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Eisenstein’s engagement with psychology can be most productively unpacked by acknowledging his lifelong collaboration with two Russian psychologists, Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) and Alexander Luria (1902-1977), both of whom were among the most influential psychologists of the 20th century, and both of whom were among those few whose influence is likely to endure well into the 21st. Vygotsky’s legacy is associated primarily with his cultural-historical theory. This theory provided a powerful paradigm with which to address the emergence and development of thought, language and consciousness as culturally and historically specific phenomena. His collaborator Luria was instrumental in creating the field of neuropsychology, or cognitive neuroscience, by extending the cultural-historical theory to address the mechanics of the brain. This all but unexplored collaboration between Eisenstein, Vygotsky and Luria is not only highly pertinent to the problematics of cinematic thinking, but deserves renewed attention in the current context of more general debates in cinema theory, which, it can be argued, are encumbered by three main factors: the digital revolution, the shift beyond postmodernism, and the so-called ‘crisis’ in current film theory.

#eisenstein-method

Sergei Eisenstein first started to discuss psychological problems of the “theory and psychology of expressiveness” with Luria and Vygotsky in 1925/beginning of 1926. The research program they carried out, from the mid-1920s until Eisenstein’s death, aimed to combine neuroscience, social sciences, and cinema theory to address the neural basis and semiotics of screen aesthetics.

#film-sense

The topics addressed in the program( as Luria’s archive demonstrates) ranged from the analysis of the historical processes through film to the basic structures of consciousness and the dynamics of personality. This joint research project was instrumental in Eisenstein’s theoretical work, from Film Form and Film Sense of 1920s and 1930s through Montage (1937), to Non Indifferent Nature (1945 -1947), and Method (1932-1948).

#film-sense

Art is the social technique of feeling

Vygotsky began his research by examining the structural organisation of a work of art and the psychological effect it produces in the recipient. Psychology of Art, Vygotsky’s PhD thesis, written and defended in 1925, was a result of research conducted between 1910 and 1922. This study became a quintessential manifestation of Vygotsky’s life-long concern with the specifically human aspect of behaviour and cognition: “Psychology in its attempts to explain the whole of [human] behaviour cannot but be attracted by the difficult problems posed by aesthetic reaction”. However, the analysis of structure in the work of art was only the first step for Vygotsky. His ultimate aim was the analysis of the psychological effect produced by the work of art, guided by his general perception that “art is the social technique of feelings”.

Eisenstein’s modes of aesthetic reaction

It can be argued that the principle of ‘art as a social technique of feelings’ can be traced in Eisenstein’s three modes of aesthetic reaction. From his early notion of ‘montage of attractions’ through his ideas of ‘intellectual montage’ to the more organic model of ‘pathos’ elaborated at a later stage, Eisenstein strived to organise and control viewer’s responses in order to optimally produce aesthetic effects from the experience. The three different principles of art’s effectiveness were posited by Eisenstein as operating simultaneously at the level of structural organisation of the work of art, and in terms of their emotional and broader intellectual and psychological effect on the spectator. Art was thus understood by both Vygotsky and Eisenstein as a mediator, a culturally elaborated tool to produce, regulate and transform complex emotional reactions – reactions which always encompass affective and intellectual dimensions: as Vygotsky states, “The emotions caused by art are intelligent emotions”

#aesthetic_reaction

The concept of "tools of the mind" comes from the work of Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky. He believed that just as physical tools extend our physical abilities, mental tools extend our mental abilities, enabling us to solve problems and create solutions in the modern world. When applied to children, this means that to successfully function in school and beyond, children need to learn more than a set of facts and skills. They need to master a set of mental toolsâtools of the mind.

