Alexander Romanovich Luria A Scientific Biography

Plenum Series in Russian Neuropsychology Series Editors: David E. Tupper Hennepin County Medical Center and University of Minnesota Medical School

Antonio E. Puente University of North Carolina at Wilmington

Editorial Board: Tatiana V. Akhutina, Moscow State University; Alfredo Ardila, Miami Institute of Psychology; Janna M. Glozman, Moscow State University; Evgenia D. Homskaya, Moscow State University; I. Alexander Meerson, Bekhterev Psycho­neurological Institute; Lena Moskovichyute, Boston v.A. Medical Center; Ludwig I. Vasserman, Bekhterev Psychoneurological Institute

ALEXANDER ROMANOVICH LURIA A Scientific Biography Evgenia D. Homskaya

Alexander Romanovich Luria A Scientific Biography

Evgenia D. Homskaya Moscow State University

Moscow, Russia

Edited, with a Foreword, by

David E. Tupper Hennepin County Medical Center and

University of Minnesota Medical School Minneapolis, Minnesota

Translated by

Daria Krotova

Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Aleksandr Romanovich Luriia. English. Alexander Romanovich Luria: a scientific biography /Evgenia D. Homskaya ... [et

al.]; translated by Daria Krotova; edited, and with a foreword, by David E. Tupper. p. em. - (The Plenum series in Russian neuropsychology)

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4613-5441-3 ISBN 978-1-4615-1207-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-4615-1207-3

1. Luriia, A. R. (Aleksandr Romanovich), 1902-. 2. Neurologists-Russia-Biography. 3. Psychologists-Russia-Biography. l. Khomskaia, E. D. (Evgeniia Davydovna) II. Tupper, David E. III. Series.

RC339.52.LS7 A4413 2000 153.'092-dc21 [B] 00-062190

Luria's classic English signature (1962) below the frontispiece photograph is reproduced by courtesy of Joan Simon.

This volume is translated and edited from the original Russian edition: E. D. Khomskaya, Aleksandr Romanovich Luriia: Nauchnaia Biographia. Moscow: Voenizdat, 1992.

ISBN 978-1-4613-5441-3

©200l Springer Science+Business Media New York Originally published by Kluwer Academic / Plenum Publishers, New York in 2001 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2001

http://www.wkap.nl/

10 9 S 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A Cl.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher

Editor's Foreword

I am very pleased to have been asked to act as the editor of the English edition of this scientific biography of Alexander Romanovich Luria writ­ten by Evgenia D. Homskaya of Moscow State University. Although per­haps it is not traditional in a Foreword, I would like to comment briefly on the subject matter, the author, and my editorial work on the book itself.

About the Subject

Alexander Romanovich Luria (1902-1977), a Russian neurologist and psy­chologist, has been recognized worldwide as one of the preeminent neuropsychologists of the twentieth century. His work has had a signifi­cant global influence on psychological theorizing and practice even since his death in 1977. In fact, in papers by Solso and colleagues (Solso, 1985; Solso & Hoffman, 1991), Luria has been identified as the most frequently cited Soviet (Russian) psychology scholar in North America, with contem­porary citations of his work in American, Canadian, and British journals occurring at double the rate of that of other Soviet scholars. Luria was extremely prodigious throughout his seventy-five years, with many of his scientific works already available in English and numerous other languages, no doubt adding to his popularity.

Luria's interests throughout his life were quite diverse and included not only narrow neuropsychological topics such as cerebral localization of psychological functions but also wide-ranging psychological concerns such as child development, rehabilitation interventions, educational and instruc-

vii

viii Editor's Foreword

tional methods, mental retardation, linguistic phenomena, and cognitive processing at the individual level. Luria's influence in neuropsychology has been particularly significant and has spanned a number of prominent topics, including his neurolinguistic interests and aphasia classification, his drug and cognitive approaches to treatment of brain injury, his discus­sions of breakdowns in regulatory and executive activity associated with frontal lobe damage, and his qualitative approach to assessment. In par­ticular, Luria's conceptualization of the three functional units of the brain (although simplified) helps students and practitioners utilize a simple brain-behavior model in clinical and research work, and it provides the type of functional behavioral geography system that can incorporate spe­cific findings from diverse neuropsychological perspectives. More recently, Luria's cross-cultural work has also become salient (e.g., Nell, 2000) as neuropsychologists are increasingly recognizing the necessity of consider­ing individual differences and experiential variables in their understand­ing of brain-behavior relationships.

