Psychology and the Theory of the Localization of Mental Functions

Abstract

It is legitimate and fruitful to approach the problem of localization from the psychological viewpoint because the dominant psychological views of various periods have always greatly influenced the ideas about the localization of mental functions (association psychology and the atomistic theory of localization; structural psychology and the tendency of modern scholars toward an integral conception of localization). The problem of localization ultimately is a problem of the relation between structural and functional units in brain activity. That is why the conception about what is being localized cannot be irrelevant for the solution of the problem of the character of the localization.

First published as Vygotsky, L. S. (1934). Psikhologija i uchenie o lokalizacii psikhicheskikh funkcij. In Pervyj vseukrainskij s’ezd nevropatologov i psikhiatrov (pp. 34–41). Kharkov.