My disagreements and my reconciliation with Vygotsky

Abstract

This is a personal account on an investigation brought about along six years over the work of the Russian psychologist, Lev S. Vygotsky. The title echoes the distancing attitude that, unexpectedly for him, the author kept when he began deepening the Vygotsky's writings. This attitude took later a new course when the historical and circumstantial influences that gave shape to the psychological thinking of Vygotsky became transparent. Some of these influences belonged to domain of ideas: Hegel and Marx; others came from his contemporary psychology: Pavlov, Gestalt, Piaget, Janet, Stern; and other tragically coercive influence arouse from the imposition of a totalitarian sovieto-marxist ideology. All these of influences summed, made Vygotsky an historical more than today figure. As result, this study on Vygotsky, that follows a detailed analysis of his work, stands in a middle way between a scarcely unobjectionable appraisal of one part of his thinking and the recognition of some brilliant inspired  ideas that aptly recontextualized can be of enduring value.