Abstract
The problem of “normal pathology” in the transitional age—The concept of the constitution: a somatic and psychological constitution, their unity—The problem of the asthenic and schizothymic constitution in the transitional age—Two counterposed visions on the content and character of the crisis in the transitional age—The biological character of the crisis—“Phenotypic” and “conditional genetic” points of view on the pedology of the transitional age—The new pedological material (studies of the working adolescent)—The structure of the basic life requirements of the working and bourgeois adolescents—Constitutional and conditional understandings of the conflicts and complications of the transitional age—The “biological scissors” in the transitional age and its explanation.
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Notes
- 1.
Some Soviet schools of the time had an office for the resident pedologist, who functioned something like the school nurse or the school psychologist.
- 2.
Vygotsky uses the term aнкeтныx cвeдeний (anketnykh svedeniy or “personal inquiries”). As we saw in Chap. 2 on methods, this might mean a Durkheimian survey of personal information. But Vygotsky glosses this with the “caмoxapaктepиcтикa и xapaктepиcтикa дpyг дpyг,” which we have translated as “self-characterizations and characterizations by peers.” In Soviet schools, students were sometimes asked to give themselves a kind of report card on their own strengths and weaknesses in front of the whole class, who would then offer their own characterizations. These characterizations were aimed at identifying the personal traits of the students—the positive as well as the negative ones. The idea was not to offer pure criticism but a sort of help to and from the school collective.
- 3.
Robert Heinrich Hermann Koch (1843–1910) was a German doctor and professor at Berlin University. In 1882, he discovered the bacteria that causes tuberculosis, which at the time was a “white plague” that killed one in seven Germans. Before Koch, people believed that tuberculosis was inherited (because it was overwhelmingly a disease of the poor). Koch proved that this was not true and even isolated the protein substance that appears to cause death, which he called tuberculin. He tried to make it into a cure for the disease, but failed, largely because death from tuberculosis is also due to environmental factors and not simply constitutional ones. However, tuberculin is still used to diagnose tuberculosis (e.g. in the Mantoux test).
- 4.
It has been estimated that around 80% of people living in Asia are infected with the Koch bacillus. But only about ten percent of these will ever develop any symptoms (and about half of them will die if not treated). In a single family, some members experience a sudden flare up and then appear in remission for years. Vygotsky’s little brother, who Vygotsky cared for, died about fifteen years before Vygotsky did, and Vygotsky appears to have contracted the disease from him. Mahler and Munch lost siblings in the same way, and this explains their preoccupation with the deaths of young children in their art.
- 5.
Like any teacher of students with varying levels of engagement, Vygotsky sometimes employs analogies that give off more noise than news. First of all, gunpowder is not a molecule or even a compound: it is a mixture of different compounds and different molecules. Vygotsky recognizes this and introduces instead nitroglycerine, which is a compound. Secondly, both gunpowder and nitroglycerine will reliably explode if a spark contacts them, but Vygotsky’s point here is that different constitutions will react very differently to challenges in the environment. Vygotsky recognizes this too and at the end of the paragraph reverts to a more accurate but less attention-getting analogy.
So who are these “many authors” responsible for this gunpowder analogy? Marcius might refer to Lucius Marcius Philippus, a Roman orator. There were several generations of Roman consuls, all named Lucius Marcius Philippus, and as educated Romans they would know about Aristotle’s distinction between material, formal, efficient, and final causes, which seems to be what Vygotsky is referring to here. While the Greeks and Romans were not familiar with gunpowder, many of their examples (e.g. building a fire in Aristotle) were similar.
Karl Joseph Eberth (1835–1926) was a Wurzburg pathologist who discovered the bacillus that causes typhoid. Today, this bacillus, which is rod shaped, is recognized as a subspecies of salmonella. Some kinds of salmonella do infect pigs, cows, rats, and even rabbits, but Vygotsky is right to say that typhoid is specific to humans.
