The golden age of Soviet psychology in the mirror of contemporary Marxist psychology in Brazil

Abstract

This chapter presents a brief – and therefore necessarily personal – history of psychology and Marxism in Brazil. The student became interested in Vygotsky from J. Piaget’s commentary on Soviet psychology in a 1974 book, Wisdom and Illusions of Philosophy. With regard to Soviet psychology, the 1980s were marked by the protagonism of two Sao Paulo institutions: PUC-SP and Unicamp, respectively in social psychology and education, two of the vital universities for the survival of the left wing in the years of dictatorship. Freitas also reports the passage of interest of various researchers to Soviet psychologists without necessarily having political activism or preference for Marxism. The history of the reception, diffusion and production of Marxist psychology, and its Soviet variants in Brazil, as studied by Garcia, occurred belatedly in relation to, for example, Argentina, where it had gained momentum from the 1950s and 1960s.