Psychology
Psychology [психологія; psykholohiia]. In Ukraine psychology was an integral part of the study of philosophy beginning in the Princely era; it did not constitute a scientific discipline in itself until the mid-19th century. In his theological and philosophical works Metropolitan Nicephorus, a 12th-century Kyivan metropolitan, set out a conception of the dual (corporeal and spiritual) nature of a human being, analyzed the basic principles of will, emotion, and intellect, and examined the function of the five sensory faculties. Such theological and philosophical thinking about psychological problems disappeared after the Mongol invasions of the mid-13th century. The question of the dualism of human nature was taken up again in the 16th century in the philosophical works of Ivan Vyshensky. At the Kyivan Mohyla College (later the Kyivan Mohyla Academy) a course in psychology was taught by Innokentii Gizel. Lazar Baranovych and Ioanikii Galiatovsky wrote on psychology with reference to the philosophical works of Aristotle. Reviews (by Petro Pelekh) of the Latin text of psychology lectures at the academy (17th–18th centuries) suggest that the professors were knowledgeable in contemporary psychological theory. Teofan Prokopovych was an adherent of the theory of human duality. Hryhorii Skovoroda’s philosophical system stressed the need to ‘discover oneself.’ Devoting considerable attention to the ‘microcosmos’ of individuals and their earthly concerns, he broke with the categorical monistic conception of the invisible spiritual and the visible corporeal.
In Ukraine the first psychophysical parallelism in psychology appeared in the works of Yakiv Kozelsky, who taught that the actions of the human spirit are connected to the neurophysiological structure of the organism. He defended sensualism and sought to prove that knowledge is derived from the senses. The sensualism of Ivan Rizhsky continued the materialist trend in philosophy. Believing in the indissolubility of the sensory and rational elements, without which it is impossible to grasp the essence of phenomena, he investigated the influence of the material world on human consciousness. Petro Lodii held similar sensualist convictions and sought to prove the spirit’s dependence on the body (the psychic on the physical). More traditional views of the primacy of the psyche prevailed in the teachings of I. Hrynevych, Orest Novytsky, and Pamfil Yurkevych at Kyiv University and Kyiv Theological Academy. In opposition to Hryhorii Skovoroda’s idealistic rationalism, Yurkevych stressed the importance of the emotional components in mental development and pedagogy.
In his textbook Rukovodstvo k opytnoi psikhologii (A Guide to Experimental Psychology, 1862) Orest Novytsky, a proponent of psychophysical dualism, set out the neurophysiological basis of memory and focused on the active role of attention in perceptions. Severe restrictions placed on philosophical studies in Russian imperial universities in 1850 halted the development of psychological sciences. Novytsky’s successors were I. Skvortsov (from 1850), Sylvestr Hohotsky (1851–86), and O. Kozlov (1876–87), who returned to the concept of rational psychology as a philosophical discipline. In Mysl' i iazyk (Thought and Language, 1840) Oleksander Potebnia examined the interaction of thought and language from a psycholinguistic point of view and claimed that concepts cannot be formulated without words and that ‘consciousness cannot be conjured out of nothing.’
Experimental psychology in Ukraine was initiated by the famous physiologist I. Sechenov, who worked at Odesa University (1871–6). He had a profound influence on subsequent research in reflexology. In the 1880s his successor, Pavlo Kovalevsky, established the first psychological research laboratory in Ukraine, at Kharkiv University’s clinic of psychic and nervous diseases. Nikolai Lange established a similar laboratory at Odesa University in 1895. Lange sought to reconcile traditional psychophysical dualism with reflexology.
G. Chelpanov, a Russian philosopher and a professor at Kyiv University (1892–1907), was the first to conduct psychological seminars and practical workshops with students. He set up the first experimental laboratory in Kyiv and collected much valuable psychological data. Vasilii Zenkovsky followed in Chelpanov’s footsteps and sought to reconcile idealistic views on the nature of the psyche with experiential learning. Ivan Sikorsky, one of the first in the world to apply experimental methods in researching child psychology, laid the groundwork for the field of developmental psychology.
In Western Ukraine before the Second World War, psychological studies were associated with the work of Polish scholars at Lviv University, particularly K. Twardowski, who established the first psychological laboratory there in 1901. The most notable of his Ukrainian students was Stepan Balei. He published the first Ukrainian textbook on psychology in Western Ukraine, as well as numerous articles on developmental psychology and a psychological study of Taras Shevchenko’s work.
