The Cultural-Historical Perspective

After a discussion of different designations for the cultural-historical perspective in psychology, cultural-historical psychology is situated here historically. The Russian October Revolution of 1917 and its consequences, as well as psychology in the times of the Cold War, play an important role. The three developmental lines and the sign-mediated nature of the psyche, as well as the importance of ‘genetic’ experiments and case-by-case analyses, are then highlighted as essential theoretical and methodological-methodical foundations. As a concrete example in which cultural-historical psychology has been and continues to be fruitfully applied, pioneering contributions to literacy research with a corresponding profile are finally presented.