Life as authoring: The humanistic tradition in Russian psychology

This paper traces the humanistic tradition in Russian psychology, that is, the tradition that derives its theoretical models from the humanities, and specifically from philology and literary scholarship. The milestones of this tradition are provided by Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of “life as authoring,” by the analysis of the psychological relevance of literary form as argued by Lev Vygotsky, and by the recent application of these ideas to the issue of coping and living-through crisis. It is argued that with the “life as authoring” approach, Soviet psychology may gain a new perspective, trascending such familiar trends as Pavlovian reflexology and Marxist social science.