“…the role of Freud and his theories and the whole psychoanalytic tradition, with the great harm this has done to women, as well as overall, is something which needs to be dug into and criticized much more thoroughly. Some important criticism of this has been raised by various feminists and some others. But, again, there remains a need for a much more thorough and radical exposure, critique and refutation of this, particularly through the application of dialectical materialism/historical materialism and the consistently and systematically scientific outlook and approach this embodies.

“I recall myself that back in the 1960s, many of us were influenced, to varying degrees, by Freud’s theories, and there were many attempts by radical theorists—particularly male ones, but not only them—to somehow link and commingle the theories of Freud with the theories of Marx. In reality, these theories are in profound opposition to each other, and the influence of Freud not only has had a negative influence in society overall, but did so within the radical movements of that time. More thoroughly critiquing Freud’s theories and their influence can play an important part in the further development of the truly radical, and scientific, theory of communism, as applied to the oppression and the liberation of women, and overall.”

Freud write almost a century ago. He has been dissected, critiqued etc. by literally generations of theorists (including Marxists…) And yet Avakian announces that this is something that needs ”
“needs to be dug into and criticized much more thoroughly…”

Sure. Who can deny that? But is there no discussion of why (a century later) Avakian’s Marxism has said so little? Do any of his followers know what Althusser said on these matters, or Deleuse? Or Foucault? Is it possible to breeze past such things (and such theories) and pose as the synthesizer of world-historic proportions?

Avakian is not alone in all this (or else this would not be worth mentioning). He is merely a local and current (and particularly obvious) variant of a more general problem.

How long can we communists tolerate this approach — where we are asked to put on blinders, and then told to pretend that the world is just a narrow slice? This is not just a matter of a rather outrageous approach to psychology, but a crippled approach to theory in general.

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A brief essay by Michael Tomasello, “How Are Humans Unique?”, that summarizes some key findings on human cognition is in the May 25 NY Times on line. The essay begins:

“Human beings do not like to think of themselves as animals. It is thus with decidedly mixed feelings that we regard the frequent reports that activities once thought to be uniquely human are also performed by other species: chimpanzees who make and use tools, parrots who use language, ants who teach. Is there anything left?

“You might think that human beings at least enjoy the advantage of being more generally intelligent. To test this idea, my colleagues and I recently administered an array of cognitive tests — the equivalent of nonverbal I.Q. tests — to adult chimpanzees and orangutans (two of our closest primate relatives) and to 2-year-old human children. As it turned out, the children were not more skillful overall. They performed about the same as the apes on the tests that measured how well they understood the physical world of space, quantities and causality. The children performed better only on tests that measured social skills: social learning, communicating and reading the intentions of others.”

How are Humans Unique?

The NY Times carries a short essay “How Are Humans Unique?” by Michael Tomasello dated May 25, 2008 here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/magazine/25wwln-essay-t.html

Fernyhough, C. (2008). “Getting Vygotskian about theory of mind: Mediation, dialogue, and the development of social understanding.” Developmental Review 28(2): 225-262.
The ideas of Vygotsky [Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). Thinking and speech. In The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky, (Vol. 1). New York: Plenum. (Original work published 1934.)] have been increasingly influential in accounting for social-environmental influences on the development of social understanding (SU). In the first part of this article, I examine how Vygotskian ideas have to date been recruited to explanations of the development of SU. Next, I present a model of SU development which draws on two implications of Vygotsky’s ideas: the importance of semiotic mediation for mental functioning, and the dialogic nature of the higher mental functions. I then consider the value of the proposed model in accounting for evidence from three areas of enquiry: the typical development of SU in infancy and early childhood, relations between individual differences in SU and social-environmental variables, and atypical development. The model is suggested to be particularly helpful in understanding the transition from intentional-agent to mental-agent understanding, and the role of language in SU. Remaining challenges include a need to specify further the cognitive processes underlying internalization, and to gather more extensive evidence on the roles of typical and atypical social experience in SU development.

Fernyhough, C., K. Bland, et al. (2007). “Imaginary companions and young children’s responses to ambiguous auditory stimuli: implications for typical and atypical development.” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry Published article online: 9-Aug-2007.
Background: Previous research has reported a link between imaginary companions (ICs) in middle childhood and the perception of verbal material in ambiguous auditory stimuli. These findings have been interpreted in terms of commonalities in the cognitive processes underlying children’s engagement with ICs and adults reporting of imaginary verbal experiences such as auditory verbal hallucinations. The aim of the present study was to examine these relations using improved methodology and a younger sample of children for whom engagement with ICs would be expected to be particularly salient. Method: Data on young children’s (age range: 4-8 years) reporting of ICs were gathered in two studies (total N = 80). Responses to ambiguous auditory stimuli were investigated using the new Jumbled Speech task, which measures participants likelihood of perceiving words in meaningless but speech-like auditory stimuli. Results: Reporting hearing words in the Jumbled Speech task was associated with having a parentally corroborated IC. Hearing words on the task and having an IC were unrelated to age, gender, verbal ability, and understanding of the stream of consciousness. Conclusions: Findings are consistent with the hypothesis that engaging with ICs is one aspect of a general susceptibility to imaginary verbal experiences. We consider the implications for the assumption of continuity in psychopathological experiences between childhood and adulthood.

