“Every individual has his own insanity”: Applying Vygotsky's work on defectology to the question of mental health as an issue of inclusion

Smagorinsky, Peter

doi:10.1016/j.lcsi.2012.01.001

Cited by 14 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…The axiom that problems of difference are societal rather than individual underlies our approach to considering the education of extranormal or neuroatypical populations, those whose mental makeup stands outside the normnot in deficit, but in relation to different orientations to the social and natural worlds (see Smagorinsky, 2011Smagorinsky, , 2012aSmagorinsky, , 2012b. Extranormal bypasses the assumption that there is a human norm, departures from which are indicative of deficiencies, such as the term "abnormal" in the subtitle of Volume 2 (Vygotsky (1993)).…”

Section: Defect Vs Differencementioning

confidence: 99%

Constructing positive social updrafts for extranormative personalities

Cook

Smagorinsky

2014

Learning, Culture and Social Interaction

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This case study examines one high school student, a young woman from the U.S., who was diagnosed with multiple mental illnesses and who, during the research, began to identify as a lesbian. Using a framework grounded in Vygotsky's defectological writing, the authors analyze the case in light of the focal participant's engagement with the international online anime art community, which provided her with a positive social updraft through which she entered a cultural stream that enabled her to represent and reflect on her emerging identity through conventions that were not available to her in mainstream culture. Relying on artifacts from digital art production and a series of interviews, the study examines the manner in which the focal participant employed the signs, tools, goals, values, and overall setting and contours of the anime culture to develop a positive sense of self, a goal difficult for her to achieve in mainstream society. The study concludes with a discussion of how Vygotsky's work in defectology has salience for 21st century mental health differences -characterized here as extranormative or neuroatypicalbecause of his emphasis on viewing the settings of human development, rather than individual points of difference, as the focus of intervention.

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Section: Defect Vs Differencementioning

confidence: 99%