3

English translation 2009 M.E. Sharpe, Inc., from the Russian text Vstupitelnoe
slovo: L.I. Bozhovich: chelovek, lichnost, uchenyi, in L.I. Bozhovich, Lichnost i
ee formirovanie v detskom vozraste (Moscow: Piter, 2008), pp. 932. Published with
the authors permission.
V.E. Chudnovskii is a Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences and professor.
Translated by Nora Seligman Favorov.
*For the theoretical tenets of Bozhovichs personality theory, see Journal of Russian
and East European Psychology, vol. 42, no. 4 (JulyAugust 2004).Ed.
Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, vol. 47, no. 4,
JulyAugust 2009, pp. 327.
2009 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved.
ISSN 10610405/2009 $9.50 + 0.00.
DOI 10.2753/RPO1061-0405470401
V.E. CHUDNOVSKII
L.I. Bozhovich as a Person,
a Personality, and a Scholar
An Introduction
The article presents a scientic biography of Lidiia Ilinichna Bozhovich
(19081981), one of the collaborators of L.S. Vygotsky. In addition to
characterizing the personality of the leader of this scientic school, the
article describes the main lines of research and empirical results of her
collaborators.*
In a remote corner of the Donskoi Monastery cemetery is a small niche in
the columbarium wall that stands amidst magnicent monuments. It contains
an urn. In front is a holder for the owers that appear here from time to time
and an inscription: Lidiia Ilinichna Bozhovich, 19081981. Coming here,
one always senses an incongruity between the modesty of this nal, mourn-
ful resting place and what the person it belongs to achieved in her life, the
legacy she left humanity.
Who was Lidiia Bozhovichas a person, as a personality, and as a
scholar?
Lidiia Ilinichna Bozhovich was born on October 28, 1908 in Kursk. She
graduated from the State Lenin Institute [in Moscow]. While a student, she
4 JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY
conducted her rst experimental research into the psychology of imitation
under the direction of L.S. Vygotsky. After concluding her studies she worked
as curriculum director in a psychoneurological sanatorium and later in the
psychology department of the Academy of Communist Education, which
was headed by Vygotsky. In the early 1930s, Lidiia Ilinichna was an active
researcher in the psychology division of the Kharkov Psychoneurological
Academy, collaborating with A.N. Leontiev, A.R. Luria, A.V. Zaporozhets,
and P.I. Zinchenko.
In 1939 she defended her candidate of sciences dissertation. A signicant
conclusion reached in her dissertation research was that schoolchildrens
assimilation of knowledge is signicantly conditioned by their personality-
mediated relationship to the material. This conclusion would go on to become
a core focus of her scholarship.
During World War II, Lidiia Ilinichna headed an occupational therapy
unit in a hospital for evacuees.
In 1944 she began her almost forty-year career at the USSR Institute of
Psychology, Academy of Psychological Sciences. For an uninterrupted thirty
years of that career, she directed the laboratory devoted to the psychology of
personality formation.
In 1967 she earned the degree of doctor of pedagogical sciences (in psy-
chology), and in 1968 she was granted the title of professor.
L.I. Bozhovich has been awarded two medalsFor Victory over Germany
and For Valiant Labor during the Great Patriotic Waras well as the badge,
Top Performer in Education.
When you think of Lidiia Ilinichna, the words of S.L. Rubinshtein come
to mind: Personalities force the people around them to dene themselves; a
personality has its position, its face. Lidiia Ilinichna was rst and foremost
a personality in the true sense of the word.
It was said of her that she was a woman with a mans character. But that
is not quite right. The masculine traits of insistence, a strong will, the ability
to stand up to an opponent, to defend the weak, were combined in her char-
acter with gentleness and a truly feminine, often touching concern for those
who worked on her teamfrom her closest assistants, with whom she started
her career in science (Liia Solomonovna Slavina, Larisa Vasilevna Blago-
nadezhina, Nataliia Grigorevna Morozova, Tatiana Emovna Konnikova,
Tatiana Vasilevna Endovitskaia), right down to her laboratory technician.
Lidiia Ilinichna was a strong polemicist who stood her ground with te-
nacity and dignity, something that invited quite a few complications in those
days. In the heat of polemics she could use strong, even harsh words. The
wall newspaper at the Institute of Psychology (there was such a thing at one
time) in a report about a recent academic council meeting posted an excerpt
JULYAUGUST 2009 5
from remarks made by Lidiia Ilinichna: She rebuked those critics who
were trying to score points despite the fact that they had no understanding
of the matter at hand. An editors note stated that this expression has been
toned down.
Lidiia Ilinichna was a self-sufcient person. A particular incident comes
to mind. A group from the institute was traveling to Berlin to attend a sym-
posium on problems of personality. In the train compartment naturally there
were heated arguments about whose scientic credo was more right and
more appropriate. In the heat of discussions, Vasilii Vasilevich Davydov
said some harsh and disparaging words about Lidiia Ilinichnas scientic
stance. It is interesting that when she returned from the trip and was telling
about it during a laboratory meeting, she repeated what Davydov had said
word for word.
Her burning passion and primary meaning in life was the search for truth
and the rm defense of her views and convictions. The following episode is
illustrative.
At that same symposium, a roundtable was organized. The discussion
gradually evolved into a debate between Lidiia Ilinichna and Daniil Boriso-
vich Elkonin. Their German colleagues looked on with interest as scholarly
feathers ew. The polemics with Daniil Borisovich were ongoing. It was a
good thing that their laboratories were right next door, separated by a shared
wall. But the heat of the polemic did not interfere with their warm friendship.
Laboratory meetings were amazing for how businesslike they were, for the
atmosphere of creativity, for how much interest there was in the discussion of
results achieved by each of its members. The laboratory prepared for meetings
as if they were examinations. At times passions would are up, and discus-
sion would turn into a cacophony of shouting, but its main driving force was
a striving to reach the truth or, as Lidiia Ilinichna would say, rasponiat* the
essence of what lies on the surface. No one was safe from criticism. At one
meeting, Lidiia Ilinichna was outlining the content of an article she had written.
A discussion ensued. A young member of the laboratory, a woman who had
just started work as a technician (usually young people spoke rst, and only
after they had had their say the heavyweights would join in), blushing and
stuttering out of embarrassment, expressed her disagreement with a point made
in the article. Lidiia Ilinichna listened to her attentively, thanked her for her
courage, and said, Thats something worth considering. Laboratory meetings
provided a good scientic education, and not only for the junior members.
One of her main personality traits was integrity of the purest sort. Even
*A neologism combining a prex suggesting repeated attempts with the verb to
understand.Trans.
6 JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY
in the most difcult situations she preferred to remain herself, to act as her
conscience dictated. During the battle with pedology, when a prohibition
was placed on Vygotskys ideas, the then-director of the institute suggested
that she revise her research plan, to free it of the inuence of her teacher.
Lidiia Ilinichna preferred to write a letter of resignation from the institute.