- 6.
Professor Alexander Andreevich Kisel (Aлeкcaндp Aндpeeвич Киceль 1859–1936) was a pediatrician and a pathologist who led the Higher Courses for Women at the Second Moscow State University where Vygotsky’s correspondence course was published. He was a militant promoter of vaccinations (especially against tuberculosis) and public medicine, and he developed a theory of “chronic tubercular intoxication” in children.
- 7.
The 1929 Russian text has a misprint: pacтeния (“plants”) should be acтeния (“asthenia”).
- 8.
Vladimir Petrovich Vorobyev (Bлaдимиp Пeтpóвич Bopoбьёв, 1876–1937) was an anatomist who was particularly interested in the anatomy of the nervous system, which as we have seen is a particular interest of Vygotsky (because it provides the best scientific basis for a unitary theory of psychological and physiological development). Vorobyev developed a new way of monitoring nervous activity in a living body using implanted electrodes.
- 9.
For a footnote on Homburger, see Footnote 22 in Chap. 5.
- 10.
The morphological index is calculated from the ratio of torso (or: the sitting height) to body length (or: the standing height). Nowadays, this morphological index is calculated by computing the ratio of the volume of the human trunk to the sum of the lengths of one arm and one leg multiplied by 100. This index, like the proportion of the head to the rest of the body, is very important for artists, but it does vary quite a bit (including in races—black people tend to be leggier and white people are thicker in the middle). This is why when women wear high heels, they look tall rather than just ill proportioned.
- 11.
Vygotsky is referring to the various peoples called “pygmies” Pygmies are defined as peoples who are less than 150 centimeters. Pygmy peoples include (as Vygotsky says) the Aka in central Africa, but also the Ati in the Phillipines, and the Djabukay of Cairns, in Australia. Their short stature is apparently not due to nutrition (unlike, say, the difference in height between North and South Koreans).
Vygotsky speculates that the whole of early man was essentially pygmy. This is speculation, but it is not unfounded: first of all, many fossil remains do suggest this (e.g. the so-called “hobbits” of Flores); secondly, analysis of DNA suggests that pygmies are among the oldest peoples that have survived largely unmixed with others. Thirdly, fossil hominids do tend to be small in stature, and even ancient Greeks were noticeably shorter on average than modern humans are today.
What Vygotsky says about pygmy adolescence, however, is not speculation. Pygmies have a very short lifespan—the average life expectancy is between 16 and 24 years old, and very few reach the age of forty. Most women die before menopause.
Some scientists claim that this explains their short stature—because their mortality is so high, they marry very early (nine or ten) and bear children as soon as they can, and early reproduction puts an end to their general anatomical growth, just as Vygotsky speculated at the beginning of this chapter (see Migliano et al., 2007).
- 12.
For Vygotsky, genetic nature is not a matter of genes, chromosomes or DNA (which had not yet been discovered). Vygotsky’s use of “genetic” is much closer to the Greek Γένεσις, Γένεση which means origin, appearance, birth, development. This usage of “genetic” was common in cognitive development; hence Piaget referred to himself as a genetic epistemologist, a researcher into the origins and development of knowledge.
- 13.
Zalkind is not afraid of mixing metaphors. Here he is thinking of the child’s nervous energy as “энepгeтичecкoгo фoндa” (energeticheskogo fonda, literally—“fund of energy”) like a checking account or an electrical battery that can only be drained away and cannot accrue interest or be recharged. Later, he speaks of the child’s mind botanically and then geologically: early sexuality creates “ugly outgrowths” and “unsightly deposits.” Mixed metaphors create ugly outgrowths and unsightly deposits in writing. They allow weak metaphors to undermine stronger ones. We now know that nervous energy, like muscular energy, is based on the conversion of ATP, so it is, as Vygotsky suggested in Chap. 5, much more like the musculature that it is integrated with than like a checking account or an electrical battery: it is a self-renewing and even self-expanding resource in adolescents, and it is not simply drained away. When Zalkind says “К oтвeтcтвeннoй зpeлoй cтaдии cвoeгo бытия” (“In the responsible matured stage for its own existence”), he refers to the responsible and matured age when the adolescent is not only capable of producing enough to reproduce his or her own labor, but also producing enough for others, i.e. enough to start a family. It is precisely at this moment that the adolescent can become sexually distracted, particularly in an economy like our own that finds a universal instinct like sex very easy to monetize and commercialize.