Tomasello, M., M. Carpenter, et al. (2005). “Understanding and sharing intentions: The origins of cultural cognition.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28(05): 675-691.
We propose that the crucial difference between human cognition and that of other species is the ability to participate with others in collaborative activities with shared goals and intentions: shared intentionality. Participation in such activities requires not only especially powerful forms of intention reading and cultural learning, but also a unique motivation to share psychological states with others and unique forms of cognitive representation for doing so. The result of participating in these activities is species-unique forms of cultural cognition and evolution, enabling everything from the creation and use of linguistic symbols to the construction of social norms and individual beliefs to the establishment of social institutions. In support of this proposal we argue and present evidence that great apes (and some children with autism) understand the basics of intentional action, but they still do not participate in activities involving joint intentions and attention (shared intentionality). Human children’s skills of shared intentionality develop gradually during the first 14 months of life as two ontogenetic pathways intertwine: (1) the general ape line of understanding others as animate, goal-directed, and intentional agents; and (2) a species-unique motivation to share emotions, experience, and activities with other persons. The developmental outcome is children’s ability to construct dialogic cognitive representations, which enable them to participate in earnest in the collectivity that is human cognition.

Tomasello, M. and H. Rakoczy (2003). “What Makes Human Cognition Unique? From Individual to Shared to Collective Intentionality.” Mind & Language 18(2): 121-147.
It is widely believed that what distinguishes the social cognition of humans from that of other animals is the belief-desire psychology of four-year-old children and adults (so-called theory of mind). We argue here that this is actually the second ontogenetic step in uniquely human social cognition. The first step is one year old children’s understanding of persons as intentional agents, which enables skills of cultural learning and shared intentionality. This initial step is ‘the real thing’ in the sense that it enables young children to participate in cultural activities using shared, perspectival symbols with a conventional/normative/reflective dimension-for example, linguistic communication and pretend play-thus inaugurating children’s understanding of things mental. Understanding beliefs and participating in collective intentionality at four years of age-enabling the comprehension of such things as money and marriage-results from several years of engagement with other persons in perspective-shifting and reflective discourse containing propositional attitude constructions.

Hauser, M. D., N. Chomsky, et al. (2002). “The Faculty of Language: What Is It, Who Has It, and How Did It Evolve?” Science 298(5598): 1569-1579.
We argue that an understanding of the faculty of language requires substantial interdisciplinary cooperation. We suggest how current developments in linguistics can be profitably wedded to work in evolutionary biology, anthropology, psychology, and neuroscience. We submit that a distinction should be made between the faculty of language in the broad sense (FLB) and in the narrow sense (FLN). FLB includes a sensory-motor system, a conceptual-intentional system, and the computational mechanisms for recursion, providing the capacity to generate an infinite range of expressions from a finite set of elements. We hypothesize that FLN only includes recursion and is the only uniquely human component of the faculty of language. We further argue that FLN may have evolved for reasons other than language, hence comparative studies might look for evidence of such computations outside of the domain of communication (for example, number, navigation, and social relations).

Trigger, B. G. (1998). “Archaeology and Epistemology: Dialoguing across the Darwinian Chasm.” American Journal of Archaeology 102(1): 1-34.
Archaeological theorists employ rival epistemologies (theories of knowledge) borrowed from philosophy to justify and help implement alternative programs for interpreting archaeological data. Epistemological idealism has been used to validate cognitive studies of the past, positivism to privilege behaviorist and processual approaches, and realism to promote a combination of both while at the same time noting the constraints exerted by external reality. It is argued that, viewed from the perspective of biological evolution, these three approaches are complementary rather than competing. All human adaptation to the social and natural environments is cognitively and culturally mediated, while, contrary to the claims of extreme idealists, discrepancies between expectations and observed happenings facilitate more effective adaptive behavior. Any rounded interpretation of archaeological data must take account of mental concepts, sensory perceptions, and conditions external to the individual. Positivist methods and humanistic forms of analysis that focus on subjectivity, agency, and the historical transmission of knowledge are complementary to one another. To understand better what has happened in the past, archaeologists must produce scenarios that are radically different from what has previously been conceived. But these speculations in turn must be subjected to rigorous appraisal if genuine progress is to be achieved. Because of its greater inclusiveness and specific postulates, a realist epistemology, combined with a materialist view of reality, offers the most satisfactory general framework for integrating the best features of all three epistemologies and interpreting archaeological data.

Fernyhough, C. (1996). “The dialogic mind: A dialogic approach to the higher mental functions.” New Ideas in Psychology 14(1): 47-62.
Drawing on the work of Vygotsky, Bakhtin, Wertsch and others, I outline a framework for the study of the higher mental functions that views them as dialogic processes derived from interpersonal activity. According to this view, the higher mental functions develop through the progressive internalization of semiotically manifested perspectives on reality, such that mature functioning involves the simultaneous coming-into-conflict of differing internalized perspectives. I suggest that such an approach goes some way to account for the open-ended and unconstrained nature of higher mental functioning. I also consider some implications of this approach for current research in developmental psychology, with particular reference to the role of care-givers in mental development, the emergence of perspective-taking and mentalizing abilities in early childhood, and the deficits associated with early childhood autism.