Table Of ContentAlexander Romanovich Luria
A Scientific Biography
Plenum Series in Russian Neuropsychology
Series Editors:
David E. Tupper
Hennepin County Medical Center
and University of Minnesota Medical School
Antonio E. Puente
University of North Carolina at Wilmington
Editorial Board: Tatiana V. Akhutina, Moscow State University; Alfredo Ardila,
Miami Institute of Psychology; Janna M. Glozman, Moscow State University; Evgenia
D. Homskaya, Moscow State University; I. Alexander Meerson, Bekhterev Psycho
neurological Institute; Lena Moskovichyute, Boston v.A. Medical Center; Ludwig I.
Vasserman, Bekhterev Psychoneurological Institute
ALEXANDER ROMANOVICH LURIA
A Scientific Biography
Evgenia D. Homskaya
Alexander Romanovich Luria
A Scientific Biography
Evgenia D. Homskaya
Moscow State University
Moscow, Russia
Edited, with a Foreword, by
David E. Tupper
Hennepin County Medical Center and
University of Minnesota Medical School
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Translated by
Daria Krotova
Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Aleksandr Romanovich Luriia. English.
Alexander Romanovich Luria: a scientific biography /Evgenia D. Homskaya ... [et
al.]; translated by Daria Krotova; edited, and with a foreword, by David E. Tupper.
p. em. - (The Plenum series in Russian neuropsychology)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4613-5441-3 ISBN 978-1-4615-1207-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4615-1207-3
1. Luriia, A. R. (Aleksandr Romanovich), 1902-. 2. Neurologists-Russia-Biography.
3. Psychologists-Russia-Biography. l. Khomskaia, E. D. (Evgeniia Davydovna) II.
Tupper, David E. III. Series.
RC339.52.LS7 A4413 2000
153.'092-dc21
[B] 00-062190
Luria's classic English signature (1962) below the frontispiece photograph is reproduced
by courtesy of Joan Simon.
This volume is translated and edited from the original Russian edition: E. D. Khomskaya,
Aleksandr Romanovich Luriia: Nauchnaia Biographia. Moscow: Voenizdat, 1992.
ISBN 978-1-4613-5441-3
©200l Springer Science+Business Media New York
Originally published by Kluwer Academic / Plenum Publishers, New York in 2001
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2001
http://www.wkap.nl/
10 9 S 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
A Cl.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming,
recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher
Editor's Foreword
I am very pleased to have been asked to act as the editor of the English
edition of this scientific biography of Alexander Romanovich Luria writ
ten by Evgenia D. Homskaya of Moscow State University. Although per
haps it is not traditional in a Foreword, I would like to comment briefly on
the subject matter, the author, and my editorial work on the book itself.
About the Subject
Alexander Romanovich Luria (1902-1977), a Russian neurologist and psy
chologist, has been recognized worldwide as one of the preeminent
neuropsychologists of the twentieth century. His work has had a signifi
cant global influence on psychological theorizing and practice even since
his death in 1977. In fact, in papers by Solso and colleagues (Solso, 1985;
Solso & Hoffman, 1991), Luria has been identified as the most frequently
cited Soviet (Russian) psychology scholar in North America, with contem
porary citations of his work in American, Canadian, and British journals
occurring at double the rate of that of other Soviet scholars. Luria was
extremely prodigious throughout his seventy-five years, with many of his
scientific works already available in English and numerous other languages,
no doubt adding to his popularity.
Luria's interests throughout his life were quite diverse and included
not only narrow neuropsychological topics such as cerebral localization of
psychological functions but also wide-ranging psychological concerns such
as child development, rehabilitation interventions, educational and instruc-
vii
viii Editor's Foreword
tional methods, mental retardation, linguistic phenomena, and cognitive
processing at the individual level. Luria's influence in neuropsychology
has been particularly significant and has spanned a number of prominent
topics, including his neurolinguistic interests and aphasia classification,
his drug and cognitive approaches to treatment of brain injury, his discus
sions of breakdowns in regulatory and executive activity associated with
frontal lobe damage, and his qualitative approach to assessment. In par
ticular, Luria's conceptualization of the three functional units of the brain
(although simplified) helps students and practitioners utilize a simple
brain-behavior model in clinical and research work, and it provides the
type of functional behavioral geography system that can incorporate spe
cific findings from diverse neuropsychological perspectives. More recently,
Luria's cross-cultural work has also become salient (e.g., Nell, 2000) as
neuropsychologists are increasingly recognizing the necessity of consider
ing individual differences and experiential variables in their understand
ing of brain-behavior relationships.
Luria is also very well known for his personal biographies of indi
viduals with unique cerebral characteristics, which he termed a "romantic
science" approach to psychology (for a contemporary perspective on such
case histories, see also Sacks, 1973, 1985, 1990). These unique and de
tailed narrative summaries of the life of an individual were also called
"unimagined portraits" (a description of an individual and the laws of his
or her mental life) by Luria as he contrasted them to Walter Pater's (1887/
1997) imaginary portraits. These biographies represent Luria's attempts
to integrate both a classical and a romantic methodology in his work.
