Defectology and the Study of the Development and Education of Abnormal Children

Abstract

The question at hand today is how to break out of biology’s hold on psychology and to move into the area of historical human psychology. In reference to our subject, the word social has great significance. First of all, it marks as social everything cultural, in the broadest sense of the word. Culture is the product of man’s social life and his public activity; therefore, the very formulation of the question of cultural development takes us directly into the social plane of development. Furthermore, it would be possible to illustrate that a sign, a tool, located outside the organism, is separate from personality and is essentially a social organ, a social means. Even further, we could say that all higher functions are based not in biology nor in the history of pure phylogenesis; the mechanism at the very basis of higher mental functions is a social mold. We could say that the final goal toward which the history of a child’s development leads is the social genesis of higher forms of behavior.