Luria is also very well known for his personal biographies of indi­viduals with unique cerebral characteristics, which he termed a "romantic science" approach to psychology (for a contemporary perspective on such case histories, see also Sacks, 1973, 1985, 1990). These unique and de­tailed narrative summaries of the life of an individual were also called "unimagined portraits" (a description of an individual and the laws of his or her mental life) by Luria as he contrasted them to Walter Pater's (1887/ 1997) imaginary portraits. These biographies represent Luria's attempts to integrate both a classical and a romantic methodology in his work.

Michael Cole, in his introduction to Luria's previous autobiography (Luria, 1979), indicates that the thread that ties much of Luria's life works together was his desire to create a more comprehensive cultural-historical theory for psychology, to contrast with what he saw as the" crisis" of the other dominant paradigms in psychology during his life. As a contempo­rary of Lev S. Vygotsky, Luria was significantly influenced by Vygotsky's dialectical-materialist approach to understanding the mind as inseparable from the surrounding society and dedicated his life to working out further this meaningful cultural-historical psychological theory. In this book, Homskaya outlines all of these themes and influences in Luria's scientific life and provides the reader with a detailed account of Luria's leading sci­entific motivations. Luria himself has downplayed his role in psychology, stating, "People come and go, but the creative sources of great historical events and the important ideas and deeds remain" (Luria, 1979, p. 188). This book proves that both people and their ideas are vital for the devel­opment of scientific thought in psychology.

Editor's Foreword ix

About the Author

Evgenia D. Homskaya (b. 1929) is clearly the most suitable and appropri­ate individual to have written a scientific biography of Luria. She worked with him longer than anyone else-for about twenty-five years-after gradu­ating in 1952 from the Psychology Sector of the Philosophy Department (now the Psychology Department) of Moscow State University under his tutelage. Her initial scientific work (1952-1957) involved the study of chil­dren with mental retardation at the Institute for the Study of the Handi­capped and; in 1957, she defended her Candidate's thesis under Luria, concerning a conditional reflex method for differentiating such children. Since that time, Homskaya has worked independently in neuropsychol­ogy, with a particular interest in the functions of the frontal lobes. She was appointed Head of the Neuropsychology Laboratory at the Institute of Psychology of the USSR (now Russian) Academy of Sciences in 1972, and has retained active clinical and teaching roles in that setting, at the N. N. Burdenko Neurosurgical Institute, and in the Psychology Department of Moscow State University. Her own work on the frontal lobes and activa­tion (as documented in her 1972 book, Brain and Activation) was recog­nized as the best in its field and was awarded the Lomonosov Prize.

As the present book documents, Luria was the primary influence in Homskaya's professional life, and she provides an insider's perspective on his scientific and personal life as well as on the lasting influence his work has had on psychology and neuropsychology worldwide.

About the Book

This book is the first volume in the Plenum Series in Russian Neuropsy­chology. It was first published in Moscow in 1992, fifteen years after Luria's death, and has been edited heavily for publication in English. It is pub­lished now, almost a century after his birth and almost seventy years after the publication of his first book in English, The Nature of Human Conflicts (1932). With the exception of the two Luria autobiographies written in the 1970s (Luria, 1974*E; 1979*E), and Elena Luria's (1994) posthumous-more personal-biography of her father, Homskaya's scientific biography of Luria is the first serious volume from outside the Luria family devoted to his life and work.