There was also a call to the Lubyanka, where she was strongly urged to write
a denunciation against an institute employee. She refused, even though she
presumed that this decision would entail trouble.
Lidiia Ilinichna was incapable of being hypocritical, of making accom-
modations, or of attering the powers that be. Although she had tremendous
self-condence, deep down inside she was thin-skinned. She hid her wounds
behind a trustworthy shield of combativeness.
The contradictions of the socialist era and the shortcomings of the edu-
cational system, which was aimed at shaping people with the psychology of
a cog in the state machine, were a source of great anguish for her. Lidiia
Ilinichna worked for the sovereignty of personality, and she herself was a
sovereign personality, serving on behalf of conscience and justice.
L.I. Bozhovich has left us a tremendous scholarly legacy that cannot be
done justice in this article. We will point to a few of the milestones of her
scientic career, the stages of which take material form in her publications: in
collections of scientic works, articles, and monographs. It should be noted
that the collections of scientic papers that she edited (in collaboration with
L.V. Blagonadezhina) and in whose preparation she was directly involved were
distinguished by their high quality, complete freedom from verbiage, logical
consistency, clear and concise writing style, painstaking analysis of empiri-
cal and experimental ndings, and well-argued conclusions. One lengthy but
eloquent example of the work that authors put into preparing these publications
is the 100-page article by M.S. Neimark titled The Study of Adolescents with
Various Personality Tendencies published in a 1972 collection.
In 1960 a collection of research papers was published under Bozhovichs
editorship titled The Psychological Study of Children in a Boarding School
[Psikhologicheskoe izuchenie detei v shkole-internate]. This volume sum-
marized extensive research by her laboratory. The soldiers of psychology
had taken up positions in an ordinary boarding school. The psychologists did
not just conduct observation and experimentation there. They became a part
of the schools pedagogical collective, gave advice to the teachers, helped
them, taught them psychological observation and how to penetrate beyond
surface phenomena and identify the essence of a childs problem. Their
constant interaction with the children, kindness, and warm-heartedness won
them the affection of the schools teachers. (An illustrative detail: when Liia
Solomonovna Slavina, who was by then in her fties, arrived to conduct an
JULYAUGUST 2009 7
experiment, the children cried out Grandmas here!) The thorough analysis
of the results derived from observing the children, the particular individual
approach used with them, the psychological portraits of individual children,
and the description of what the psychologist achieved in the school place this
work at the forefront of modern school psychology.
An important stage in Bozhovichs scientic career was the study of motiva-
tion in learning, which later grew into the more general problem of studying
motivation in child and adolescent behavior. The academic council spent
more than ve hours discussing the paper on learning motivation presented by
Bozhovich, Slavina, and Morozova. This was a new approach to the problems
of learning that did not limit itself to how learning was organized as external
inuences on the child, focusing instead on their internal incentives. Today,
this problem is no less (and perhaps even more) relevant.
Later Lidiia Ilinichna wrote of this work that, unlike sociological and social
psychology research, it centered attention on the problem of the development
of needs [potrebnosti] and motives in ontogeny, their place and role in the
formation of child personality.
1
In 1968 Bozhovichs book Personality and Its Formation in Childhood
[Lichnost i ee formirovanie v detskom vozraste] was published. Lidiia
Ilinichna was not very happy with the pink color of the cover, feeling it was
inappropriate for a serious scientic publication. Nevertheless, there was
an organic connection between this color scheme and the books content.
The pink Bozhovich, as her institute colleagues christened it, like the pink
rays of dawn, shed a great deal of light on what had previously been dark
and murky.
This was an amazing book in terms of the wealth of ideas that were
contained in it, the irreproachable logic of its exposition, and the precision
and consistency with which the authors scientic positions were expressed.
Its content organically combined profound theoretical intellect, an original
experimental approach to the well-founded hypotheses advanced and the
results of specic psychological and pedagogical practice by the collective
working under its author.
The book was not greeted with universal acclaim. A vigilant few detected
deviations from what was then the inviolable canon. There were two ofcial
objections:
1. The book contained almost no quotations from Marx and Lenin.
2. In her treatment of Freud, the author did not stop short at pointing
out his deciencies, but acknowledged a rational kernel to his views,
underscoring his striving to uncover the dynamic of motivational
forces in human behavior, how they interplay and conict with one
8 JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY
another, and to identify the role of unconscious processes in human
behavior.
Naturally, it was not just the lack of quotations or even recognition of
some of Freuds contributions that bothered the books opponents. The main
problem was that Bozhovichs ideas did not t with the ofcial ideology and
contradicted the attitudes and educational strategies that prevailed at the time.
Typical of these attitudes was the elevation of the social and the belittling
of the natural, the individual, something manifested in the practice of reduc-
ing all pupils to a common standard of average pupil and in the notorious
success rate. In personality theory, success was viewed primarily as the
assimilation of social forms of consciousness more as a factor of activity
than its subject.
For some reason, Lidiia Ilinichna wrote, in our psychology only one
aspect of the interaction between a subject and the world has been recog-
nized and developedthe aspect of assimilation. But another aspect has
been left out, the aspect of how mental activity crystallizes into those same
products of activity that later become the source of individual psychological
formation.
2
It should be noted that Bozhovichs monograph generated tremendous
interest and was favorably viewed by the leadership of the institute (which
for many years was headed by Anatolii Aleksandrovich Smirnov) and by the
majority of its psychologists. The book was soon awarded a rst prize by the
Academy of Pedagogical Sciences.
The concluding stage of Bozhovichs scholarly career is represented by
a cycle of articles summarizing the authors many years of work studying
the primary laws governing the formation of mature personality, the central
characteristic of which is the emergence in people of the ability to behave
independently of immediate circumstances and be guided by their own con-
sciously determined goals.
3
An examination of Bozhovichs scholarly contributions to the problem of
mental development in general and the formation of personality in particular
suggests three fundamental lines of investigation.
1. Solution of the problem of the unied line in mental development
involving the unity between a persons external and internal
motivators.
2. The problem of personality and its emergence as the highest level of
mental development.
3. Development of the scientic foundation of the psychology of
education and specic recommendations on how to increase the
effectiveness of classroom instruction.
JULYAUGUST 2009 9
Bozhovichs research was based on Vygotskys conception of mental de-
velopment. This conception, she wrote, contains a number of ideas that
became the point of departure for a large number of subsequent studies. One
foundational concept for Vygotsky was the social situation of development,
which represents the relationship between external and internal conditions
determining a childs age-related and individual traits.
4
Furthermore, Vygotsky ascribed special signicance to the role of inter-
nal factors in mental development. A aw in many periodizations of mental
development was that they were based on developmental features that, while
characteristic, were external and not the internal essence of this process. Only
the internal changes of development itself, he wrote, only the ruptures and
turning points that take place over its course provide a reliable basis for de-
ning the main epochs in the construction of child personality that we label
age-related epochs.
5
The main thrust of Bozhovichs theoretical work consisted in the study of
specically the inner essence of the process of development, its breaking
points and turning points.
