Ivan Pavlov on communist dogmatism and the autonomy of science in the Soviet Union in the early 1920s

On 25 September, 1923, two days before his 74th birthday, Ivan Petrovich Pavlov stood before a class of medical students assembled in the auditorium of his Alma Mater, the Military Medical Academy in Leningrad. Pavlov, the recipient of the Nobel prize in medicine in 1904 for his work in physiology, was about to address his first class of the new academic year, and, as was his custom, he had prepared his first lecture on a general theme. This was an especially significant address, however, for in it Pavlov reviewed the impressions he had gathered during his travels in Western Europe and the United States in the summer of 1923, and he criticised the prevailing ideology of Soviet communism by attacking the ideas of Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin, then the leading expositor of Bolshevik Marxism. An English translation of the lecture is printed below. This article was originally published inMinerva, vol. 29, no. 4 (Winter 1991). Published by permission ofMinerva: A Review of Science, Learning and Policy, 19 Nottingham Road, London SW17 7EA, and by permission of the Rockeller Archive Center, North Tarrytown, N.Y.     

Pavlov and the Rockefeller foundation

Despite the tension between the United States and the Soviet Union in the early 1920’s, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research found ways to assist I. P. Pavlov. In addition to providing scientific literature and financial aid, these institutions and their officers rendered important moral support to the scientific career of Pavlov during his later years. In 1923, as a guest of the Rockefeller Institute, Pavlov visited American scientific laboratories. In 1924, he requested and received a number of books on physiology, and during the 1930’s the Foundation helped him to acquire equipment for his Leningrad laboratory.     

I.P. Pavlov vs. N.I. Bukharin: The critical mind and the arrogance of power

In 1923, Pavlov criticized the Marxist theses and the policy of the Soviet regime. In 1924, N.I. Bukharin, a Marxist theoretician and member of the Soviet government, responded to Pavlov’s passionate speech with a sarcastic diatribe. I suggest that Pavlov’s speech and Bukharin’s article represent a conflict between a scientist critical of the Marxist pseudotheory and a journalist’s abusive response to the realization that his theory was without much merit.     

Pavlov and the Nobel Prize award

When Pavlov was first nominated for the Nobel Prize, he was well recognized by physiologists, especially those concerned with digestion. It appears unlikely that psychological interpretations of his conditional reflex findings had begun to penetrate deeply into the discipline of psychology. The selection in 1904 of Pavlov for the award in physiology or medicine attracted the attention of a broader range of scientists. American psychologists, in particular, probably became more aware of the advantages of incorporating his “objective” conditional reflex method into their investigations. General biographical aspects relating to the award and the effect of the award upon the acceptance of the conditional reflex method by American psychologists are developed in this presentation.     

Notes from "Pavlov's Wednesdays": sensory preconditioning.

Sensory preconditioning was first demonstrated in Pavlov's laboratory in 1931/32, rather than discovered by Brogden in 1939. Pavlov included nonassociative controls, forward pairing of the indifferent stimuli before reinforcing the second one with shock, and he avoided the development of inhibition to the compound by using a moving visual stimulus and a sound like that of scurrying mice, which both had persistent orienting reactions. Pavlov concluded that the indifferent stimuli were associated by temporal contiguity similar to human associations between successively spoken works. He did not consider the possibility of mediation via the orienting reactions.     

The importance of I.P. Pavlov for the development of neuroscience.

By his experimental and theoretical work on the physiology and pathophysiology of the higher nervous activity I.P. Pavlov significantly influenced the development of Neuroscience. During the 1950 Pavlovian Conference in Moscow, Stalin and the Communist Party tried to dogmatize his and his pupils' fundamental theories. But the Pavlovian ideas were developed by his pupils in open discussions with representatives of other schools in a very creative way, opening the doors for a systemic approach to understanding the integrative functional systems of brain and behavior. Pavlov emphasized the high plasticity of the central nervous system, investigated the complex functional systems within the brain and between the organism and its environment, and designed models for pathological deviations of the higher nervous activity. During his last years, he freed himself from the strong deterministic view and characterized the organism and its environment as a self-organizing system.     

Pavlov and the Pavlovians in the laboratory

The general character of the Pavlovians and their role in the experimental investigation of conditioned reflexes is discussed. From 1897 to 1936, Ivan P. Pavlov had at least 146 co-workers and he was closely involved in their experimental work. The social background, nationality, and gender of the Pavlovians are described together with the daily routine in the laboratories. It is pointed out that, despite Pavlov's authoritarian style, the Pavlovians characterized him as the epitome of a scholar and an admirable human being. It is concluded that the work in the laboratories was truly a cooperative effort between Pavlov and his co-workers.     