- 14.
Vygotsky uses an idiom that suggests a farmer casting mixed seeds at random into coarsely tilled soil without taking sowing time into account; the meaning is that the “seeds” of general-anatomical, sexual, and sociocultural formations are now too widely dispersed in time and intermingled with each other.
- 15.
Vygotsky schematically depicts the outline of his proposed theory of the transitional era as a triangle formed by three points, called by the Russian letters П (i.e. π, pronounced /p/), O (pronounced /, and C (pronounced /s/). “П stands for “Пoлoвoгo coзpeвaния” (sexual maturation), O is for “Oбщeopгaничecкoгo coзpeвaния” (general-organic maturation), and C is for “Coциaльнo-кyльтypнoгo coзpeвaния” (social-cultural maturation).
Although the triangle looks like a single mountain, it is important to keep in mind that there are three mountains. The height of the mountain indicates its specific weight in development. For the working adolescent, who must labor to live, the highest mountain is the sociocultural one, but for the bourgeois adolescent who has leisure for pleasure, the highest is sexual maturation. This explains why Vygotsky associates sublimation with the working adolescent and parasitism with the “bourgeois” adolescent.
Since at the time, there was no bourgeoisie at all in the USSR, we must assume he is talking about children from rich families in Germany or some other capitalist country. This way of defining class is distinctly un-Marxist: it is idealist and not materialist. For Marxism, a class relationship is not a family tradition but a distinct relation to the means of production: the bourgeois, who is not a child or an adolescent, is someone who owns a means of production, while a laborer, who in our society is only rarely a child or an adolescent, does not. The whole problem of the transitional age is precisely that the child does not yet have any fixed relation to the means of production: one of the functions of adolescence is to assign that relationship.
This is not to say that the whole argument Vygotsky is making has no validity. Vygotsky says that for some people, “sublimation” is really a form of parasitism: that is, instead of desexualizing sexual content (i.e. dance, which has the power to transform a private, biological sex urge into a public, cultural art form) it is really sexualizing non-sexual content (i.e. clothes, which have the power to transform an item of everyday use into a vehicle for the sex drive).
If anything, this distinction seems even more relevant today: violence, for example, is an obvious form of sexual parasitism that pervades both art and life, changing non-sexual physical force into sexualized assault; status transforms social inequality into sexual harassment in the same way.
- 16.
This is the schematic triangle Vygotsky is discussing. The apex—very high above the base—is sociocultural maturation. On the left hand side, you have sexual maturation, and on the right, you have general organic maturation at about the same level.
We sometimes think of the apprenticeship model (i.e. learning outside the classroom, by doing chores for a master) as being uniquely working class, because we learn manual skills by doing and not by thinking and talking. Interestingly, Vygotsky is making the opposite argument here—the apprenticeship model fits a middle-class existence, because only for middle-class children is an apprenticeship untied from an income (only rich kids can afford “internships” without pay or studying fields like literature where jobs are scarce). Alas, still true today!
- 17.
Like the previous triangle, this originally appeared near paragraph 6, probably for printing layout reasons (it was the middle of the page). We are putting it here for better reader understanding.
Note that the lines are different: this suggests that the three “peaks” are linked in very different ways. So for example general organic maturation is linked to sexual maturation through the organic maturation of the gland system, as Vygotsky remarked at the end of Chap. 6 and the beginning of Chap. 7. Sociocultural maturation is linked to sexual maturation through sublimation and parasitism, and to organic maturation through marriage and child-bearing, etc.