In the first few decades after the imposition of Soviet rule in Ukraine, psychology was subjected to rigid Communist Party control, and developed exclusively as a branch of reflexology. The new definition entailed a shift from the tradition of idealism in psychology to materialism, imposed as the new orthodox science. General psychology began to disappear from the curriculum in schools, even as an area of research. In the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic the center of studies in reflexology was the Ukrainian Scientific Research Institute of Pedagogy in Kharkiv. Its leading academician was Viktor Protopopov, who considered psychology to be a superfluous discipline, although he acknowledged the existence of a ‘subjective element of the personality.’ The Kharkiv psychiatrist Yevgenii Popov and defectologist Ivan Sokoliansky completely denied the existence of a human psyche and consciousness and proposed that they were accumulated reflexological sets of the individual. O. Zaluzhny expanded on that proposition to formulate a theory of the ‘reflexology of collectives’ on the basis that ‘all social life is a reflex.’ The journal Ukraïns'kyi visnyk refleksolohiï ta eksperymental'noï pedahohiky was published in Kharkiv in 1925–30. Psychologists in Ukraine were also interested in various aspects of educational psychology, mostly dealing with the problems of memory processes and the relationship between learning and maturation. Leading researchers of that time included Petro Zinchenko, who did pioneering work in perception, processing, and memory and established a psychological laboratory devoted to the investigation of memory; and Oleksander Zaporozhets, who did educational, psychological, and physiological research on the optimum chronological age for symbolic and abstract learning.
In Kyiv a pedagogical institute was established by the psychiatrist Adriian Volodymyrsky. He was one of the first in Ukraine to initiate experimental studies of psychological anomalies in children. K. Mokulsky taught reflexology at the Kyiv Institute of People's Education.
In the 1930s there was a reaction against the unilateral mechanistic conception of humans as passive organisms whose behavior is determined by their physiology and environment. Reflexology was condemned as ‘a vulgar attempt to biologize social phenomena.’ Soviet psychologists, however, continued to maintain the primacy of physiology, recognizing only that the autonomy of the psyche was a characteristic of ‘highly organized matter’ which operated according to its own laws. Renewed emphasis was placed on the consciousness and on individual responsibility for behavior, in opposition to the previously held view of the complete modification of behavior by the environment. The approaches remained materialistic, however, in that they continued to deny the presence of an unchangeable soul and stressed the dynamic evolution of consciousness as a product of nature and history. In that regard psychology was hampered by its links to dialectical materialism and utilitarian considerations of social policy.
The return from reflexology to general psychology was argued by the noted psychological historian Hryhorii Kostiuk, the director of the Institute of Psychology of the Ukrainian SSR in Kyiv (from 1945) and head of the Ukrainian branch of the All-Union Association of Psychologists. From a position of materialistic monism he sought to explain consciousness as one of the characteristics of matter in the higher stages of development. He also supported the viewpoint that historical development determines the ontogenesis of human personality by biological and social means. D. Elkin, a department head at Odesa University from 1930, stressed the individuality of consciousness that is inherent in a physical subject.
Specialized scientific research institutes were initially established in Kharkiv, including the Psychoneurological Scientific Research Institute (reorganized in 1937), the psychology division of the Scientific Research Institute of Pedagogy of the People's Commissariat of Education of the Ukrainian SSR, the Institute of Labor, and the Scientific Research Institute of Defectology. In those institutions attention was focused primarily on diseases or congenital defects that had a direct or indirect effect on the psyche.
Kyiv began to gain importance as a research center in psychology in the 1940s. The first autonomous academic department of psychology was established in Kyiv (1944). In 1945 the Institute of Psychology of the Ukrainian SSR was formed in Kyiv to co-ordinate the work of Ukrainian researchers. The institute had departments of general psychology, child psychology, educational and polytechnical education psychology, professional development psychology, and special psychology. It published Naukovi zapysky, various thematic collections of works, and popular works. In 1959 a Ukrainian section of the Association of Soviet Psychologists at the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the RSFSR (later of the USSR) was established.
The most developed disciplines came to be child psychology and developmental psychology as well as the history of psychology (Hryhorii Kostiuk, V. Voitko, A. Hubko). Scientists in those fields included L. Balatska, P. Chamata (who edited a psychology text for pedagogical schools, 1954), T. Kosma (at the department of psychology at Kharkiv University, 1931–5), Kostiuk, A. Leontev, Dmytro Nikolenko, and M. Vovchyk-Blakytna, as well as Oleksander Zaporozhets and Petro Zinchenko. Kostiuk and Oleksander M. Raievsky (head of the department of psychology at Kyiv University from 1945) studied the philosophical and physiological bases of psychology. Raievsky also researched the history of psychology with Petro Pelekh and the psychology of language with M. Zhinkin. Ye. Milerian researched the psychology of labor.
