The Collected Works of Lev Semonovich Vygotsky comprise a series of six
volumes, originally published in Moscow by Pedagogika between 1982 and
1984 and comprising the work done by Vygotsky between 1924 and his early
death in 1934. The present vol- ume is the first of this series to
appear in English but it is actually Volume 2 in the Russian series. It
contains a complete rendition of Thinking and Speech (which may be known
to English readers as Thought and Language, the title assigned to an
abridged, interpretative translation by Hanfmann and Vakar in 1962) and
five Lectures in Psy- chology which are here published for the first
time in English and essentialIy comprise Vygotsky's systematization of
psychological theory and data in respect to the develop- ment in
childhood of perception, memory, thinking, emotions, imagination, and
will. The volumes which are yet to appear in English are respectively
concerned with: (1) theory and history of psychology; (2) problems of
developmental psychology; (3) child and adolescent psychology; (4)
"defectology" (or "special education" in American par- lance); and (5) a
"scientific archive" consisting of a critique of Spinoza's studies of
the passions and an important essay, "Tool and Sign. " The decision by
the Translator and Editors to render the title of the first segment of
this volume, Mysclzlenie i Rech', as Thinking and Speech and not as
Thought and Language, as it was previously translated, was a very
intentional one.