The contours of Perezhivanie: Visualising children’s emotional experiences in place

In this paper we use the visual method Vygotsky explored in the Psychology of Art (1925) to consider how perezhivanie might be represented and mapped as a unity of emotional experience in place. We illustrate the method with regard to children's experiences recorded during an environmental education excursion that deployed a pedagogy based on narrative drama. The visualization method foregrounds the dynamic relationship between children's emotional experiences and the specific places where such experiences were embodied. The method also foregrounds time by mapping experience-in-place as remembered (analepsis) and foreshadowed (prolepsis) within an unfolding narrative. Using two case studies, we identify the most important places in the excursion that were emotionally engaging for the students. By tracking their reflections on the experience across time we identify how their experiences in place continued to reverberate on their sense of self in the past, present and the future. The visualization method is an attempt to bring together three related aspects of perezhivanie, namely emotional experience, place, and time, into a unified analytical approach.