A childs mental development, she wrote, is a complex process that
cannot be understood without analyzing not only those objective conditions
affecting the child, but the emerging features of his psyche through which the
inuence of these conditions are refracted. She goes on to write, This has
to be specially discussed because even now we encounter attempts to remove
childrens age-related and individual traits from immediate analysis of the
external circumstances of their lives.
6
Rubinshteins stance is well known, that the external acts through the
internal, that external social inuences are refracted through personality.
But Lidiia Ilinichna took this a step further. Even S.L. Rubinshtein, who
devoted so much space to the question of the activity of human consciousness
in specic psychological analysis, she noted, does not recognize the decisive
role of psychological formations in human behavior once they emerge. . . . It
seems to us, however, that without that it is impossible either to understand or
study the psychology of personality. She continues, Even now you can nd
psychologists and pedagogues who have forgotten the undeniable proposition
that the childs mental development has its own internal logic and its own
laws, and is not a passive reection of the reality in which this development
is taking place.
7
The signicance of the concept of internal logic should be emphasized:
it is one thing when we talk about mediation, about refracting the external
by means of the internal and quite another when we start by recognizing the
actual logic of development of the internal.
Lidiia Ilinichna, in concretizing and (it can be stated without exaggeration)
10 JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY
developing Vygotskys conception, constructed a rather expressive chain of
the distinctive relationship at various developmental stages between the two
componentsneeds and consciousnessthat are conditioned by a unied
line of mental development, its internal logic.
It should be noted that underestimating the signicance of these phenomena
in human life was typical of Soviet psychology. This had a great deal to do with
the ideological attitudes of the society when it came to treating the external
and social as absolute at the expense of the individual and the personal and
its importance in mental development.
Within Soviet psychology, the experimental study of needs was rst un-
dertaken by Bozhovich and A.V. Zaporozhets under the direction of A.N.
Leontiev during the Kharkov period of their scholarly careers. From then on
and for many decades the problem of needs was a central research focus for
Lidiia Ilinichna. A central thesis of this research was that specically needs
provide a basis for the development of motivational forces in human life and
activity. Bozhovich created an original theory of development in the sphere of
human needs and motivations that is exceptionally relevant for contemporary
science and practice. This theory was born of an organic union between the
authors theoretical investigations and the everyday empirical psychological
and experimental work of the collective she directed.
In the course of criticizing Kurt Lewin for the fact that the needs he had
designed into an experiment lacked vital content, making it impossible for
him to bridge the gap between needs and quasi-needs, Bozhovich outlined
her own path in the experimental study of needs.
The needs and motives that must be studied, she wrote, are those that
are real, that are formed in the process of life and human activity. They should
be modeled experimentally, and then again their role in the behavior and
activity of the individual must be analyzed and their function in forming his
personality must be established.
8
It was specically this path that allowed her to make fundamental prog-
ress in understanding the essence of motivational forces in human mental
development.
Traditionally a need has been characterized as something people require,
something without which they cannot survive. In other words, a need is an
expression of peoples dependence on their environment. And this is beyond
doubt. But at the same time another function of need remains in the shadows,
specically, peoples need for something drives them to transformative action
aimed at gradually emancipating themselves from the immediate effects of
the environment. With this dual function of needs in mind, the investigator
emphasizes the importance of studying the laws governing how the system of
needs takes shape over the course of mental development. The very logic of
JULYAUGUST 2009 11
the research therefore necessitated an emphasis on exploring the sphere en-
compassing a childs motivation and needs. Experimental studies by members
of Bozhovichs laboratory conrmed the exceptional importance of needs in
the upbringing of children and in their intellectual and moral development.
The full-edged formation of human personality, Lidiia Ilinichna
wrote, is decisively tied to specically what needs will take the form of
self-motion.
9
Bozhovichs contribution to the elucidation and specic psychological
characterization of the leading role of consciousness in the mental develop-
ment of the child is beyond question.
In Soviet and post-Soviet psychology of past decades, while the importance
of consciousness in life and mental development was being emphasized in
general theory, at the same time emphasis was placed on the reective
nature of consciousness, its secondary nature as a derivative of existence.
Insufcient attention was devoted to the fact that existence not only denes
consciousness but also consciousness denes existence. Zinchenko put it well:
Consciousness was kept on the short leash of activity.
10
Metaphorically speaking, Lidiia Ilinichna succinctly demonstrated the
psychological work that consciousness does in transforming needs, in
bringing about developmental stages, and in creating the preconditions for
advancement to a new stage of development.
Vygotskys view is well known, that elementary mental functions
perception, memory, thinking, and othershave a developmental logic of
their own that transforms them into higher mental functionslogical memory,
categorical perception, verbal thought. In other words, the essence of forma-
tion of higher mental functions is that elementary functions are mediated by
consciousness.
Bozhovich applied this logic in analyzing the process by which the
motivational-need sphere, which conditions mental development in ontogeny,
develops.
Traditionally in psychology there is a sharp division and even an opposition
between two categories of needs: lower, innate needs, and higher, spiritual
ones. It would seem that Lidiia Ilinichnas great scholarly contribution is
that she demonstrated the inadequacy of such an opposition. On the basis of
theoretical analysis supported by the experimental ndings of the collective
under her direction, a close connection between these categories of needs
was demonstrated and it was shown that mental development is a sequential
transformation of needs. The links in the chain of this process were thoroughly
analyzed by Bozhovich following the example of the formation of cognitive
need, which takes its origin and motivational energy from innate needs and
new impressions.
12 JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY
Infants are slaves to the situation impacting them. But as early as the
second year of life, the rst personality formation takes shapemotivating
ideas that are the result of the rst synthesis of intellectual and affective com-
ponents (or in other words, needs and consciousness)and enables children,
to some extent, to go beyond the connes of their immediate situation. The
motivating idea generates in them a striving to act in accordance with their
internal drives and incites rebellion in children if the realization of their
activity meets with resistance from the environment.
During the next stage (the age three crisis) there is a new step in the de-
velopment of consciousnessinitial awareness of the I as a subject, which
generates a striving, a need to actively inuence the situation.
It is the deprivation of that need that generates crisis. The next stage (the
age seven crisis) is based on the emergence of the social I, which generates
a striving to occupy a new place in life and provokes children to protest if
circumstances interfere in the manifestation of their activity.
The adolescent crisis is associated with a new level of development of
consciousness and the appearance of self-awareness in the true sense of this
word, the appearance of the ability to know oneself as a personality, which
generates a striving (need) for self-assertion and self-expression. Deprivation
of this need forms the basis of the adolescent crisis.
The next neoformation in mental development is the ability to dene one-
self, which generates the need to understand oneself, ones abilities, ones
place in the present and future.
We wind up with a logically convincing and well-reasoned unied line of
development, the breaking points and turning points of which are sub-
stantially conditioned by the consistently appearing tandemthe interaction
of need and consciousness.
