Zazzo, René

Basic Biographical Information/Major Accomplishments

A prodigious student of Henri Wallon, René Zazzo was affected by his mentor throughout his life. Zazzo sought a more Marxist interpretation to human higher mental functions than the instinct doctrine which dominates the field of psychology. In the footsteps of Wallon, Zazzo expanded his vision of psychology in Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes which was one of the first interdisciplinary institutes in the social sciences, and prepared the way for what was to become behavioral science in France. Zazzo did combine dialectical materialist conception of history with psychology, which was an unusual synthesis at the time. Psychology at that time was seen as a bourgeois science. It was through Zazzo’s effort that Marxist psychologists now had a language of their own to guide experimentation, empirical research, and stimulate discussion with such concepts as intelligence, human nature, higher mental functions, learning, personality, etc. To...