L.S. Vygotsky 1925
New translation of Vygotsky’s“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
“The spider makes operations resembling the operations of the weaver, and the beecreating its waxen cells disgraces some architects. But from the very beginning, theworst architect differs from the best bee in that before building the cell of wax, healready has built it in his head. The result, which is received at the end of the processof work, already exists in the beginning of this process in an ideal form in arepresentation 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 mustsubordinate his will.”K. MarxRelated Translator’s Comments:“Consciousness as a problem in the psychology of behavior”, Nikolai Veresov
I
The question of the psychological nature of consciousness is persistently anddeliberately avoided in our scientific literature. Attempts are made even to take nonotice of it, as if it does not exist for the new psychology. Owing to this, the systemsof 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 opinionare the main and most fundamental ones.1. By ignoring the problem of consciousness psychology has deprived itself of accessto the study of some rather complex problems of human behaviour. It is forced torestrict itself to explaining no more than the most elementary connections between aliving being and the world. That this is actually the case can easily be seen at a glanceat the table of contents of Academician Bekhterev’s book “General foundations of human reflexology” (1923): “The principle of conservation of energy. The principleof continuous change. The principle of rhythm. The principle of adaptation. The principle of a counterforce equal to a force. The principle of relativity.” In a word,they are all-embracing principles, embracing not only animal and human behaviour but the world in its wholeness. Among all this we find not even one psychological law
which formulates the relationship or interdependence of the phenomena, that wouldcharacterise the uniqueness of human behaviour in contrast to animal behaviour.The other pole of Bekhterev’s book contains a classic experiment of establishing aconditional reflex – one small experiment, which in principle is extremely important, but not filling the space from the conditional reflex of first degree to the principle of relativity. Disparity between the roof and the foundation, the absence of a building between them, patently demonstrate that it is still too early to formulate universal principles on reflexological material, and how easy it is take laws from other areas of knowledge and apply them to psychology. Indeed, the broader and morecomprehensive a principle we will take is, the easier it is for us to pull it onto any factwe require. We must just not forget that the volume and content of a concept arealways in an inversely proportional relationship. Since the volume of universal principles tends toward infinity, their psychological content tends toward zero.But this is not a defect particular to the Bekhterev’s course. The same flaw appears inone form or another elsewhere and leaves its imprint on every attempt tosystematically produce a theory of human behaviour as mere reflexology.2. The denial of consciousness and the attempt to construct a psychological systemwithout this concept, as a psychology without consciousness, to use the expression of P. P. Blonsky
leads to the situation in which method has been deprived of the mostnecessary means and instruments for studying latent responses, such as internalmovements, internal speech, somatic responses, etc., that are not observable with thenaked eye. The study of only those reactions that are visible to the naked eye is totally powerless and untenable in explaining even the simplest problems of human behaviour.But human behaviour is organised in such a way that, in fact, it is these internalmovements, difficult to perceive, that actually direct and guide it. When we develop aconditional salivary reflex in a dog, we are organising by certain external devices thedog’s behaviour beforehand; otherwise the experiment will not succeed. We place thedog in a stand, wrap straps around it, etc. In the same way, we organise the behaviour of a human subject beforehand, with certain internal movements, through instructions,explanations, etc. If these internal movements suddenly become altered during thecourse of the experiment, the entire picture of behaviour changes sharply. Thus, wealways make use of inhibited reactions; we know that they are constantly operating inthe body; and we know that they play a very influential and regulatory role in behaviour because it is conscious. Nonetheless, we have no means of studying theseinternal reactions.To say this simply, a human being is always thinking to himself; this is never withoutsome influence on his behaviour; a sudden shift in thought during an experiment willalways sharply make some impact on the subject’s overall behaviour (for example,sudden thought: “I will not look at the apparatus”). Yet we know nothing of how toassess this influence.3. Any principal distinction between animal behaviour and human behaviour isobliterated. Biology devours sociology and physiology devours psychology. Human behaviour is studied as the behaviour of a mammal. What is essentially new, what
consciousness and psyche brings in human behaviour, is ignored. As an example Ishall mention two laws: the law of extinction (or internal inhibition) of conditionalreflexes, discovered by Academician Pavlov
.The law of extinction (or internal inhibition) of conditional reflexes expresses the factthat with continued excitation elicited by one conditional irritant, not reinforced byanother unconditional irritant, a conditional reflex gradually diminishes in strengthuntil it finally disappears. Now let us turn to human behaviour. Let us develop aconditional reaction on some irritant in a human subject. For example, we give theinstructions “When you hear the bell, press the button.” Now let us repeat thisexperiment 40, 50, or even 100 times. Does extinction take place? On the contrary, theconnection is reinforced with each instance, with each passing day. Fatigue sets in, butthis is not what the law of extinction is referring to. It is obvious here that simpleextrapolation of a law from animal psychology to human psychology is not possible.We need some principal stipulation. But we do not know just what this stipulation is,nor do we even know where and how to look for it.The law of dominants propounds the existence in the animal nervous system of focusof excitation that attract to themselves other subdominant excitations impinging onthe nervous system at the same time. Sexual excitation in a cat, the acts of swallowingand defecation, the embracing reflex in a frog – all these, as experiments have shown,are strengthened at the expense of any other extraneous irritation. From this a directstep is made to the act of attention in humans, and it is asserted that a dominant is the physiological foundation of this act. Yet it turns out that attention is actually devoid of the capacity to be strengthened at the expense of any other extraneous irritation whichis the characteristic feature of a dominant. On the contrary, any extraneous irritantdistracts and weakens attention. Again, a step from laws concerning dominants in thecat or the frog to the laws of human behaviour needs some essential corrective.4. But what is most important is that the exclusion of consciousness from the domainof scientific psychology to a considerable extent preserves all the dualism andspiritualism of former subjective psychology. Academician Bekhterev asserted that hissystem of reflexology did not contradict the hypothesis of the soul
. Subjective or conscious phenomena are depicted by him as second-order phenomena, as specificinternal phenomena accompanying combinatory reflexes
, is admitted as not only possible in the future, but even as inevitable.The main premise of reflexology, namely, the purported possibility in principle of explaining all human behaviour without any recourse to subjective phenomena and of constructing a psychology without psyche, is the hand-me-down dualism of subjective psychology, its attempt to study pure, abstract psyche. This is the other half of the olddualism: then there is a psyche without behaviour, here – behaviour without psyche;in both cases mind and behaviour are understood as two different phenomena. No psychologist, even if he is an extreme spiritualist and idealist, has, precisely byvirtue of this dualism, ever denied the physiological materialism of reflexology. Yet,on the contrary, it is idealism through and through, and indeed necessarily presupposed it.
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