This dialogue and book is for you, and you paid the price.
Therefore, make its meaning come through by reading it twice.
This is a metalogue, i.e., an imaginary dialogue, with Vygotsky sometime during the last years of his life. The view he expresses is based on ideas discussed in this book (see parenthetical notes for their location). Nevertheless, the statements of his ideas in this metalogue are my interpretations of what I believe that Vygotsky probably meant. Interpretations are unavoidable when attempting to understand the writings of great thinkers. It is my hope that my interpretations will stimulate and facilitate your interpretations in such a way that they may emerge even more accurate than mine.
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References
“James Rush and the theory of voice and mind,” in Psychology of Language and Thought: Essays on the Theory and History of Psychoinguistics, eds. Peter Ostwald and R. W. Rieber (New York: Plenum, 1980), pp. 105–119.
Joseph Priestley, Piestley’s Writing on Philosophy Science, and Politics, ed. J. A. Passmore (New York: Collier’s, 1965), pp. 139–150.
See L. S. Vygotsky, The Psychology of Art (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1971).
See, for example, J. Dewey, Experience in Nature (New York: W. W. Norton, 1929), p. 167.
On the suppression of Freudian psychology in the Soviet Union, by the time of Vygotsky’s death in 1934, see Martin A. Miller, Freud and the Bolsheviks: Psychoanalysis in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union (New Haven : Yale University Press, 1998).
Compare the revealing anecdote that opens a book by another social psychologist of the time: Floyd Henry Allport, Institutional Behavior: Essays Toward a Re-interpretation of Contemporary Social Organization (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1933), p. 3. At a meeting of the faculty of a certain large university a proposal for a new administrative policy was being discussed. The debate was long and intense before a final vote of adoption was taken. As the professors filed out of the room an instructor continued with one of the older deans. “Well,” observed the latter official, “it may be a little hard on some people; but I feel that, in the long run, the new plan will be for the best interests of the institution.” “Do you mean that it will be for the good of the students?” inquired the younger man. “No,” the dean replied, “I mean it will be for the good of the whole institution.” “Oh, you mean that it will benefit the faculty as well as the students.” “No,” said the dean, a little annoyed, “I don’t mean that; I mean it will be a good thing for the institution itself.” “Perhaps you mean the trustees then—or the Chancellor?” “No, I mean the institution, the institution! Young man, don’t you know what an institution is?”
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Rieber, R.W. (2004). A Dialogue with Vygotsky. In: Rieber, R.W., Robinson, D.K. (eds) The Essential Vygotsky. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30600-1_1
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