"Citations of Luria's works in the text are provided in Appendix 2 rather than in the References. The coding "R" signifies a Russsian-language citation and "E" signifies a citation in English.

x Editor's Foreword

Editing a book that has been translated from another language is a difficult and time-consuming process. Along with attempting to provide a meaningful and accurate rendition in English of Homskaya's original Rus­sian thoughts, I endeavored to develop some uniformity in the text by primarily using the more common Anglicized versions of Russian names (e.g., Luria, Vygotsky, Homskaya) rather than their direct transliterations (e.g., Luriia, Vygotskii, Khomskaya). However, to assure as much accu­racy as possible, in reference lists I consistently provided the more direct and factual Russian transliterations (according to the u.s. Board on Geo­graphic Names; see Brozek and Slobin, 1972, p. 41) to assist readers in retrieving citations. Transliterations of the author's names are provided and, in the case of the Russian references, transliterations and English translations of the titles of the works are included. All citations in lan­guages other than English are as complete and exact as I could find them.

This book has a number of unique features. First, it includes two ad­ditional appendices not available in the Russian edition of the book. Ap­pendix 1 is a set of biographical notes or the Hvita" of prominent aspects or events in Luria's life along with a brief accounting of major awards, honors, and societies in which he was involved. Appendix 3 is an updated list of writings about Luria. Second, this volume includes the most com­prehensive bibliography available anywhere of Luria's writings; Appen­dix 2 provides a chronological listing of Luria's works in Russian, English, and multiple other languages. Because the original version of this appen­dix in the Russian book was incomplete, as editor, I benefited greatly from the availability of a number of previously published Lurian bibliographies (including those by Braemer & Jantzen, 1994; Mecacci & Misiti, 1978; Pefia­Casanova, 1989; Pier6, Mateu, & Carpintero, 1980; Scheerer & Elliger, 1980; and Schubert & von Hebel, 1987). The bibliography is now signifi­cantly larger than the one in the Russian version of the book. Finally, the book provides the unique perspective of Luria's first student and longest collaborator, E. D. Homskaya.

II- II- II-

The accurate editing and publication of a book such as this could not have been accomplished without the assistance of a number of individu­als. In particular, I would like to acknowledge the special assistance pro­vided by Toni Williams and the other staff of the Thomas Lowrey Health Sciences Library at Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMe) in track­ing down obscure Russian works; the graphic arts assistance of Brad Capouch of HCMC; the loan of supplementary photos by Joan Simon,

Editor's Foreword xi

Janna M. Glozman, Gita Vygodskaya, and A. Fridenstein; and the direct support provided by E. D. Homskaya. Tony Puente, series coeditor, and Eliot Werner, executive editor at Kluwer Academic/Plenum, have always provided the correct kind of encouragement in the editorial process, and Eliot has been a major supporter of the Plenum Series in Russian Neurop­sychology. Thanks are also due to a number of individuals around the world who have provided additional materials to me while working on the book, including Guillermo Blanck, Jerome Bruner, Anne-Lise Christensen, Michael Cole, Janna Glozman, Wolfgang Jantzen, Alex Kozulin, Luciano Mecacci, Alexandre Metraux, Jose Piera, Jordi Pena-Casanova, Oliver Sacks, Eugene Subbotsky, and Robert Wozniak.

Finally, I would like to thank my family-Sharon, Jonathan, and Ashley-for allowing me to spend numerous evenings and weekends at the computer, which gave me time to double- and triple-check citations and permitted me to polish this manuscript into a proper scientific book worthy of constituting the initial publication in the series.

