Bibliophile Peeter Tulviste - Psychology collection

Peeter Tulviste’s collection includes many psychology books, particularly those required for his work as a professor with a special interest in cultural psychology and the history of psychology. The exhibition features several books by Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934), the founder of the cultural-historical approach, and his students Alexander Luria (1902–1977) and Aleksei Leontiev (1903–1979). As Luria’s student, Tulviste’s psychological views were shaped mainly during his years of study by the followers of this school of thought. Tulviste himself became a prominent representative of the tradition (later known as Vygotsky’s school, or the sociocultural or contextual school).

The only work related to Estonia in the display is an exception. System der Gedächtnislehre by Rudolf Gottfried Kallas, published in 1897, was the first study on psychology written by an Estonian. Tulviste found this book particularly fascinating, as Kallas regarded the runic (or Kalevala) metre and the alliteration, rhythm, of older Estonian folk songs as mnemonic devices that enabled folk singers to memorise lengthy texts. Leontiev also discussed cultural tools of memory in his book on the historical development of memory; the foreword is by Vygotsky.

At the beginning of his career in psychology, Alexander Luria was interested in psychoanalysis. He founded the psychoanalytic society in Kazan and corresponded with Sigmund Freud. The exhibition includes a Russian translation of Wilhelm Jensen’s Gradiva: a Pompeian fantasy, and Freud’s Delusion and Dream in Jensen’s Gradiva. In this work, Freud used psychoanalysis to analyse the behaviour of the protagonist, an archaeologist who falls in love with Gradiva (in Latin, “the woman who steps along”), a girl depicted in an ancient bas-relief. This was the first literary work Freud ever analysed. Gradiva also inspired various artists. This book held special significance for Peeter Tulviste because it contains Vygotsky’s inscription addressed to Luria.

Luria discussed psychoanalysis both in his 1923 book (published in a print run of only 500 copies) and in a chapter in a volume edited by Konstantin Kornilov (1925). After the October Revolution of 1917, psychoanalysis was seen in Russia as an approach to the human psyche consistent with the Marxist worldview. However, by the late 1930s, attitudes towards psychoanalysis and many other psychological approaches, topics, and even psychologists themselves had drastically changed. Lev Vygotsky, too, remained under censure until the 1960s.

In the books published by representatives of the cultural-historical school in the early 1930s, the main views of this new approach to human nature and development had already taken shape.

• In their book (1930), Vygotsky and Luria demonstrate how modern human behaviour has developed through evolutionary, historical, and ontological lines.

• Kornilov’s book includes a chapter by Vygotsky on consciousness as a problem of behavioural science.

• The first edition of Vygotsky’s Speech and Thinking can be found in several libraries, and reprints have also been issued. The book was published posthumously. Translating this book into Estonian was Peeter Tulviste’s last major work.
  

Tiia Tulviste