A Way to Develop Psychotherapy

Although Vygotsky’s ideas are applied to dozens of disciplines/practices, psychotherapy is not among them. With few exceptions, contemporary Vygotskians have stayed clear of the sub- ject; and most psychotherapy researchers and clinical practitioners have little familiarity with Vygotsky—despite Vygotsky’s challenge to psychology’s isolation of the intellectual from the affec- tive. Recent manifestations of psychotherapy’s cognitive bias are discussed, showing the need to “Vygotskian-ize” the discipline. The Vygotskian-influenced social therapy, focused on group creativ- ity and emotional development, is presented as an expansion of Vygotsky’s dialectical methodology: method as tool-and-result, the unity learning-and-development, the zone of proximal development of play, and language completing thought.

That’s a summary of a new article of mine, “Vygotskian-izing Psychotherapy.”  Through the miracle of technology, anyoe interested can download  it for free by clicking on the link. Actually, not onyone—just the first 50 of you. That’s what the publisher of the journal, Mind, Culture and Activity, allows.

Mind, Culture and Activity is an interdisciplinary, international journal that’ publishes research and theory from a socio-cultural and historical context.

Comments welcome!