DAVID E. TUPPER

Preface to the English Edition

A. R. Luria was not only a Russian scientist; he was also a scientist of international significance. His contributions to scientific psychology can be compared with Mendeleev's in chemistry and Pavlov's in physiology. However, the role of his personality in science is not always estimated at its true worth for several reasons. One of them is the contemporary state of scientific psychology and those disciplines related to it. Different do­mains of knowledge develop independently and the fact that they deal with similar matters, although from different points of view, is not always taken into consideration. Luria was a man capable of synthesizing knowl­edge and of finding common problems in domains that seem very differ­ent to others. The "synthetic" character of his approach to the traditional problems of psychology was not evident to everyone. This approach al­lowed him to make important contributions to the psychology of speech, the psychology of voluntary action, the psychology of intellectual develop­ment, and to other areas of psychological science.

The second reason is the contemporary situation in neuroscience. In his time, the study of the problem of the brain and psyche was reserved mostly to physiology. That Luria dealt with this problem as a psychologist could not be accepted by all the representatives of neuroscience. The fact that neuropsychology-his most favorite creation-was conceived by him from the beginning as a science of the cerebral organization of the psycho­logical processes of man, as a neuropsychology of man, provided the suc­cess for his research.

From the very beginning, Luria wanted to understand how the brain functions during the process of the realization of conscious, voluntary,

xiii

xiv Preface to the English Edition

regulated forms of psychological activity (higher psychological functions), regarding them as complex psychological units consisting of many sys­temically organized links. He was looking for a correspondence between those systemicly organized psychological functions and the systemically organized brain mechanisms. He created the theory of the dynamic orga­nization (localization) of higher psychological functions, which opened new possibilities for the approach to the problem of the brain and psyche.

Because of other, more subjective reasons, the personality of Luria has not yet come to be rightly evaluated. The publication of this book, Alexander Romanovich Luria: A Scientific Biography, in English should help international readers to have a better understanding of his contributions in science.

As many readers know, a large number of Luria's works were trans­lated into English and published by major publishing corporations of the United States, Great Britain, Holland, and other countries. Among them are Traumatic Aphasia (1959R, 1970E); Restoration of Function after Brain Injury (1963E); Higher Cortical Functions of Man (1966R, 1980E); Basic Prob­lems ofNeurolinguistics (1967E); The Working Brain (1973E), and many oth-ers.

The English-speaking reader might be interested in a more detailed account of Luria's works published in English. This book will help him or her to know more about Luria's works. It includes a bibliography consist­ing of approximately 762 titles, with 371 Russian citations and 391 titles in English and other non-Russian languages.

Luria had many friends in the United States. His first major mono­graph, The Nature Of Human Conflicts, was also published in America, in New York in 1932. He had a number of personal and professional ties relating him to America and I am glad that this book will be published in this country. I hope that it will be interesting to people who were familiar with him and his work.

Plenum Publishing Corporation also has known a long-term relation­ship with Luria. I am happy that this particular publishing house has taken charge of this publication. Plenum's reputation in the world of scientific publications assures the fact that the book will find the reader.

My book is one of the first (and rather more modest) attempts to analyze Luria's professional biography. I think, however, that not only Russian-speaking but also the English-speaking readers will find here some new facts concerning the life of my teacher and friend.

EVGENIA D. HOMSKAYA

Contents

Editor's Foreword by David E. Tupper v Preface to the English Edition xi

Introduction 1

1. Childhood and Youth 9

2. The Twenties: Luria's Acquaintance with 1. S. Vygotsky and the Beginning of their Mutual Activity 15

3. The Thirties: An Expedition to Central Asia and the Twin Study 25

4. The Forties: World War II and the Rehabilitation Hospital-Neuropsychology in the Making 35

5. The Fifties: Luria's Work in Defectology 41

6. The Sixties: A Vast Research Program in Neuropsychology 53

7. The Seventies: Creation of a Soviet Neuropsychological School 69

8. Alexander Romanovich Luria and Psychological Science 83

Conclusion 111

xv

xvi Contents

References 119

Appendix 1. Biographical Notes and Chronology 123

Appendix 2. The Bibliography of Alexander Romanovich Luria A. In Russian 127 B. In English 151 C. In Other Languages 161

Appendix 3. References about Luria 171

Index 177