Lev Vygotsky’s Psychology of Freedom

ABSTRACT The author argues that the idea of freedom guided Vygotsky’s research from his very first steps in psychology, when he was deliberating on the “overman” and on “mastering one’s own behavior” by means of signs. The freedom of actions and intentions, not intellectual superiority, is the most essential distinction of “cultured man” from his kin in the animal kingdom. Man is free as long as he acts as a human—in accordance with culture rather than situationally, under the pressure of external natural forces. In the “height,” or “acmeist,” psychology of his later years, Vygotsky defines freedom as “the affect in the concept,” in the spirit of Spinoza’s Ethics. It is from this angle that the article studies the genesis of “psychological systems”—the age-specific changes and social varieties of affect–concept relationship, as well as the disruption of this relationship typical of schizophrenia.