According to Vygotsky, human higher mental functions must be viewed as products of mediated activity.The role of mediator is played by psychological tools and means of interpersonal communication. The concept of a psychological tool first appeared in Vygotsky’s thought by loose analogy with the material tool,which serves as a mediator between the human hand and the object upon which the tool acts. Like material tools, psychological tools are artificial formations. Both are naturally social but while material tools are an immediate control over processes in nature, psychological tools master natural forms of individual behaviour and cognition. Although sensory-motor schemas connected with practical actions also may become psychological tools, the latter usually have a semiotic nature. Psychological tools are internally oriented, transforming the natural human abilities and skills into higher mental functions (Vygotsky noted such psychological tools as gestures, language and sign systems, mnemonic techniques, and decision-making systems - for example, casting dice ).

#psychological-tools

A study of concept formation in educational setting led Vygotsky to another insight, namely, the dialogical character of learning. Vygotsky suggested that egocentric speech is rather a transitory form situated between social, communicative speech and inner speech. For Vygotsky the major problem was not that of socialization, but rather of individualisation of the originally communicative speech-for- others. Vygotsky believed that the outward, inter psychological relations become the inner, intrapsychological mental functions. In the context of this idea, the transition from egocentric to inner speech manifests the internalization of an originally communicative function, which becomes individualized inner mental function. Peculiarities of grammar and syntax characteristic of inner speech indicate this submergence of communication-for-others into individualized reasoning-for-oneself: in inner speech, culturally prescribed forms of language and reasoning find their individualized realization. Culturally sanctioned symbolic systems are remodelled into individual verbal thought.The principal steps in this remodelling include the transition from overt dialogue to internal dialogue.

#dialogical-learning

Eisenstein’s Grundproblem

The overriding goal of Eisenstein and his final major work Method, was to formulate the major laws of art that would be applicable to art criticism and analysis and be used by artists as tools in producing maximally effective works of art. The distinct feature of the approach adopted in Method is a consistent and determinate historicism, with equal attention given to the synchronic and the diachronic dimensions of reality. At the core of the elaboration of Method Eisenstein positioned what he called Grundproblem, the German term he used to define the central problem of art. Eisenstein construed this as arising from the paradoxical coexistence of two dimensions in the work of art: logical and sensuous, cognitive and emotional, rational and irrational, conscious and unconscious.

Eisenstein further hypothesised that, in general, a work of art is congruent with properties of the world and of human consciousness: Two layers – the layer of logical thought and the layer of sensuous thinking – underpin both the organisation of consciousness and the structures of works of art. As Eisenstein insists, these layers, or modes of operation, are indissolubly linked and their simultaneous work is crucial for consciousness encountering works of art. Such an understanding echoes the idea regarding ‘intelligent’ emotions expressed by Vygotsky, who similarly argued that aesthetic experience combines heightened emotional response and rational insight. Moreover, for Eisenstein, art is effective because the laws of form are determined by the laws of sensuous thinking based on earlier forms of human psychological functioning, which he variously defines as archaic, pre-logical or magical.

This central tenet of Eisenstein’s Grundproblem corresponds directly to Luria-Vygotsky’s idea, expressed in their cultural historical neuropsychology, that the phylogenetic history of the organisation of behaviour is reflected in the structure of the brain. While Vygotsky wrote “the brain preserves in itself in a spatial form the documented temporal sequence of development of behaviour”[34] and “the development of the brain proceeds according to laws of stratification and superstructure of new stories over the old”,[35] Luria proposes that the new structures are built on top of the old ones while preserving the principal relatedness, the same working style, a “common factor”.[36] Conversely, however, the engagement of the emotional sphere is effective for Eisenstein only if it is encompassed by the rational. Eisenstein placed equal emphasis on the logical component that ‘sublates’ the emotional one in an overall effect of the work of art. Art thus combines the conveying of logical content (theme and message) with the use of sensuous thought in the organisation of form. Considered within the context of the cultural-historical theory of Vygotsky and Luria, which also addressed the neuropsychological mechanisms of the work of the mind and functionality of the brain, the way Eisenstein addressed Grundproblem seemed to correspond to the cutting edge models in neuroaethetics.[42] Such models foreground three aspects of aesthetic experience: fascination with an aesthetic object (high arousal and attention) leading to the strong feeling of unity with the art object; intense cognitive engagement with the work of art through appraisal of narrative and symbolic structures and a strong emotional response underpinned by the analysis of perceptual associations and the detection of compositional regularities.

