Comments on a standardized version of Luria's tests

Appreciation is expressed for the work of Golden's group in the selection of Luria's tests, the standardization of their administration, the collection of norms, and the evaluation of the reliability and validity of the Luria-Nebraska test battery. However, questions are raised concerning the ability of the test to efficiently handle topical diagnosis and to construct rehabilitation programs. Concern is expressed over the possible vulgarization of Luria's doctrine of functional systems and the loss of predictive power in Luria's tests through neglect of qualitative information and methodology. Suggestions are made as to how Luria's qualitative methodology might be incorporated in a standardized version of a neuropsychological examination.     

Bilingualism and brain functional asymmetry

The task of the neural organization of the native language, acquired by a direct method and of another language, studied at school, performed correspondingly by the left and the right hemispheres, was studied in the bilingual patient after unilateral electroconvulsive therapy used in psychiatry. It was established that in such a bilingual type the right hemisphere is concerned with the formation of deep semantic structures of the native language while the left hemisphere is responsible for the formation of second language deep structures and of surface structures of both languages. The effect of language learning method on cerebral organization of bilingualism is postulated.     

我国的一种有特色的智能观

对我国的一种有特色的智能观即智能独立论进行了考察。认为智能独立论不同于西方的和前苏联的智能观。它肯定智能包含智力与能力,是二者的合称;认为智力与能力既有区别,又有联系,是两个相对独立的概念;指出智力独立论实质上是一种多元智能理论,包含着12种智能。     

Tradition,morality and community: elaborating Orthodox identity in Putin’s Russia

This paper draws upon a number of official, semi-official and other public texts related to the current views of the Russian Church on social and political issues. Overall, in spite of a variety of opinions and nuances, a certain mainstream becomes apparent, as expressed through this body of texts. The most discussed topics include moral values related to the human body (such as abortion, euthanasia, reproductive technologies and sexuality) and issues such as blasphemy, juvenile courts and new technologies of personal registration for Russian citizens. ‘Traditional morality’ has become the signature discourse of the Russian Orthodox Church which is attempting to construct ‘tradition’ by drawing upon a partly imagined ethos of imperial Russia and the late Soviet Union. Traditional family values are central to the church’s rhetoric. The authors of these texts see a presumed decay of traditional values as the main danger that must be opposed. They usually trace the source of this danger directly to the contemporary West. By contrast, they see Russia as a protective shield against these global influences. Either consciously or involuntarily, they translate their religious language of traditional morality into a political rhetoric of solidarity and patriotism. Such ideological rhetoric has direct political implications and analogies in the agenda of Putin’s regime. This Russian appeal to ‘traditional values’, both religious and political, has recently acquired an extraordinary international relevance.     

Analytical space and work in Russia: Some remarks on past and present1

In this paper, the author outlines the historical‐cultural picture in the former USSR and post‐Soviet Russia. He looks at some facets of psychoanalysis in Russia in the years immediately before and after the October Revolution as well as in its recent history, exploring the implicit question of how the wider social context, and specifi cally totalitarian and post‐totalitarian reality, has infl uenced psychoanalytic work and analytic space in this country. With the help of Sebek's concept of the totalitarian object and Britton's formulations about the triangular space, the author attempts to understand the interaction of external and internal space and to give an introduction to the problem of establishing the analytic setting as well as fi nding some new possibilities of enlarging the space for new psychoanalysts in Russia.     

On the Performativity of Gender: Gender Studies in Post-Soviet Higher Education

In this article I attempt to conceptualize myexistential and institutional experience as thedirector of the Kharkov Center for GenderStudies acquired in the course of introducinggender studies into the system of post-Soviethigher education. The main subject of thearticle concerns the logical ground of genderdiscourse and the complicated relations betweenthe notions of `gender studies', `women'sstudies', and, within the latter, `feminism' inthe former USSR, all in the framework ofconcepts from Western feminists theory.     

Neurophysiological codes of words in subcortical structures of the human brain.

Investigations into the cerebral mechanisms of mental activity, using modern mathematical-technical capabilities, allows the transition from study of structural-functional organization to a new stage: the study of neural coding of these cerebral processes.Here we present the results of studying the elementary components of the neurophysiological pattern-code of words and the neurophysiological correlates of the simplest mental processes, generalization, and mental conclusion. The elementary components of the pattern-code are the group sequences of neuronal firing with comparatively stable intervals in between. The processes of mental conclusion and decision making occur when full, compressed, and complex patterns-codes appear in the brain.In discussing the data obtained, the problems of relationship between a part and the whole in activity of cerebral systems is considered, and the hypothesis of a dynamic pace-maker mechanism for cerebral organization of mental activity, is proposed.     

History of the unconscious in Soviet Russia: from its origins to the fall of the Soviet Union

Russia accepted the notion of the unconscious and psychoanalysis before many Western countries. The first Russian Psychoanalytic Society was established in 1911. After World War I and the Russian Revolution, for a short happy period, the following psychoanalysts were active: Sabina Spielrein, Tatiana Rosenthal, Moshe Wulff, Nikolai Osipov and Ivan Ermakov. Scholars associated with Soviet ideas participated too, including Aleksandr Luria, Michail Rejsner and Pavel Blonskij. Lev Vygotskij himself dealt with the unconscious. A second psychoanalytical society was set up in Kazan. Unfortunately, at the end of the 1920s, repression dissolved the psychoanalytic movement. Even the word 'psychoanalysis' was banned for decades. Nonetheless, interest in the unconscious, as distinct from psychoanalytic theory, survived in the work of the Georgian leader D. Uznadze. His followers organized the 1979 International Symposium on the Unconscious, in Tbilisi, Georgia, which marked the breaking of an ideological barrier. Since then, many medical, psychological, philosophical and sociological scholars have taken an interest in the unconscious, a subject both feared, for its ideological implications, and desired.Since the 1980s, psychoanalytic ideas have been published in the scientific press and have spread in society. The fall of the USSR in 1991 liberalized the scientific and institutional development of psychoanalysis.