“Every individual has his own insanity”: Applying Vygotsky's work on defectology to the question of mental health as an issue of inclusion

an article by Peter Smagorinsky (The University of Georgia, USA) published in Learning, Culture and Social Interaction Volume 1 Issue 2 (June 2012)

Abstract

In Volume 2 of the Collected Works, Vygotsky argues for more inclusive treatment of people who depart from the developmental norm.

In this essay I review facets of his approach and discuss how they may inform current attention to extranormative mental health makeups, e.g., tendencies toward depression, anxiety, bipolarity, and related neurological influences on personality.

I focus on the following sets of Vygotskian tenets:

1. his belief that mental and cognitive differences do not comprise defects or deficiencies, but rather present developmental channels that depart from the evolutionary norm;
2. his assertion that “secondary disabilities” resulting from stigmatization related to difference produce more deleterious effects on one than does the source of difference itself;
3. his belief that feelings of inadequacy, if socially channeled toward productive roundabout means of mediation, can productively promote human growth within existing cultural channels; and
4. his conviction that the goal of education and human development is to promote progress toward a culture’s higher mental functions – i.e., those ways of thinking endemic to particular cultural orientations to the world – rather than to remediate sources of difference.

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