#eisensteins-grundproblem

Enactive Cinema

Moreover, considered alongside each other, Luria-Vygotsky’s cultural-historical theory and Eisenstein’s Method seem to extend the paradigm of four Es in neuroscience (that posits mind and brain as embodied, embedded, enacted and extended) towards the realm of aesthetic, and specifically, cinematic experience. Thought and emotions are complexly interrelated in the aesthetic experience, moreover their joint work takes the form of a material experience which is embedded – i.e. relates to the context of a particular socio-historical environment. Furthermore, in Method Eisenstein argues that the act of engagement with the work of art represents an embodied experience – it relies on extra-neural structures and processes represented by complex organic reactions that Eisenstein explored under the umbrella concepts of “shifts in time” and “ways of regress”. Method also emphasises the enacted character of aesthetic experience – from complex bodily reactions to intricate involuntary movements, Eisenstein consistently explores the role of concrete material actions in the temporal unfolding of aesthetic reaction. But, perhaps most importantly, Method foregrounds the extended character of aesthetic reaction – its reliance on the mediating role of cultural tools and semiotic systems.

#enactivecinema

Vygotsky returned to the problem of inner speech in connection with a study of generalization versus contextualization of word meaning. He made a distinction between word meaning (znachenie), which reflects a generalized concept, and word sense (smysi), which depends on the context of speech. The sense of a word is the sum of all the psychological events aroused in a person’s consciousness by the word. It is a dynamic, complex, fluid whole, which has several zones of unequal stability. Meaning is only one of the zones of sense, the most stable and precise zone. A word acquires its sense from the context in which it appears; in different contexts, it changes its sense.

#language&thought

British neurologist Oliver Sacks, who wrote famous "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" and "An Anthropologist on Mars", brings up his memories of Russia...

Through the notion of inner speech Vygotsky refers to the junction at which thinking is transformed into the linguistic, and language into thought. This process relies on the fact that inner speech operates with pure meanings. As Luria explains, “What is primarily represented in inner speech is the predicative part of the future utterance (the rheme). The predicative character of inner speech is the basis for the conversion of the initial thought into an expanded, syntagmatically structured, speech utterance”.

A. Luria, Language and Cognition, New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1982, 154

#Language&Cognition

Interview with Professor Peter Smagorinsky (in Georgia USA) on Vygotsky's "Psychology of Art" conducted by Andy Blunden (in Melbourne Australia), using Skype. Apologies…

According to Vygotsky, the predominance of sense over meaning, of sentence over word, and of context over sentence are rules of inner speech. While meaning stands for socialized discourse, sense represents an inter-face between one’s individual (and thus incommunicable) thinking and verbal thought comprehensible to others. Inner speech is not an internal aspect of talking; it is a function in itself. It remains, however, a form of speech, that is. thought connected with words. But while in external speech thought is embodied in words, in inner speech words must sublimate in order to bring forth a thought. In inner speech two important processes are interwoven: the transition from external communication to inner dialogue and the expression of intimate thoughts in linguistic form, thus making them communicative. Inner speech becomes a psychological interface between, on the one hand,culturally sanctioned symbolic systems and, on the other hand, private “language" and imagery.The concretization of psychological activity in this context appears as a psychological mechanism for creating new symbols and word senses capable of eventually being incorporated into the cultural stock.

This was a return on Vygotsky’s part to the enigmatic problem of artistic and intellectual creativity, which, apparently, had not left his mind since The Psychology of Art (1925). In Vygotsky’s view, the process of artistic or intellectual creation is antipodal to the process of internalizalion. In creative activity, inner context-dependent senses gradually unfold their meanings as symbols-for-others.

#psychology-of-art

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