The next step in constructing a unied line of mental development in
Bozhovichs conception was the study of motivation and the motivational
sphere of personality. First and foremost this involved the very concept of
motive, its etymology, comprehension of the psychological essence of this
phenomenon, its relationship to other psychological formations.
It is well known that, according to Kurt Lewins topological psychology,
motives are objects within an individuals life space that are need-signicant
or that drive the formation of intentions (quasi-needs). The individual, ac-
cording to these ideas, is under the power of the psychological eld, which
is subject to the inuence of the outer environment.
Lidiia Ilinichna, while by no means denying the role of the external, pri-
marily social, environment in peoples lives, emphasized the view of motives
as internal drivers of behavior. Furthermore, unlike Freud, who saw innate,
deep-seated forces as the masters of human behavior, Bozhovich, you might
JULYAUGUST 2009 13
say, was the rst person in Soviet psychology to clearly and thoroughly dem-
onstrate the signicance of the psychological formations that have taken shape
and continue to take shape over the course of a human life to the subsequent
development and formation of personality.
The polemic concerning the psychological essence of motive that she
conducted with A.N. Leontiev, who saw motive as the object that impels to
activity, is well known. Bozhovich did not place primary emphasis on ob-
jects impelling to action; she was most interested in the subjective aspect of
motivation. For her, a sense of duty, a consciously formed intention, and the
immediate desires of a child are all motives. Undeniably, the psychological
nature of these phenomena are different. But this just underscores the need to
understand the essence of such differences, to uncover the main tendencies
in the interactions between different motivators. Motive, as Bozhovich saw
it, is a phenomenon that reects the mutual connections between needs and
consciousnessthe very gap between elementary and higher needs that,
as Lidiia Ilinichna put it, Lewin was not able to bridge.
The cycle of experimental studies of motivation began with research into
the learning activity of schoolchildren conducted between 1945 and 1949.
Learning activity was not a random choice: it was important that for the
schoolchild this is leading activity. Like Leontiev, Lidiia Ilinichna saw this
as the activity during which the main acquisition takes place in childrens
mental development. This was innovative work that, as Bozhovich noted,
aimed to make the object of study the motives themselves, how they change
and increase at different ages, while previous studies have merely addressed
the inuence of the readymade motive on childrens activity.
11
The inuence of individual motives had been studied before, but not the
motivational sphere itself, its psychological features, genesis, construction,
and development. This work studied age-related differences when it came
to the impelling force of motives, the hierarchical features of motives, and
two major categories of motives were identied, one of which was associ-
ated with the content and process of learning activity itself, while the other
was conditioned by the features of the childs relationship with the social
environment. It was determined that both categories of motives are essential
to full-edged learning activity. The practical experimental work studying
motivation in schoolchildren gives us a good idea of the nature and main
direction of Bozhovichs scholarly collectives research activity. Research
usually began with analysis of a specic psychological reality, which made
it possible to identify the features of specic schoolchildrens behavior and
learning and the reason for their actions, formulate a hypothesis, and design
ways to inuence them. But this was just the beginning. The central focus
of the research was the creation of a special educational situation. And if
14 JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY
the researcher succeeded in signicantly changing childrens behavior, in
resolving conict, alleviating a problem that was interfering in life, school,
and interactions with peers, this served to validate the hypothesis. The aws
in how learning activity was organized and children were nurtured were
thoroughly analyzed. It was also demonstrated that in classroom practice,
failures in discipline and achievement are often analyzed only supercially:
the teacher often reacts to the result, to the surface manifestations of actions
without taking into account or analyzing either what caused them or the ex-
periential motives that underlie them.
In 1951, L.S. Slavinas book, An Individual Approach to Failing and Un-
disciplined Pupils [Individualnyi podkhod k neuspevaiushchim i nedistsi-
plinirovannym uchenikam] was published. The book introduced the concept
of a conceptual barrier, a phenomenon that was given a lease on life in
Bozhovichs laboratory and went on to become an enduring feature of peda-
gogical psychology. The essence of this phenomenon is that when the motives
behind schoolchildrens actions are not taken into account or are incorrectly
understood, the result is a lack of receptiveness to teacher input, which in turn
is a consequence of the pedagogues orientation toward external manifestations
of child behavior rather than the true reasons for their actions.
12
Lidiia Ilinichnas laboratory developed a technique to help teachers
eliminate the conceptual barrier. At a time when percentages and bureaucratic
approaches to classroom failures were ourishing, the laboratory discovered a
psychological-pedagogical mechanism of failure. It was demonstrated that the
problem of failure could not be solved globally, that there had to be a search
for and differentiation of the causes and analysis and formation of motives
for learning. A large-scale theoretical and experimental effort was aimed at
increasing the intellectual activity of pupils who were seen as having little
ability for intellectual activity and learning. The result of this work was the
creation of a technique aimed at changing the learning motivation of these
children. The experimental validation and testing of this technique in class-
room practice demonstrated its effectiveness and the possibility of actively
building childrens intellectual action. Bozhovichs laboratory was essen-
tially the rst to give scientic credence to the formative experiment and its
widespread application in the classroom, something that later became widely
accepted in pedagogical psychology. In The Stages of Personality Formation
in Ontogeny [Etapy formirovaniia lichnosti v ontogeneze], Lidiia Ilinichna
uses decades of scientic ndings as the basis of a thorough analysis of the
role of higher motivation in mental development in general and in the life
of the adult in particular. Underscoring the motivational work of the con-
science, the researcher puts together a sort of motivational scalea unied
line of development from simplest to the highest motivational systems. The
JULYAUGUST 2009 15
objective was to show how goals, intentions, and decisions take on motiva-
tional force and become motives. Of exceptional importance for educational
theory and practice (even today) was the study of the psychological essence
of intention.
Intention, Bozhovich writes, is a complex behavioral act that is medi-
ated by its internal structure and drives a person to a goal that has no actual
motivational force. Intention results from the mediation of human needs by
consciousness.
13
The scientic collective directed by Lidiia Ilinichna studied the conditions
under which children of various ages formed and realized intentions. It identi-
ed the differences in how intentions were realized in young schoolchildren
and adolescents. It was demonstrated that in the rst case, the struggle between
motives in realizing intention usually occurred elementally, while in the second
it was more a matter of conscious choice. The role of certain forms of behavior
that became character traits was demonstrated in the formation and realiza-
tion of intentions. One important outcome of this work was the denition of
the psychological essence of the formed personality property as a union and
alloy of a particular behavior and the motive that corresponds to it.
According to this view, feelings that emerge during the development of
human needs (moral, aesthetic, intellectual) occupy the highest point on the
motivational scale.
They represent system formations that are new in terms of their psycho-
logical nature. In comparison with elemental (natural) emotions, they have
a qualitatively different mediated construction and they occupy a different
place in the structure of personality and carry out a different function in the
behavior, activity, and development of human beings.
14
Lidiia Ilinichna formulated certain features of these peak experiences:
They can acquire independent value and become an object of need that
motivates human activity (the need for love and feelings that manifest
themselves in moral, aesthetic, and humanistic emotions).