Michael Cole, in his introduction to Luria's previous autobiography
(Luria, 1979), indicates that the thread that ties much of Luria's life works
together was his desire to create a more comprehensive cultural-historical
theory for psychology, to contrast with what he saw as the" crisis" of the
other dominant paradigms in psychology during his life. As a contempo
rary of Lev S. Vygotsky, Luria was significantly influenced by Vygotsky's
dialectical-materialist approach to understanding the mind as inseparable
from the surrounding society and dedicated his life to working out further
this meaningful cultural-historical psychological theory. In this book,
Homskaya outlines all of these themes and influences in Luria's scientific
life and provides the reader with a detailed account of Luria's leading sci
entific motivations. Luria himself has downplayed his role in psychology,
stating, "People come and go, but the creative sources of great historical
events and the important ideas and deeds remain" (Luria, 1979, p. 188).
This book proves that both people and their ideas are vital for the devel
opment of scientific thought in psychology.
Editor's Foreword ix
About the Author
Evgenia D. Homskaya (b. 1929) is clearly the most suitable and appropri
ate individual to have written a scientific biography of Luria. She worked
with him longer than anyone else-for about twenty-five years-after gradu
ating in 1952 from the Psychology Sector of the Philosophy Department
(now the Psychology Department) of Moscow State University under his
tutelage. Her initial scientific work (1952-1957) involved the study of chil
dren with mental retardation at the Institute for the Study of the Handi
capped and; in 1957, she defended her Candidate's thesis under Luria,
concerning a conditional reflex method for differentiating such children.
Since that time, Homskaya has worked independently in neuropsychol
ogy, with a particular interest in the functions of the frontal lobes. She
was appointed Head of the Neuropsychology Laboratory at the Institute
of Psychology of the USSR (now Russian) Academy of Sciences in 1972,
and has retained active clinical and teaching roles in that setting, at the N.
N. Burdenko Neurosurgical Institute, and in the Psychology Department
of Moscow State University. Her own work on the frontal lobes and activa
tion (as documented in her 1972 book, Brain and Activation) was recog
nized as the best in its field and was awarded the Lomonosov Prize.
As the present book documents, Luria was the primary influence in
Homskaya's professional life, and she provides an insider's perspective
on his scientific and personal life as well as on the lasting influence his
work has had on psychology and neuropsychology worldwide.
About the Book
This book is the first volume in the Plenum Series in Russian Neuropsy
chology. It was first published in Moscow in 1992, fifteen years after Luria's
death, and has been edited heavily for publication in English. It is pub
lished now, almost a century after his birth and almost seventy years after
the publication of his first book in English, The Nature of Human Conflicts
(1932). With the exception of the two Luria autobiographies written in the
1970s (Luria, 1974*E; 1979*E), and Elena Luria's (1994) posthumous-more
personal-biography of her father, Homskaya's scientific biography of Luria
is the first serious volume from outside the Luria family devoted to his life
and work.
"Citations of Luria's works in the text are provided in Appendix 2 rather than in the References.
The coding "R" signifies a Russsian-language citation and "E" signifies a citation in English.
x Editor's Foreword
Editing a book that has been translated from another language is a
difficult and time-consuming process. Along with attempting to provide a
meaningful and accurate rendition in English of Homskaya's original Rus
sian thoughts, I endeavored to develop some uniformity in the text by
primarily using the more common Anglicized versions of Russian names
(e.g., Luria, Vygotsky, Homskaya) rather than their direct transliterations
(e.g., Luriia, Vygotskii, Khomskaya). However, to assure as much accu
racy as possible, in reference lists I consistently provided the more direct
u.s.
and factual Russian transliterations (according to the Board on Geo
graphic Names; see Brozek and Slobin, 1972, p. 41) to assist readers in
retrieving citations. Transliterations of the author's names are provided
and, in the case of the Russian references, transliterations and English
translations of the titles of the works are included. All citations in lan
guages other than English are as complete and exact as I could find them.
This book has a number of unique features. First, it includes two ad
ditional appendices not available in the Russian edition of the book. Ap
pendix 1 is a set of biographical notes or the Hvita" of prominent aspects
or events in Luria's life along with a brief accounting of major awards,
honors, and societies in which he was involved. Appendix 3 is an updated
list of writings about Luria. Second, this volume includes the most com
prehensive bibliography available anywhere of Luria's writings; Appen
dix 2 provides a chronological listing of Luria's works in Russian, English,
and multiple other languages. Because the original version of this appen
dix in the Russian book was incomplete, as editor, I benefited greatly from
the availability of a number of previously published Lurian bibliographies
(including those by Braemer & Jantzen, 1994; Mecacci & Misiti, 1978; Pefia
Casanova, 1989; Pier6, Mateu, & Carpintero, 1980; Scheerer & Elliger,
1980; and Schubert & von Hebel, 1987). The bibliography is now signifi
cantly larger than the one in the Russian version of the book. Finally, the
book provides the unique perspective of Luria's first student and longest
collaborator, E. D. Homskaya.
II- II- II-
The accurate editing and publication of a book such as this could not
have been accomplished without the assistance of a number of individu
als. In particular, I would like to acknowledge the special assistance pro
vided by Toni Williams and the other staff of the Thomas Lowrey Health
Sciences Library at Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMe) in track
ing down obscure Russian works; the graphic arts assistance of Brad
Capouch of HCMC; the loan of supplementary photos by Joan Simon,
