The essential Vygotsky

his book aims to provide the reader with “the most important and most interesting contributions” (p. xiii) selected from the six volumes of The Collected Works of L. S. Vygotsky (1987–1999). It consists of a prologue, a preface, an imaginary dialogue with Vygotsky, 19 readings (chapters) divided into six sections, a bibliography of references in English about Vygotsky, and an index. The six sections are: “Problems of General Psychology: Thinking and Speech”; “Fundamentals of Defectology (Abnormal Psychology and Learning Disabilities)”; “Problems of the Theory and History of Psychology: Crisis in Psychology”; “The History of the Development of High Term Mental Functions: Exegesis of
Vygotsky’s Text”; “Child Psychology: Vygotsky’s Conception of Psychological
Development”; and “Scientific Legacy: Tool and Sign in the Development of the Child.” Each section is introduced by an editor and/or one of the five collaborators, all of whom have studied Vygotsky in considerable depth. (Bruner’s introduction is, with a little alteration, his foreword to the first volume of The Collected Works.) The aim in these introductory essays is to “explore various aspects of Vygotsky’s biography in order to explain certain parts of his
work and his writing” (p. xiii).