Such experiences become valuable to people in and of themselves and
are transformed into unsatised need.
15
It should be noted that the characterization of peak experience that was
formulated on the basis of scientic ndings obtained in Bozhovichs labora-
tory is very close to the views of Abraham Maslow on the function of elevated
feelings in human life and in the learning process: peak experiences serve
not only as a mechanism for launching the learning process, but they should
be viewed also as its goal, a reward for it.
16
Investigating the psychological essence of motive, in addition to the moti-
vational scalethe connection between elemental and higher motivesLidiia
16 JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY
Ilinichna also took an interest in the integrated system of motives, the human
motivational sphere, the features of the relationship between motives inside
this sphere, and the laws governing the formation of motivational hierarchies.
In other words, one might say that she was interested in the many dimensions
of motivation. The logic of studying human needs and motives required re-
searchers to understand the psychological essence of personality, of the phe-
nomena that govern the formation of this whole. In approaching the problems
of personality, Bozhovich made a thorough analysis of personality theory in
both Western and Soviet psychology. Her thoroughness and objectivity in
this effort are noteworthy. Lidiia Ilinichna did not indulge in the prevalent
fashion of the time by blanketing the views of foreign psychologists in criti-
cism, usually for being bourgeois. After examining psychoanalytic theories
of personality, approaches to this problem by Carl Rogers, Kurt Lewin, and
adherents of socialization theory, she pointed not only to the aspects of these
views she did not like but also to what was valuable and could and should be
used in the subsequent study of personality theory. In describing the views of
Anna Freud, she pointed to that authors position concerning the importance
of childrens own activity in solving educational problems; in Kurt Lewin she
underscored the striving to understand personality as an integrated whole in
a state of unity with the environment; and from adherents of role theory
she drew attempts to present personality as structure with a social origin. In
characterizing Rubinshteins perspective on the problem of personality and
noting its positive aspects, she nevertheless objected to his understanding of
personality as the aggregate of internal conditions mediating the impact of
the environment: This denition so expands the concept of personality as to
deprive it of its psychological distinctness.
17
In analyzing research into the psychology of personality, Lidiia Ilinichna
wrote that our psychology still lacked any sort of complete, integrated con-
ception of personality. It should be emphasized that her own research, her
approach to exploring personality, made substantial contributions to the
creation of such a conception.
Bozhovich based her investigation into personality on two ideas that were
cardinal to her scientic viewsthe idea of an integrated approach to exam-
ining the mind and the existence of an internal logic in mental development.
During those years, psychologists were devoting a great deal of attention to
exploring the philosophical, sociological, and methodological aspects of per-
sonality. (Personality as an aggregate of social relationshipsthe highest level
of mental development.) Bozhovichs efforts were aimed at understanding
personality on a very concrete psychological level. According to her beliefs,
personality was a special mental formation that carries out the following
functions: it assures the integrity of mental life and human activity, it forms
JULYAUGUST 2009 17
peoples internal position, it frees people from the immediate inuence of the
environment and permits them not only to adapt to it but also to consciously
transform both it and themselves.
As personalities, human beings are characterized by having their own
views, their own moral demands, by dened life goals, which they strive to
achieve. All this makes them relatively strong and independent from extrane-
ous environmental inuences. They are characterized by active, rather than
reactive, behavior.
18
Such an understanding of personality is in conict with the ideology of a
totalitarian society. Bozhovichs internal position was fundamentally incom-
patible with the mandates of life under totalitarianism, something that, as
we have already mentioned, was a source of more than a few personal and
professional difculties.
In the course of her personality research the need arose to provide a more
specic analysis of the relationshipbetween the external and the internal,
between the objective and the subjectivethat shapes childrens mental
development as the process of personality formation: it is specically the
relationship between external requirements and the capabilities and needs
of the children themselves that constitute the central nexus that denes their
subsequent development.
19
It is in this connection that she introduces the concept of internal position,
which reects a new level of self-awareness. Internal position is a special,
central personality neoformation that characterizes the personality of the child
overall. It is what determines childrens behavior and activity and the entire
system of their relationships to reality and self. In the course of her polemic
with A.N. Leontiev, who at rst underscored the importance of childrens life
position in their development and then changed this thesis somewhat to an
assertion that development is dened by life itself, by childrens real activity,
she wrote: It seems to us that A.N. Leontiev undercuts his own position when
in his subsequent treatises and studies the concept of position is discarded
and he returns to the much more general and psychologically vague concepts
of life itself, real life processes, and the activity of the child.
20
Internal position, she writes, that is, the system of the childs needs
and strivings that refracts and mediates the inuence of the external environ-
ment, becomes the immediate force driving the development of new mental
properties in him.
21
Having formed within the framework of one developmental period, in-
ternal position becomes a factor conditioning the move to the next stage of
personality development. This is the main distinction between Bozhovichs
conception of personality and theories that view personality development as
the assimilation (acquisition) of social experience.
18 JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY
Once internal position emerges, in Lidiia Ilinichnas view, it becomes in-
trinsic to a person through all stages of life. In this connection, the researcher
characterized different hypostases of internal position in ontogeny: in the
child and adolescent it is expressed in a striving toward a more adult position
in life; in maturity, toward a position more consistent with a subjects require-
ments and capabilities (in their own estimation); and in old age it is expressed
in a desire to preserve the position in life occupied previously.
Personality, Bozhovich emphasizes, is an integrated psychological struc-
ture. Disputing the differing view of personality as an aggregate of particular
properties and qualities and as a harmonious collection of various proper-
ties, she wrote: Research that views personality as an aggregate of separate
properties and qualities are doomed to failure. Just the opposite is needed:
investigation of each separate quality in terms of personality as a whole.
22
Here we see the elaboration and subsequent development of the thesis
that B.M. Teplov advanced in his time asserting that personality as a whole
is more than the sum of its parts.
Lidiia Ilinichna formulated the strategic investigative task as follows: to
understand the age-related psychological laws governing the formation of
personality in the child. Only such an approacha genetic approachshe
insisted, would permit us to study personality as a specic structure that
emerges in the process of the life and activity of children, and, consequently,
discover its psychological essence.
23
An essential tenet for Bozhovich was that every stage in child develop-
ment is characterized not by a simple aggregate of mental features, but by the
uniqueness of the integrated structure of child personality and the existence
of developmental tendencies specic to a given type. In this connection she
criticized two collections that came out at the time: Psychology of the Young
Schoolchild [Psikhologiia mladshego shkolnika], edited by E.I. Ignatev
(1960), and The Psychology of Personality and Activity in the Preschooler
[Psikhologiia lichnosti i deiatelnosti doshkolnika], edited by A.V. Zaporo-
zhets and D.B. Elkonin (1964). These volumes described age-related features
of particular mental processes, but were devoid of any attempt to characterize
their specic structure or tie them to the personality features of children of
the corresponding age (it should be noted that this failing is typical of many
contemporary textbooks on developmental psychology: the development of
cognitive processes, and intellectual and personality development at a given
developmental stage are essentially viewed in isolation or, in any event, as
having little to do with one another).
