Alexander Luria is a famous domestic psychologist. It is considered the founder of Soviet neuropsychology. He worked closely with the Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky, becoming one of the leaders of his circle. He has the title of professor, doctor of pedagogical and medical sciences, since 1947 he has been a full member of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences. He is one of the Soviet psychologists who gained wide fame thanks to his outstanding pedagogical and scientific work.
Biography of a scientist
Alexander Luria was born in 1902, he was born in Kazan. He was the oldest child in a Jewish family of intellectuals. His father was a renowned general practitioner who eventually became a professor. Roman Luria had a private practice. The mother of the hero of our article, Evgeny Khasina, was also a doctor, she worked as a dentist.
In 1921, Alexander Luria graduated from Kazan University, which at that time was considered one of the most prestigious in the country after the largest metropolitan universities. He did not stop there, went to Moscow, where he received a diploma from the First Medical Institute in 1937.
University work
Alexander Romanovich Luria has been directly involved in pedagogical and scientific work since 1921. He works at the departments of the universities of Kazan, Kharkov and Moscow. In 1922 he was admitted to the Russian Psychoanalytic Community. His interest in this field of knowledge is strongly encouraged by colleagues, and he also offers mature ideas.
In 1931, Alexander Luria became the head of the psychology sector at the Kharkov Psychoneurological Academy. In fact, he becomes the first specialist to begin conducting deep psychological research in Soviet Ukraine.
Moving to Moscow
Finally, Luria moved to Moscow in 1933. Here he works in various research institutions, teaches a lot. For example, Luria gives lectures at the Biomedical Institute, the Institute of Experimental Medicine, and the Pedagogical Defectological Institute.
Before the start of World War II, he was actively involved in the international process, actively brings together in every possible way the achievements of Soviet, American, German researchers in the field of gestalt psychology.
In 1940 he was invited to the New York Academy of Medicine to give his lecture series. But these plans were never realized due to the outbreak of World War II.
During the war
Almost immediately after the outbreak of the war, Luria was appointed to lead a 500-place surgical evacuation hospital, which was located in the village of Kisegach, Chelyabinsk Region.
During the war, Luria and her co-workers, there were about thirty people in total, began to conduct research and rehabilitation of the wounded with head injuries, and occupational therapy was recognized as particularly successful.
Continuing to lead the hospital, in October 1944, Luria moved to Moscow, only after a year completely resigned. For work and research during the years of World War II, the hero of our article was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.
Work at Burdenko Institute
In 1944, Luria became an employee of the Burdenko Institute of Neurosurgery. At the same time, does not leave pedagogical activity. He teaches at Moscow State University, in 1945 receives the title of professor. Luria has been engaged in scientific work for about half a century, having managed to make an invaluable contribution to various fields of psychology during this time. In particular, his research touched on psychophysiology, psycholinguistics, ethnopsychology, and even such a little-studied area at that time as child psychology.
Luria made a great contribution to the popularization of research in psychology. He founded and headed the publication “Reports of the Academy of Sciences of the RSFSR”, in which scientists who worked not only in psychological, but also in humanitarian areas could be published. His colleagues, evaluating the work of Luria, noted that he did a lot to organize scientific publications, his journal played a key role in the development and growth of Soviet psychological science over the several post-war decades.
Scientific activity
In his work, Luria largely followed the ideas of Lev Vygotsky, developing a historical and cultural concept for the development of the human psyche, and took a direct part in creating the theory of activity.
Based on these studies, he was engaged in the development of the idea of a systemic structure of higher mental functions, emphasizing that during life their character is realized in various fields of activity. Also in the interests of Luria included research on the relationship of upbringing and heredity in mental development. For this, he traditionally used the twin method, making significant changes to the experimental genetic study of the development of minors.
One of Luria’s achievements is that he was able to demonstrate that somatic symptoms are mainly due to our genetics, but elementary mental functions, such as, for example, visual memory, to a lesser extent. According to his theory, not genes, but the environment and upbringing conditions are of decisive importance for the formation of higher mental processes. By higher mental processes, he primarily understood meaningful perception and conceptual thinking.
Work in the field of defectology
Alexander Luria devoted several books to this area. Here he studied the anomalies in children, using objective methods. The result of this work was the study of children who had various forms of mental retardation, so it was possible to classify these diseases, which was important for both physicians and teachers.
One of the main achievements of Alexander Romanovich Luria in psychology is the creation of a new direction, which he called neuropsychology. Nowadays, it has stood out in a specialized branch of psychology, has gained worldwide recognition. Luria began to develop neuropsychology with a study of brain mechanisms in people suffering from local brain damage. For example, as a result of an injury. He received a large amount of working material for research during the Great Patriotic War.
As a result, he developed a fundamentally new approach to the problem of determining higher mental functions. He came to the conclusion that they cannot be localized in narrow zones of the cerebral cortex or in separate cell groups isolated from each other. Instead, it is necessary to encompass complex systems of zones that can work together, each of which makes its own special contribution to these complex mental processes. Moreover, these zones can be located in different parts of the brain, often far from each other. Such conclusions were made by Alexander Romanovich Luria in the book "Fundamentals of Neuropsychology." She is still being studied at medical schools.
Luria also formulated key principles for the localization of mental processes, creating a classification of aphasic disorders. He described forms of speech impairment that were not previously studied by anyone, studied the frontal lobes of the brain, and the brain mechanisms of human memory.
He had great international authority, was in various foreign academies of sciences, was an honorary doctor of a number of prestigious foreign universities.
The works of a psychologist
Luria left dozens of studies, monographs, and books that practitioners and researchers still use. A real revolution at the time was made by his book "The Highest Cortical Functions of Man." Alexander Romanovich Luria published it in 1962.
His books are devoted to the basics of neurolinguistics, cultural differences, the nature of human conflicts, the historical development of cognitive processes. "Lectures on General Psychology" by Alexander Luria, published in 2007, students are studying today.
"Words are superfluous"
In 1999, director Christopher Doyle directed the drama Words Unnecessary. She talks about a person with a phenomenal memory, he does not forget a single word, everything that he hears in life can reproduce. His name is Asano.
He goes to Hong Kong, where he meets gay alcoholic Kevin, who turns out to be his exact opposite. Due to the constant binges, he constantly forgets everything, nothing remains in his memory.
The director himself admitted that he was inspired by Luria's Little Book of Great Memory, in which he describes the life of his real patient, Solomon Shereshevsky, who had phenomenal mental characteristics.