Duality of Categories or Dialectical Concepts?

Abstract

The paper explores that CHT contains at least three dialectical concepts and principles; (1) development as drama (dialectical contradiction) and the principle of dramatic construction of the personality, (2) the concept of mediating activity and the principle of qualitative transition and reorganisation and (3) the concept of perezhivanie and the principle of refraction. Rethinking the status of "the social" creates opportunities to overcome a dualism of two groups of factors (biological and social) and introduces the principle of dramatic construction of the personality, which is an intrapsychological result of overcoming social dramatical interpsychological collisions (dramas of life). Rethinking "the individual" in relation to mediating activity leads to the conclusion that by creating and using cultural signs an individual not only creates artificial stimuli-devices for mastering his psychological processes, but actively reorganizes the whole social situation. Dialectics of the individual and social is explained as interpsychological and intrapsychological are dimensions of one "social-individual" or "individual-social" continuum. Drama of real life refracted through the prism of perezhivanie becomes a drama of a personality; intrapsychological higher mental function develops, but remains quasi-social.

Keywords: Cultural-historical theory; Dialectics; Dualism; Individual; Perezhivanie; Social.