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Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) It has been said of the Russian psychologist Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky that he possessed a Mozartian genius, yet he lived in a time and place that was not receptive to Mozarts. In his youth he was interested in literature and literary analysis, becoming a connoisseur of poetry and philosophy. At 18, he wrote an essay on Shakespeare's Hamlet that was later incorporated into one of his psychological writings. After entering the medical school at Moscow University he promptly switched to the law school and simultaneously enrolled in a private university to study literature once more. He became interested in psychology only at the age of 28.Vygotsky taught literature for awhile in a provincial school and then taught at a teacher's college where he gave his first lectures on psychology. His first large research project was The Psychology of Art (1925) -- he used this as his Ph.D. thesis in psychology at Moscow Institute of Psychology. Vygotsky never had formal training in psychology.Vygotsky's collaborators included Alexander Luria and Alexei Leontiev, who helped create the body of research now known as the Vygotskian approach. During his lifetime, Vygotsky was under pressure to adapt his theories to the prevailing political ideology in Russia. After his death from tuberculosis in 1934, his ideas were repudiated by the government but his ideas were kept alive by his students and later revived. Vygotsky's pioneering work in developmental psychology has had a profound influence on school education in Russia, and interest in his theories continues to grow throughout the world. |
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