Because the three points each represent mountain peaks, one can think of these lines as paved roads, footpaths, or hiking trails—some of them are well-maintained and relatively straightforward, while others are quite arduous and difficult. Similarly, the distance between the peak of sexual maturation and the peak of sociocultural maturation may be less than that between sexual maturation and organic maturation (when children start work before they stop growing), but things are usually the other way around: the distance between the peak of sexual maturation and that of social maturation is usually greater than that between sexual maturation and organic maturation, because children stop growing before they get their first job.
- 18.
It seems that the groups here are the school grades or classes. These schools were for three-year education, so Group 1 would be first-year students, and there is an increasing number of disorders across the three years of study.
- 19.
“Inguinal ring divergence” appears to refer to some problem with the peritoneum separating the intestines from the sex organs—this is where hernias often arise in boys, and hernias are often related to stressful labor. “Adenoids” are tonsils, which usually disappear in adolescence. Vygotsky is true to his intention to support his theorizing with facts—but the facts he gives us here are horrifying and also somewhat dangerous. The facts say that even in the most prosperous part of the country and in the best schools, nearly half children are ill (and nearly a fifth with a deadly disease like tuberculosis). The longer the children spend in these schools, the sicker they get.
And yet the average level of health matches that of Germany! Three explanations for this paradoxical situation, which Vygotsky calls the “scissors”, are possible. First, as Vygotsky noted earlier (and as the name “scissors” suggests), we may be looking at a paradox that is specific to the USSR. Unlike Germany, Russia is a land of very sick children and very well children, with very few children in between, even in the factory apprenticeship schools. Secondly, we may be looking at a paradox that inheres in adolescence, in which case the “scissors” also obtains in Germany, But thirdly, as the name “scissors” which Vygotsky reminds us of suggests, we may be looking at historically specific phenomena: on the one hand, we have the results of famine and epidemics that accompanied and followed the Civil War (1919–1922), and on the other a fairly harsh regime of overwork and under-nourishment in the factory apprenticeship schools.
- 20.
Does Vygotsky agree or disagree with Homburger? He agrees with Homburger’s rejection of the constitutional explanation for adolescent pathology (“normal pathology”), and he also agrees with Homburger’s discovery of a continuum of personality variations from normal anomalies to morbidities due to infantilism. But Vygotsky rejects the idea that these are all caused by a delay in sexual maturation, for the same reason that he rejects the more traditional idea that they are caused by the onset of sexual maturation. The logical conclusion of this explanation is that sexual maturation should be “natural,” as Margaret Mead argued in her book Coming of Age in Samoa. This biologizing explanation does nothing to alleviate what is the most important delay in coming of age in the USSR—not sexual but sociocultural maturation. In all cultures—including Samoa—adult sexual behavior is conditional upon sociocultural maturation and not the other way around.
- 21.
There was an epidemic of encephalitis lethargica worldwide in 1930, leaving many people immobile for the next thirty years. Oliver Sacks wrote his 1973 book Awakenings about his (limited) success in treating cases of people who had been essentially asleep since the 1930s with the drug L-DOPA. Some of the patients recovered for a short time, and then lapsed back into immobility. Harold Pinter also wrote a 1982 play about it (“A Kind of Alaska”). It is this kind of encephalitis that Vygotsky discusses in the next paragraph.
References
Mead, M. (1928). Coming of age in Samoa. William Morrow.
Migliano, A. B., Vinicius, L., & Lahr, M. M. (2007). Life history trade-offs explain the evolution of human pygmies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(51), 20216–20219.
Sacks, O. (1973). Awakenings. Random House.
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Vygotsky, L.S. (2022). Conflicts and Complications of the Transitional Age. In: L. S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works, Volume 3. Perspectives in Cultural-Historical Research, vol 11. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2972-4_8
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