In Ukraine there was also an early interest in zoopsychology, among such researchers as Stepan Balei and M. Pargamin. The conceptual anthropomorphization of animals and mechanistic reflexological theories held that there were only quantitative differences between the psyches of animals and humans. Later theories proposed by A. Khilchenko, N. Ladygina-Kots, Viktor Protopopov, and H. Rohinsky held that animal psyches were established only biologically, whereas human consciousness was molded socially as well.
Of more specialized areas of research, the most notable include studies of the perception of time, particularly the influence of experience on the subjective deformation of perception of time (D. Elkin, T. Kozina, and V. Yaroshchuk), the psychology of mathematical problem solving (Yu. Mashbyts), and the psychology of technical construction (B. Baiev). The formation of worldviews and individual self-awareness was researched by Chamata (1956). Oleksander M. Raievsky studied the relation between the emergence of consciousness in early humans and its dependence on the physical environment, particularly social class.
Emigré Ukrainian psychology was initially centered in Prague, where Yakym Yarema, a professor at the Ukrainian Higher Pedagogical Institute, studied the problem of psychometry in schools and published a textbook on pedagogical psychology. O. Ivanov worked at the Psychotechnical Institute of the Masaryk Academy and as a lecturer (until 1945) at the Ukrainian Free University (UVU). Psychology gained importance as a discipline at the UVU after it was moved to Munich, where Oleksander Kulchytsky headed the department of psychology (from 1946). Kulchytsky believed in holistic psychology and pedagogical characterology. Mykhailo Mishchenko taught experimental psychology at the UVU in 1946–9. In 1955 Volodymyr Yaniv became director of its chair in psychology. Yaniv studied the psychology of prisoners and the social trends among Ukrainians. The Munich school focused on the psychological characteristics of Ukrainians (ethnopsychology) and organized a number of thematic conferences with non-Ukrainian scholars (Munich, 1953; Leuven, 1954). Hryhorii Vashchenko also worked in the field of ethnopsychology (he published a survey of reflexological studies in the Ukrainian SSR), as did Dmytro Chyzhevsky and Ivan Mirchuk. In the United States, Bohdan Tsymbalisty studied problems involving geometrical and optical illusions and was a director of psychology programs at the Jamesburg State Home for delinquents. Ivan Holowinsky published in the areas of mental retardation, learning disorders, and the history of psychology.
In the 1970s and 1980s in the Ukrainian SSR, developments in psychology continued to be hampered by Russification and Communist Party control. The publications of psychologists were not allowed to deviate from official dogma, and doctoral degree programs in psychology at Soviet universities were approved only in 1968. Ukrainian psychologists were obliged to publish their papers in the Russian-language journals Voprosy psikhologii (est 1955) and Defektologiia; the Ukrainian-language pedagogical journal Radians’ka shkola (from 1945) contained articles of a descriptive, nonempirical nature.
The Institute of Psychology of the Ukrainian SSR expanded its mandate to include the area of programmed instruction, and established a laboratory to study the methodology of psychological research (1973). Ukrainian psychologists also continued their studies in perception and memory (H. Sereda, N. Venger, T. Zinchenko, V. Zinchenko), developmental psychology (L. Venger, Oleksander Zaporozhets), personality psychology, and the history of psychology (Hryhorii Kostiuk). In 1988 Kostiuk’s collected psychological works were published in Kyiv. H. Sereda proposed the unity of short-term and long-term memory mechanisms (1970). T. Zinchenko formulated information processing and information search models, and V. Zinchenko suggested a functional model of information transformation in which memory mechanisms are arranged in a hierarchical sequence (1971). V. Zinchenko continued to publish in the area of developmental psychology (1991).
N. Venger investigated the perceptual characteristics of preschool children (ages 5–7). Venger distinguished between the sensory and intellectual aspects of the assimilation and systematization of the external properties of objects (1970). Soviet psychologists used a qualitative approach in assessing and evaluating cognitive skills, as opposed to the standardized quantitative psychometric tests accepted in the West. They rejected the idea that it is possible to measure intellectual potential independently of the conditions of experience and education. As well, there was a reluctance to acknowledge the existence of behavioral disorders with a primarily social etiology, such as social and emotional maladjustment and juvenile delinquency.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Volodymyr Yaniv
[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]