The importance of I. P. Pavlov for the development of neuroscience

By his experimental and theoretical work on the physiology and pathophysiology of the higher nervous activity I.P. Pavlov significantly influenced the development of Neuroscience. During the 1950 Pavlovian Conference in Moscow, Stalin and the Communist Party tried to dogmatize his and his pupils’ fundamental theories. But the Pavlovian ideas were developed by his pupils in open discussions with representatives of other schools in a very creative way, opening the doors for a systemic approach to understanding the integrative functional systems of brain and behavior. Pavlov emphasized the high plasticity of the central nervous system investigated the complex functional systems within the brain and between the organism and its environment, and designed models for pathological deviations of the higher nervous activity. During his last years, he freed himself from the strong deterministic view and characterized the organism and its environment as a self-organizing system. Lecture at the Annual Meeting of the Pavlovian Society, November 1, 1998, Dusseldorf, Germany.     

Pavlov and the mind-body problem

I. P. Pavlov claimed that the mind-body problem would ultimately be resolved by empirical methods, rather than by rational arguments. A committed monist, Pavlov was confronted by dualism in the case of an hysterical person. Under normal conditions, her body's left side was insensitive to pain, but when she was hypnotized, there was a reversal of her sensitivity to pain, with the right side becoming insensitive. Pavlov acknowledged that the divergence between stimulation and response suggested dualism, yet condemned his disciple G.P. Zelenyî as well as Charles S. Sherrington, for their dualistic tendencies. Pavlov's continuous adherence to monism is attributed to the influence of popular scientific books that he read during his adolescence. The books maintained that science was based upon monism. Pavlov proposed that by introducing the concept of emotions, an hysterical person's condition could be explained within the framework of his theory of higher nervous activity, thereby obviating the need to change his paradigm.     

Pavlov And Skinner: Two Lives In Science (An Introduction To B. F. Skinner's "Some Responses To The Stimulus 'Pavlov' ")

The sesquicentennial of Ivan Petrovich Pavlov's birth in September 1999 is being celebrated in Russia by a special issue of the Russian Journal of Physiology (the former I. M. Sechenov Physiological Journal, founded by Pavlov in 1917). The following article and the address by Skinner that it introduces are scheduled to appear in Russian translation in that special issue. Skinner's “Some Responses to the Stimulus ‘Pavlov’” was his presidential address to the Pavlovian Society of North America in 1966. The following article provides the context for Skinner's address by describing some ways in which Pavlov's research influenced Skinner's contributions.     

Wilhelm Reich in Soviet Russia: Psychoanalysis,Marxism, and the Stalinist reaction

Abstract

In 1929, Wilhelm Reich lectured on “Psychoanalysis as a natural science” before the Communist Academy in Moscow; he was the only Freudian-trained Central European psychoanalyst to do so. That same year, his article “Dialectical materialism and psychoanalysis” was published in the Academy's journal, Under the Banner of Marxism, in both Moscow and Berlin. By this time, Reich's involvement with political activism aligned with the Austrian Communist Party was increasing, while simultaneously psychoanalysis in the Soviet Union was in decline. Our paper places these events in their proper historical context and includes a discussion of the various attempts to determine the compatibility of psychoanalysis and Marxism. We offer analyses of both the article, “Dialectical materialism and psychoanalysis,” and the lecture, “Psychoanalysis as a natural science,” and the reactions to both by Reich's Russian critics. We show the ways in which responses to his lecture foreshadow what becomes the standard Soviet assessment of psychoanalysis. As an appendix to this paper, we provide the first English translation of the Russian account of his lecture, as published in the Herald of the Communist Academy.     

The impact of Pavlov on the psychology of learning in English-speaking countries

The translation of Pavlov's lectures (Pavlov, 1927) provided English-speaking psychologists with access to the full scope of Pavlov's research and theoretical ideas. The impact this had on their study of the psychology of learning can be assessed by examining influential books in this area. This reveals that Watson (1924) had been highly effective in promoting the misleading idea that Pavlov was a fellow S-R theorist. This assumption was not questioned by Tolman (1932), Hilgard and Marquis (1940) or by Hull (1943). However, this mistake was not made by Skinner (1938), who also provided the strongest arguments against Pavlov's belief that behavioral effects required explanation in terms of physiological processes. Post-1927 most learning research in the English-speaking countries continued to use instrumental, rather than Pavlovian, conditioning procedures. Nevertheless, many of the issues addressed by this research were ones that Pavlov had been the first to raise, so that his major influence can be seen as that of defining a research program for subsequent students of learning.     

Experimental evidence of the second signaling system of man

After the first principles of the conditional reflexes had been elucidated by Pavlov and his followers, Pavlov named the neurophysiologic entity common to both animals and men thefirst signaling system. He recognized that man has another signaling system,viz., language, and he proposed that it be named thesecond signaling system. Few experimental studies relating to the second signaling system have been done. Only occasional studies of the effects of spoken language on animals and men, or the effects of spoken language upon EEG and other motor activities of men have been reported. In this paper, the author reports experimental investigation of the second signaling system through the classical conditional salivary method in man, and the development of its methodology.     

Pavlov,psychoanalysis, and neuroses

Pavlov’s discovery of experiment neurosis was serendipitous, yet it was made under the influence of Breuer and Freud’s case of Anna O. In 1914, Pavlov’s disciple N. R. Shenger-Krestovnikova, exploring the limits of visual discrimination in dogs, noticed that when the discrimination was difficult, the dogs’ behavior became disorganized. Pavlov drew an analogy between the condition of Shenger-Krestovnikova’s dogs and their disorganized behavior with Anna O.’s situation and her neurotic reaction. Pavlov concluded that he had demonstrated in the laboratory the elements of neurosis in animals and human alike. Schilder’s criticism of his position, his later study of human neuroses in clinical settings, and the views of Janet may have induced Pavlov to differentiate between animal and human neuroses.     

