30 Sep Development is Our Task (Embrace Paradox)
For many years now I’ve been sharing with people all over the world what I call “Vygotsky the developmentalist.” What I mean by this is that the overarching concern of the Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky was human development, despite him being primarily known as an educational psychologist. The phrase is also meant to drawn attention to the ways in which his work and writings were so influential on the development of social therapeutics as a methodology for the continuous development of persons and communities. I have learned so much from sharing this and seeing what grassroots educators and community organizers and mental health workers and youth and poverty workers do with it in their ongoing work. I’m constantly inspired by what they create.
From sharing a methodology of development with people in so many varied countries and cultures and seeing how and what they take from it and what they build with it, I’ve come to more deeply appreciate some of the paradoxes of contemporary life—and how creating developmental environments à la Vygotsky the developmentalist—helps us embrace them.
For when people create “stages” on which they are simultaneously being and becoming, when they create ensembles that support them performing a head taller, they run into—
—The paradox that we live our lives socially, but experience and relate to our lives individualistically.
—The paradox that our lives are continuous, emergent continuous process, but we experience them as distinct products or moments or events located in particular times and spaces.
—The paradox that we live, learn and develop in social units, but aren’t instructed in or given practice in ways of creating or functioning effectively in them.
With few exceptions, people don’t know how to talk about such things. Conversations are rare among family members on how they want to live together; or among students and teachers on how they want to create their classroom and learning; or among doctors, caregivers and the sick on how they want to relate to each other, given that they’re all in this together. And so on and on.
I’ve learned that it is as performers that people are able to engage—in a developmental way— the paradox of experiencing our social existence as a separate and individuated one. From what I’ve learned, this kind of engaging happens when people participate in creating environments through which they discover for themselves such things as how to create a family, what learning is, how to deal with illness and create wellness, and how to talk and listen and create new kinds of conversations.
History raises the tasks that we human beings face at any given time. Right now, I believe that development is our urgent task.
Jennifer Bullock
Posted at 16:27h, 01 OctoberI love this blog and the list of paradoxes, thank you. I find in our current life process, with crises on many levels, the emphasis on individuals knowing how to be/talk/behave in social contexts and conversations in a “woke” manner challenging. I think this keeps us, as you say, from creating – for ourselves – our interactions together. Psychology contexts bind us the most and performatory /play environments liberate us from this need to know how to be before doing it. Is this statement me being too much of a knower and not enough a vygotskian developmentalist? In a recent social therapy group where we were discussing the emotional impact of the Brionna Taylor murder and everyday discriminations that occur, a white women in the group was holding back from the conversation until finally sharing, while crying, that she did not want to speak because she knew if she spoke she would cry, and white women should not cry as that has been weaponized against people of color. I attempted to yes, and her offer. I also reminded the group that our task is to create our culture of development, and that we can’t be bound to political correctness / holding back / individually knowing what we should do or say before deciding together what we want to do or say. Then in n a recent teen play session I co-lead with the Global Play Brigade, there was a teenager who did not speak English or Spanish, the languages of the facilitators. That was also challenging but did not stop us from creating a playful, moving, intimate experience together (gibberish conversations, making faces, etc.) since in playing together we are more open to throw out our need to know before, during after what we crate together. What is your response Dr. Holzman to these examples? Maybe I am bound up with knowing?