Culture, Speech and My Self

Aaro Toomela's book is [...] the presentation of one all-encompassing theory that does not want to explain anything less than a person as a mental being, more precisely, the human psyche, which the author calls My Self. [...] It must be acknowledged that the result is at the height of the author's ambitions, the reader finds indeed a convincing presentation of a scientific theory, a manifestation of a fully thought through psychological worldview. (Marek Tamm, Professor of Cultural History, Tallinn University) There are many questions about being alive in general and about being a human in particular that seem not to have satisfactory answers even today: What is life? What is mind? What is consciousness? What is environment? What is emotion? What is free will? In this book Aaro Toomela answers these and many other questions and also explains the essence of each of the defined phenomena within the framework of the coherent all-encompassing theory of psyche. His theory is rooted in theories of life and mind that emerged in the Continental European schools of thought of the first half of the 20th century. He has continued the path of science laid down by the founding fathers of the modern psychology and biology, among them Kurt Koffka, Pyotr Anokhin, Jakob von Uexküll, Lev Vygotsky and Alexander Luria. Beginning from where these scholars finished, the book takes what is the best in social and behavioral sciences today and ends up with a fully original theory. Interestingly, Toomela also provides numerous arguments to demonstrate that there is not much to learn from psychological research conducted during last half of the century. The book was published in Estonian in the end of 2016 and became very popular: almost 1000 copies have been sold (reminder: there is only about 700 000 Estonian language readers in the world). Still, the potential reader should be aware – the book is not easy to read, it does not give any advice, it is just science. Yet, it might be also interesting to know that there have been recorded cases of readers who have wasted two or even three weeks to read this book. A few more serious cases are also recorded; there have been victims of the book who have read it twice. About the author Aaro Toomela’s work in psychology belongs in kind to these basic inventions that Estonia has contributed to the World. He is a unique scholar—combining in his background the education and practice of a medical doctor with that of a cultural psychologist. Currently—as a professor of both neuropsychology and cultural psychology in Tallinn University—a combination of topics within one Lehrstuhl that is unique in the World. He is among the top three persons in the World who is an expert in the work of Lev Vygotsky and Alexander Luria. Jaan Valsiner & Carlos Cornejo, Series Editor’s Preface to Toomela’s The Psychology of Scientific Inquiry (2019) Aaro Toomela is a Professor of Cultural and Neuropsychology at the Tallinn University, Estonia. After receiving MD in 1986, he worked as a child neurologist for seven years. Since then he has worked in the academic world. He received PhD in Psychology in 2000. Toomela’s research interests cover all the main fields of psychology—cognitive, developmental, cultural, social, personality, biological, evolutionary, and applied—as well as philosophy, history and methodology of psychology. He has authored scientific publications in all these fields. It is also unusual that instead of being one of the numerous co-authors of the publications, he has written most of his works by himself; in most cases he has been the sole author of his published works. Read more