Pavlov’s position toward konorski and miller’s distinction between pavlovian and motor conditioning paradigms

Two Warsaw medical students, Jerzy Konorski and Stefan Miller, having read I. P. Pavlov’s works on conditional reflexes, informed him in a 1928 letter that they had discovered a new type of conditioning. A previously neutral stimulus preceded the passive lifting of a dog’s paw which then was followed by feeding; this stimulus then evoked the spontaneous raising of that paw. Pavlov responded informing them that their conditioning of motor responses expanded his theory of higher nervous activity, but that their conditioning paradigm—that they named CRII—did not differ fundamentally from the Pavlovian conditioning paradigm. The replication of the Warsaw experiment in Pavlov’s laboratory failed to provide unequivocal results. From 1931 to 1933, Konorski, working in Pavlov’s Leningrad laboratory, further explored the parameters of CRII. Pavlov insisted that the conditioning of motor movements differs from the conditioning of other sensory analyzers only in that, on the neural level, the motor analyzer is both afferent, that is, perceptive, and efferent, that is, responsive. Konorski was not convinced, and he subsequently maintained that the two conditioning paradigms were fundamentally different.     

The second signal system as conceived by Pavlov and his disciples

Pavlov clearly formulated his ideas on thesecond signal system (specifically, language) in the 1930s. This occurred in conjunction with his interest in interspecies differences and in the study of human neuroses. Pavlov proposed that conditional reflexes signal concrete reality while symbolic-language provides abstractions of reality. Phylogenetically, language emerged in the humans because this form of communication had survival value to the species. Pavlov’s disciples L. A. Orbeli and N. I. Krasnogorskii had considered the ontogenetic development of language. The experimental investigation of A. G. Ivanov-Smolenskii extended Pavlov’s empirical study of the function of language in psychopathology. Notwithstanding a sustained interest in language, Pavlov did not develop a theory of language acquisition based upon the conditioning principle. Pavlov’s conceptualization of language may not have been original, nor did it contribute significantly to modern linguistics. It is now mainly of historical interest. It was, nevertheless, important to the conceptualization of neuroses within the context of the theory of higher nervous activity and it had far-reaching political implications for Soviet psychology in the immediate post-World War II period.     

Hypnosis and inhibition as viewed by heidenhain and pavlov

About 1880, Rudolf Heidenhain, then Professor of Physiology and Histology at the University of Breslau, experimentally studied hypnotic phenomena. Heidenhain explained hypnosis physiologically, in terms of cortical inhibition. Subsequently, I. P. Pavlov, who in 1877 and again in 1884 was Heidenhain’s student at Breslau, encountered hypnotic phenomena during conditional reflex experiments. In 1910, Pavlov described hypnotic states and explained them (as had Heidenhain three decades earlier), in terms of partial inhibition of the cortex. As the concepts of inhibition and excitation are cornerstones of Pavlov’s theory of higher nervous activity, it is of historical interest to search for influences that led Pavlov to incorporate the concept of inhibition into his theory. It is most likely that Pavlov first encountered the concept of central inhibition in the 1860s when reading I. M. Sechenov’sThe Reflexes of the Brain (1863/1866) and that the importance of the concept was augmented by Heidenhain’s use of it in explaining hypnotic phenomena.     

Symposium on The Ego and the Id after fifty years. The past and future of ego psychology.

Having six roots in ordinary observation and introspection, ego psychology has a long pre-Freudian history, which influenced Freud's first usages of Ich. His works before 1923 contain much that is substantively ego psychology; The Ego and the Id was not a paradigm change but a consolidation of pre-existing ideas. The structural theory replaced a model (topographic) which Freud actually used very little, especially clinically, and he failed to remedy its gravest methodological faults. The ego-id model is an integral part of metapsychology, and will pass out of use as the latter dies, with no detriment to clinical psychoanalysis.     

Heidegger's Early Critique of Husserl

This paper examines Heidegger's critique of Husserl in its earliest extant formulation, viz. the lecture courses Ontologie from 1923 and Einführung in die phänomenologische Forschung from 1923/4. Commentators frequently ignore these lectures, but I try to show that a study of them can reveal both the extent to which Heidegger remains committed to phenomenological research in something like its Husserlian form, and when and why Heidegger must part with Husserl. More specifically, I claim that Heidegger rightly criticizes Husserl's account of 'equipmental objects', and that he is especially unsatisfied with the terminology in which Husserl presents his phenomenological analyses, not only of 'equipment', but of other types of entities as well. However, it will also emerge that Heidegger's own phenomenological work presupposes the performance of what Husserl calls the 'epoch 7 ', the method of 'bracketing' natural knowledge. In this way, Heidegger's sometimes very severe critique must be understood as an internal critique.