he wrote: “Personality (Society and I: infrastructure and superstructure)” [A.A. Leont’ev 2005, p. 137). In one of his studies, V.F. Petrenko presented the results of a psychosemantic analysis of the works of the Leont’ev school demonstrating a growing trend starting in the 1970s toward the study of personality psychology. [V.F. Petrenko, “Shkola A.N.” 1999]. If we look at the careers of the members of the school, we can also see a growing trend in this direction. Many of the leaders in perception research, who really came into their own in the 1960s and 1970s, voluntarily abandoned this debate many years before. For example, Iu.B. Gippenreiter and V.P. Zinchenko are two leading figures in the field of the study of perception who both once headed laboratories at the Faculty of Psychology of Moscow State University at that time. The first scholar pursued research in humanistically oriented psychotherapy, and the second investigated the philosophy of psychology.

^2. The editor of this famous work, S.L. Vorob’ev, told the author about how difficult it was to iron out this particular part of the book. The other sections were, in his opinion, much more clearly written. It got to the point that one day, when the editor asked especially hard-hitting and demanding questions, Leont’ev exclaimed: “Yes, I myself know that what I wrote is insufficient, but as of the present this is all that I can say about personality.” And then he added in the heat of the moment: “I admit it is inadequate. Just don’t print it.”

Additional information

Funding

This paper received funding from grant 13-06-00590 from the Russian Humanities Scientific Fund.