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Exploring the Relationship between Brain and Culture

The Autobiography of Alexander Luria is a relatively short and immensely readable book. In it, Luria recounts the various phases of his career and, in this process, provides a valuable overview of the major themes in Soviet psychology during the first two thirds of the 20th century. In 1923, at the age of 21, Luria was appointed to the Moscow Institute of Psychology and between then and his death in 1977 he conducted research that included what he called ‘experimental psychoanalysis’ based on the work of Freud and Jung, which led to an early model of a lie detector, his crosscultural fieldwork in Central Asia as well as his seminal work in what came to be known as neuropsychology. For those who read the original version of Luria’s autobiography, published in 1979, this apparent eclecticism must have seemed puzzling. Indeed, the shifting topics in his work, particularly given his lack of explanation for the changes, may well have led some to overlook the sustained theoretical orientation underpinning these different projects. As a result, many readers may have undervalued Luria’s importance as one of the leading psychologists of the 20th century. By providing a new edition of the original autobiography, amplified by chapters on the historical, social and personal contexts of Luria’s career, and including videorecorded interviews with colleagues and well-known scholars who worked with him, Cole and Levitin have given us a much more rounded view of Luria the man. They also offer us a more thorough understanding of Luria’s indomitable courage in pursuing his commitment to the new, comprehensive approach to human psychological processes, developed with Vygotsky, in the political climate of the Stalinist years and beyond. As they explain, Luria was several times forced to abandon his projects because of political persecution. What is so remarkable, however, is the way in which he managed to turn the sidesteps that he was forced to take into opportunities to further his abiding concern in developing the new psychology.