The Psychology of Art in Vygotsky’s School of Thought: Issues in Theory and Communicative Practices of Working with Consciousness

The article analyzes modern theatre practices through the concepts developed by Vygotsky’s school of thought. One of the fundamental features of these practices is working with consciousness, which enables an individual to master his/her own behaviour. The central point of these artful theatre practices is the experience of catharsis that becomes real as two affects meet. Theatre practices are compared with educational practices and collective problem-solving practices, in which the same phenomenon of meeting of affects takes place. The article argues that the orientation system of action is neither symmetrical nor parallel to the affective-motivational system of action. Reorganisation and transformation of emotional experience into affect and action implies the following: the ability to represent emotional experiences as idealized objective states of mind and to be susceptible to their language; the ability to observe emotional experiences from the outside using reflection; the ability to re-establish oneself as the actor by recollecting one’s self in the act of doing.