The problem of personality in the context of cultural-historical psychology

This theoretical article, which generalizes the results of the lasting researches, conducted by the author and his colleagues, analyzes the philosophical and methodological grounds of cultural-historical psychology. It is shown that cultural-historical psychology is a fundamentally new paradigm which considers processes of development as a motion that is submitted to the logic of inner self-rationalization, i.e. “casa sui”. L.S. Vygotsky's theory of child development can be regarded as a theory of personality: one's development is a way of existence of one's personality. The main concepts that characterize development, such as new psychological formations, social situation of development, central line of development, are also analyzed in the article. It is shown that the nature of higher psychological functions (i.e. speech in early childhood, imagination in preschool age, attention in school age, and thought in adolescence) is volitional. The personality itself can't be perceived out of the context of its development. Personality development is considered to be an acquisition of mind, an expansion of psychological reality that is subject to consciousness. The problem of such development can be solved by means of studying the volitional processes.

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