The Methods of Reflexological and Psychological Investigation

Abstract

The methods of the reflexological investigation of man have now reached a turning point in their development. The necessity (and inevitability) of a turnaround results from the discordance between, on the one hand, the enormous tasks which reflexology sets itself—that of studying the whole of man’s behavior—and, on the other hand, those modest and poor means for their solution which the classic experiment of creating a conditional (secretory or motor) reflex provides. This discordance becomes more and more clear as reflexology2 turns from the study of the most elementary links between man and his environment (correlative activity [2] in its most primitive forms and occurrences) to the investigation of the most complex and diverse interrelations necessary for the detection of the fundamental laws of human behavior.

First published as Vygotsky L. S. (1926). Metodika refleksologicheskogo i psikhologicheskogo issledovanija. In K. N. Kornilov (ed.) Problemy sovremennoj psikhologii (pp. 26–46). Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel’stvo.