Bozhovichs scientic collective made detailed studies of the psycho-
logical essence of individual personality formations and the properties of
JULYAUGUST 2009 19
personalityorganization, discipline, inappropriate affectand developed
specic practical recommendations for teachers and school staff.
But Lidiia Ilinichna could not settle for the experimental investigation of
separate personality features.
The particular psychological elaboration that she chose to investigate was
the directedness of personality. Describing directedness as the hierarchical
system of internal motivators, Lidiia Ilinichna felt that specically this
phenomenon was the foundation of the personality structure. Moving the
problem of directedness to the forefront permitted the original principle to be
realizedinvestigation of each individual property in terms of personality as
a whole. Over the course of many years, psychological investigation was con-
ducted into the types of directedness that were fundamental to the formation of
internal positions of personalityprosocial, business-like, narrow (egoistic).
Through the monographic investigation of the life and behavior of individual
schoolchildren, the inuence of particular types of directedness on the over-
all process of personality formation in schoolchildren was demonstrated, in
particular their affective behavior. Long-term, involved observation of the
behavior of pupils occupying a leading position in child-driven classroom
organization demonstrated that the failure to observe democratic principles
in the workings of these organizations and the existence, on the one hand, of
a narrow core group that remains constant over many years, and on the other,
a passive majority of rank-and-le organization members, negatively affects
the personality formation of many activists, promoting the formation of an
egoistic directedness in them.
In Bozhovichs laboratory and with her direct involvement, for the rst
time in Soviet psychology, experimental techniques were developed that made
it possible to subject empirical ndings characterizing the manifestation of
personality directedness to quantitative analysis and determine their statistical
signicance. These techniques were based on a phenomenon well-known in
psychology: the motives that drive human behavior inuence certain mental
functions, in particular, perceptual precision (Neimark-Konnikova technique)
and the speed of simple reactions (Chudnovskii technique). A comparison of
these two techniques was conducted and the degree of their reliability was
determined.
24
Empirical and experimental study of directedness conrmed the hypothesis
that directedness is a central formation of the motivational sphere and that it
structures and organizes the motives and needs of personality.
The next step in studying the structure of personality and the ways in which
its internal position is formed was framing and studying the question of how
stable personality is. This question was rst posed by Bozhovich during the
20 JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY
eighteenth International Congress of Psychology in 1966, where she presented
a paper titled The Stability of Personality, the Process and Conditions of Its
Formation [Ustoichivost lichnosti, protsess i usloviia ee formirovaniia].
In this paper, the phenomenon of personality stability was viewed in terms
of the level of its formation at which people acquire the ability to preserve
their personality position under various conditions and retain a certain im-
munity to external inuences that are alien to their personal values, views,
and convictions. It should be stated that the very formulation of this prob-
lem under conditions of authoritarianism, where conformism thrives and
mechanical pedagogy (Rubinshteins term) was based on the notion that
pedagogical inuences had to be immediately projected onto the child, was
an extraordinary event.
From that point forward, the stability of personality became an object of
systematic study. This work uncovered the role of contextual aspects of moti-
vation in forming personality stability and its dependence on the specic nature
of the dominant motive; it analyzed the psychological essence of conformism
as a manifestation of personality instability; it investigated the relationship
between the phenomenon of personality stability and its sense-of-life orienta-
tions; and it was demonstrated that the psychological phenomena personal-
ity directedness, personality stability, and sense-of-life orientation are
interconnected and interdependent, representing different aspects of a single
process that hinges on a future orientation of human behavior and activity.
It is well known that in Soviet psychology two alternative approaches to
the problem of personality formation grew out of the same soilVygotskys
scholarly legacy: A.N. Leontievs activity approach and Bozhovichs theories,
which emphasized the role of the internal logic of development in the emer-
gence of personality. While the leaders of these directions were still alive,
there was an ongoing polemic concerning a number of fundamental problems
in the psychology of personalitythe role of activity and its emergence,
understandings of the psychological essence of motive, and the relationship
between external social inuence and internal drives in personality develop-
ment. With the passage of years, however, it has become increasingly evident
that there is an organic connection between these approaches.
The work of Bozhovichs scientic collective in validating and realizing
her scientic credo over many years and through many publications was
aimed at organizing activity for children that corresponded to this credo,
creating a way of life for them that would best promote the nurturing of posi-
tive personality qualities. One of the fundamental principles of Bozhovichs
position was viewing the psychological essence of the personality property
as a unit, an alloy with its own particular form, a means of behavior and
JULYAUGUST 2009 21
corresponding motive. But what is the nurturing of a needed form of behavior
if not helping children organize their activity in a particular way?
On the other hand, the activity approach investigates the activity of the
internal in mental development and with the years this problem is coming
into clearer focus. It was pointed to by Leontiev in characterizing personal-
ity meaning as a connecting link between consciousness and activity. These
tendencies became more pronounced with the introduction of the concept of
conceptual formation and conceptual set.
25
In a work with the eloquent title Methods for Studying Motivation in
Personality [Metody izucheniia motivatsii lichnosti], E.E. Nasinovskaia
emphasizes the active-action nature of conceptual formations that take shape
in the individual lives of subjects and determine the personality-conceptual
aspect of their motivation.
26
In his foundational work The Psychology of Meaning [Psikhologiia smysla],
D.A. Leontiev concludes that the immediate sources of concept formation are
needs and motives. Meaning possesses force. It not only characterizes the
particular way in which subjects understand, know, and conceptualize reality
but also fullls the function of regulating practical activity.
27
There is thus reason to believe that the two schools are coming closer
together in their views on a problem that is central to the process of mental
developmentthe role of internal motivators in this process. It seems
more and more obvious with time that differences in the positions of the two
schools are complementary, enriching one another, and, one might think,
rendering our understanding of the process by which personality emerges
more complete and adequate.
The book being offered to the reader contains a wealth of material on the
psychology of educationBozhovich left us an original and exceptionally
substantive conception of education that is the result of organic interaction
between scientic investigation and the systematic psychological and peda-
gogical practice of her collective. Pedagogical practice was not just a way of
validating and testing scientic ndings. It also generated new hypotheses
and new challenges and research directions.
This conception stands in contrast to the positions of mechanical peda-
gogy, which reduced the educational process to the holding of events (event-
mania, based on the conviction that the very participation in such events leads
to the positive development of personality), admonition, demands, encourage-
ment, and punishment. It underscores the need to cultivate in people a stable
internal position and a certain immunity to inuences alien to their personal
values, views, and convictions, to help them become capable of transforming
not only surrounding circumstances, but themselves. In essence, this was a
22 JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY
matter of cultivating the psychological sovereignty of personality, something
completely incompatible with the existing ideological stereotypes.
