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Although psychoanalysis aspires to being a general psychology based on its own concepts and methods, it does rely extensively on ideas and theories drawn from mainstream experimental and clinical psychology to supplement its framework. In some instances, it assimilates the material unwittingly or informally, while in other cases—for example, when incorporating aspects of behavioral, cognitive, Piagetian, or linguistic models—the use is more deliberate. At any rate, since general psychology does have this influence, when a serious work comes along that radically calls into question the received truths of mainstream psychology, it also is bound to be relevant for psychoanalysis.
Ratner's book on Vygotsky's sociohistorical psychology is such a work. Its goal is to go beyond the growing exegetical and historical literature which describes and places Vygotsky's thought (Lethbridge, 1993). Ratner proposes to “take Vygotsky and Luria's main concepts… and unify them into a coherent paradigm that is applied to numerous psychological topics in order to demonstrate its contemporary validity” (p. 1).
The core conceptual issue is the relationship between biology and psychology. Drawing on a large body of evidence from biology, sociology, history, anthropology, economics, and various subspecialties in psychology, Ratner buttresses Vygotsky's position: Biology does not in any significant way determine human adults' specific psychological functioning. While in lower animals and in the human neonate biology narrowly constrains and determines behavior, its role in the psychological/behavioral realm changes drastically as the human infant matures and as one ascends the phylogenetic hierarchy. For the adult human, biological factors assume a generalized, nonspecific, potentiating, non-deterministic