Abstract

NAMURA, Maria Regina. Why Vygotsky focuses on sense: a brief panorama of the history of sense in psychology. Psicol. educ. [online]. 2004, n.19, pp. 91-117. ISSN 1414-6975.

This article approaches the theoretical constructions of sense formulated by psychology throughout its history. Conceived as a private science to understand the human mind, one of its main debates is production/creation of senses and the mankind’s necessity to give a sense to life. In this trajectory, we identify that psychology has created concepts and theories in order to understand the psychological processes of sense production. However, once intersected by the experimental method and by the specialization model that resulted from positivism, psychology has despised the interfaces with social sciences, philosophy and art. In its contemporary history, psychology has combined with logical- linguistic conceptions, establishing an epistemology of senses. These tendencies hinder the perception of man in his entirety. The conclusion, following Vygotsky, is that psychology’s problem is not conceptual, but methodological; it is in its analysis methods.

Keywords : Sense; History of Psychology; Epistemology and analysis methods.

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