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This book is a collection of papers by over thirty prominent Soviet psychologists, neurophysiologists, and neuropsychologists. The American editors have studied in the Soviet Union; their intention in this volume is to present a broad review of psychological research and concepts now extant in that country. It is not possible for an American reviewer who is without other knowledge of the Soviet pyschological literature (and is relatively unfamiliar with nonclinical aspects of American psychology) to judge whether they have been successful. Nevertheless, this work provides much information and its extensive bibliographies are helpful to anyone who wishes to pursue the presented material further. There is a foreword by three eminent Soviet psychologists and a preface and foreword by the American editors that give a historical introduction to Soviet psychology and enable the reader to follow the development of the psychological concepts in the context of scientific progress and political influences.
Once the reader comes to understand the difficulties of Soviet scientists in having to consider Marxist-Leninist doctrine, the cult of personality, and the godlike state of Pavlov every time they devised an experiment or wrote a line of a paper, he can read these essays more sympathetically. Objectively, work done under irrelevant handicap is less productive, but subjectively, one can admire the worker all the more for it. With such understanding, one ceases to be annoyed with the apologia and incantations that introduce many of the chapters and appreciates the content of the text.
The editors inform us that the current publication contains fewer political polemics than had been customary in the recent past. The principle remaining example of ideological refutation of scientific theory is in F. B. Bassin's chapter, Consciousness and Unconsciousness, in which freudianism is attacked with the same vehemence American John Birchers use to attack sex education as a communis