Bozhovichs theories of education were built on the idea that there is an
internal logic to mental development and the emergence of personality, an
idea that was central to her scientic worldview. She demanded that educa-
tors penetrate into the depth of the developmental process, that they take
into account the role of internal position in the emergence of their pupils
personality and the distinctive way in which their system of needs and mo-
tives takes shape.
The full-edged development of human personality, she wrote, is
decisively tied to which needs will take the form of self-motion. She con-
tinued, This position should be particularly emphasized, because at present
in pedagogy the task of nurturing needs is not being assigned at all: it is not
advanced as a special objective of education. There is no such section in
pedagogy textbooks, and it is absent in schools educational program. As
a consequence, no techniques for nurturing needs and motives have been
developed at all.
28
Emphasizing that success in education cannot be achieved through straight-
forward input, pressure on children, Lidiia Ilinichna wrote, Whatever
inuence the environment might exercise over children, whatever demands
it might place on them, until these demands enter the structure of childrens
own needs they will not serve as real factors in their development. And the
need to fulll one or another demand arises only if its fulllment can satisfy
their internal position.
29
In this conception, therefore, emphasis is placed not on cultivating external
forms of behavior, but on transforming internal structures of personality, its
needs and motivational sphere, its directedness. Education, according to the
researchers position, is a process that results in the experience of higher
feelings (moral, aesthetic, intellectual) taking on the form of self-motion.
Today as in the past, Bozhovichs psychological analysis of the problems
associated with the developmental approach to education have tremendous
importance for educational theory and practice.
She gave credence to the exceptionally important idea that developmen-
tal stages are characterized not simply by an aggregate of separate mental
features (memory, attention, thinking, etc.), but by the uniqueness of chil-
drens personality as a whole. She wrote that in educational practice, two
different processes are often confused: the sequential growth in complexity
of the knowledge and skills that children assimilate and the process of their
development. The logic of assimilation, she emphasized, is not the same as
the logic of development.
Often the need to take age-specic features into account is understood as
JULYAUGUST 2009 23
a need to adapt the form and content of pedagogy to a level appropriate to
the particular developmental age. Lidiia Ilinichna felt this was incorrect. In
arguing the idea of the leading role of education in childrens mental devel-
opment, she emphasized the importance of taking into account age-related
development just around the corner and the need to pay special attention in
the educational process to those personality traits that at a given stage are
only in a germinal state, but to which the future belong.
One cornerstone of Bozhovichs educational conception is that new sci-
entically and experimentally grounded educational techniques can to some
degree nudge forward age-related features, accelerate mental, as well as
personality, development. In this connection she had a high opinion of the
experimental program designed by D.B. Elkonin and V.V. Davydov, which
provided not only an educational, but a personality development effect.
Overall, it should be said that the theoretical investigations and practices
of Bozhovichs collective laid the foundation for contemporary theories
concerning personality development in the classroom.
Lidiia Ilinichna emphasized the role of the child collective in forming per-
sonality and the need to consider childrens social status, how they feel within
the collective, the features of their relationships with peers. Under her direction,
Ia.L. Kolominskii wrote and defended a dissertation titled A Psychological
Study of the Relationships between Pupils in the Classroom [Opyt psikholo-
gicheskogo izucheniia vzaimootnoshenii mezhdu uchenikami v klasse] (1984),
where for the rst time in Soviet psychology sociometric methods were applied.
It should be noted that this work was carried out at a time when sociology in
general and sociometrics in particular were essentially prohibited.
Bozhovichs position regarding the problem of the collective and its role
in education is clearly spelled out in the book she published jointly with
T.E. Konnikova (her comrade-in-arms and follower in research and applied
psychology) titled The Developmental Approach in the Work of a Pioneer
Organization [Vozrastnoi podkhod v rabote pionerskoi organizatsii] (1969).
This book provides critical analysis of the work of a Pioneer organization of
that time and identies and thoroughly examines the negative tendencies in
its activity as well as their causes: inappropriate understanding of the devel-
opmental approach on the part of the organizations directors; violation of
elementary democratic principles in the organizations activitiesthe sharp
delineation between a leadership core that remained unchanged over many
years (often not elected, but appointed by the grownups) and the main mass
of rank-and-le Pioneers. In addition, the activists became accustomed to
seeing themselves as being above the collective and they developed a sense
of their own exceptionalness and superiority in relation to the rank-and-le
members of the collective; formalism and a cynical attitude toward the life of
24 JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY
the collective was cultivated; and the rank-and-le members accumulated
experience of constant subordination, which fosters passivity and indifference
to the affairs of the collective.
The entire thrust of the book is aimed at demonstrating how important it is
in the cultivation of personality to have a genuinely engaged collective built
on democratic principles, a collective in which children learn to correlate their
interests with the interests of other people, a collective in which an atmosphere
of mutual assistance, mutual support, and mutual responsibility is fostered.
Over many years of work, Bozhovich and her laboratory constructed an
integrated system of specic practical recommendations for pedagogues and
others charged with the cultivation of children. The most important component
of this system is the principle: do not merely demand a particular behavior
from children, but help them acquire this form of behavior. The main idea is
that an elementary didactic rule exists: rst, teach something (how to solve a
particular class of problems, a grammatical rule), and then demand, monitor,
and evaluate the results of learning. But something else happens in education
we constantly demand and evaluate without teaching the means for fullling
this demand. The practical work done by Bozhovichs collective was aimed
at realizing this principle.
In this introduction it is not possible to describe everything that has been
achieved by the staff, comrades-in-arms, disciples, and followers of Lidiia
Ilinichna. We will have to limit ourselves to a brief mention of the main
directions of their work.
1. There is the work of Liia Solomonovna Slavina, who was Lidiia
Ilinichnas lab member, assistant, and friend, and who dedicated the
greater part of her life to the practical realization and development
of Bozhovichs scientic ideas. Her works, which tell of the ways
and means for overcoming lack of discipline, academic failure,
and intellectual passivity among pupils and describe how to teach
children with affective behavior, are striking for how productive
this psychologists efforts were and how organically she combined
scientic ndings with specic educational practice. This investigator
inspires comparisons with a doctor who comes up with the exact
diagnosis, performs a well-executed operation, and frees her patient
from a disease that had prevented him from living his life.
2. The experimental research of M.S. Neimark identied the psychological
essence of the inappropriate affect and laid the foundation for work
with affective children.
3. Psychological and pedagogical work was conducted (by S.M.
Iakobson, N.F. Prokina, and L.S. Slavina) on the formation of
JULYAUGUST 2009 25
individual personality traits in children: organization, industriousness,
and discipline.
4. Psychological analysis was conducted of creative play as a factor in
cultivating positive personality traits (E.S. Makhlakh).
5. The role of self-assessment in moral education was studied (M.S.
Neimark and E.I. Savonko).
6. The ways and means of cultivating empathy in children was studied
(T.P. Gavrilova).
7. Anxiety as a personality trait was subjected to psychological analysis
and techniques were developed for working with anxious children
(A.M. Prikhozhan).
8. Research was performed on the psychology of orphans, work that
continues and develops the ideas and principles concerning the
nurturing of children deprived of parents that were developed during
research at a boarding school (A.M. Prikhozhan and N.N. Tolstykh).
