The dynamics of personality. An East European view

As the debates on fundamental issues of the human sciences have shown, actually two significant pictures of man are opposed to each other: the scientific-biological and the historicist conceptions. The second one is supported, for instance, by the Budapest School of Philosophy (with Lukács and his followers) and the Soviet School of Psychology (Vigotsky, Luria, Leontiev and their pupils). Summing up the doctrines of these two currents of thought the author argues in favour of the historicist conception and indicates, what is implied, in different fields of application (mind-body problem, linguistic theories, neuropsychic diseases, mental disorders), by the acceptance of this point of view. Moral issues, concerning psychiatric treatment, are discussed, too, and a Kantian solution of them is defended.