9. Conformism was studied and the psychological factors behind the
ability to withstand the effect of persuasion that goes against the views
and convictions of a personality were investigated (V.E. Chudnovskii,
T.I. Iufereva, and V.S. Tripolskii).
10. The role of time perspectives in shaping the personalities of
schoolchildren were studied (N.N. Tolstykh).
11. The psychology of school readiness was studied (N.I. Gutkina).
12. Study was conducted into the role of sense-of-life orientation in the
process of personality emergence (N.I. Gutkina).
An immediate successor of Bozhovich, continuing the work to which she
devoted her life, is the Laboratory for the Study of the Scientic Foundations
of Practical Child Psychology headed by full member of the Russian Academy
of Education, I.V. Dubrovina. Among the laboratorys assets are ndings on
the problem of psychological culture and its cultivation among pupils, the
theoretical and practical foundations of mental development, and scientic
and methodological principles governing the organization of psychological
services within the education system.
The laboratorys work in creating a series of psychology textbooks for
schoolsgrades three through elevendeserves special mention. Familiar-
izing pupils with the basic laws of human mental activity will undoubtedly
advance realization of the fundamental objective Bozhovich strove to achieve
in her day: development of internal motivators, schoolchildrens internal
activity aimed at the formation of their own personality, capable of transform-
ing not only the circumstances that surround them, but themselves.
More than a quarter century has passed since Lidiia Ilinichna departed this
26 JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY
life. There have been many changes over that time, including changes in the
area of education: we now have computer classes, the Internet, and distance
learning has become popular. The achievements of science and technology
have greatly expanded opportunities for obtaining information and acquiring
knowledge. But in the end, these are just tools that assist the process of educa-
tion. It would be a shame if the tools become the goal. Analysis of Bozhovichs
legacy attests to the fact that the process through which personality emerges in
the child, adolescent, and young adult is exceptionally complex and central to it
is awakening the inner forces of development. Meeting this challenge demands
the constant, systematic engagement of the pedagogue in the educational process,
not only as an informant but also (and most important) as a personality. It is
exceptionally important that this be born in mind today.
Anyone learning about Bozhovichs scientic career might conclude that
not only has her research not lost its relevance, but in many cases it has be-
come even more timely.
In essence, L.I. Bozhovich created a model for developing personality in the
classroomfor teaching that endows academic knowledge with signicance
for personality and the goal of which is forming personality in the true sense
of the word. Lidiia Ilinichna also identied and scientically validated the
main aspects of this process:
the cultivation of personality sovereignty-personality that possesses
a stable internal position capable of withstanding inuences that
contradict developed views and convictions;
the cultivation in schoolchildren of self-assessment and a level of
aspiration that will optimally enable discovery of their potential;
the cultivation of peak experiences (moral, aesthetic, and intellectual
feelings) that become an unsatised need and largely condition the
process through which personality emerges;
the cultivation of a distinctly expressed prosocially, humanistically
oriented personality, where a leading place is occupied by motives
of searching for meaning in ones existence and the shaping of ones
own fate.
The scientic content of the book being offered to readers should help them
form an image of Lidiia Ilinichna Bozhovich, an outstanding scholar who
served science honestly and selessly for her entire life, a principled, bright,
warm, and generous person who in many ways dened her own time.
Notes
1. L.I. Bozhovich, Problema razvitiia motivatsionnoi sfery rebenka, in Izuchenie
motivatsii povedeniia detei i podrostkov (Moscow, 1972), pp. 744.
JULYAUGUST 2009 27
2. L.I. Bozhovich, Lichnost i ee formirovanie v detskom vozraste (Moscow,
1968), p. 141.
3. L.I. Bozhovich, Etapy formirovaniia lichnosti v ontogeneze (I), in Problemy
formirovaniia lichnosti (Moscow, Voronezh, 1995), p. 195.
4. L.I. Bozhovich, O kulturno-istoricheskoi kontseptsii L.S. Vygotskogo i
ee znachenii dliia sovremennykh issledovanii psikhologii lichnosti, in Problemy
formirovaniia lichnosti, p. 291.
5. L.S. Vygotskii [Vygotsky], Sobranie sochinenii v 6-ti tomakh, vol. 4 (Moscow,
1984), p. 247.
6. Bozhovich, Lichnost i ee formirovanie, p. 149.
7. Ibid., pp. 14142, 144.
8. Bozhovich, Problema razvitiia motivatsionnoi sfery rebenka, p. 18.
9. Ibid., p. 34
10. V.P. Zinchenko, Problemy psikhologii razvitiia, Voprosy psikhologii, 1991,
no. 6, p. 122.
11. Bozhovich, Problema razvitiia motivatsionnoi sfery rebenka, p. 23.
12. L.S. Slavina, Trudnye deti (Moscow-Voronezh, 1998), p. 10.
13. Bozhovich, Problema razvitiia motivatsionnoi sfery rebenka, pp. 3536.
14. Bozhovich, O kulturno-istoricheskoi kontseptsii L.S. Vygotskogo, p. 298.
15. Ibid., pp. 29899.
16. A.G. Maslou [Maslow], Dalnie predely chelovecheskoi psikhiki (Moscow,
1997), pp. 2012 [in the original, Abraham H. Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Hu-
man Nature (ReinventingYourself.com, 1971), p. 190; the corresponding English
sentence from which this quotation is taken reads: And conversely I think it is pos-
sible to think of the peak experience, the experience of awe, mystery, wonder, or of
perfect completion, as the goal and reward of learning as well, its end as well as its
beginning.Trans.].
17. Bozhovich, Lichnost i ee formirovanie, p. 140.
18. Bozhovich, O kulturno-istoricheskoi kontseptsii L.S. Vygotskogo, pp.
299300.
19. Bozhovich, Lichnost i ee formirovanie, p. 174.
20. Ibid., p. 179.
21. Ibid., p. 176.
22. Ibid., p. 44.
23. Ibid., p. 142.
24. See M.S. Neimark and V.E. Chudnovskii [Chudnovsky], Sopostavlenie raz-
lichnykh eksperi mentalnykh metodik po vyiavleniiu napravlennosti lichnosti, in
Izuchenie motivatatsii povedeniia detei i podrostkov (Moscow, 1972), pp. 24958.
25. See V.K. Viliunas, Psikhologiia emotsionalnykh iavlenii (Moscow, 1976); A.G.
Asmolov et al., O nekotorykh perspektivakh issledovanii smyslovykh obrazovanii
lichnosti, Voprosy psikhologii, 1979, no. 3, pp. 3545.
26. E.E. Nasinovskaia, Metody izucheniia motivatsii lichnosti (Moscow, 1988),
pp. 34.
27. D.A. Leontev [Leontiev], Psikhologiia smysla (Moscow, 2003), p. 104.
28. Bozhovizh, Lichnost i ee formirovanie, p. 34.
29. Ibid., p. 174.
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