Lev Vekker and His Unified Theory of Mental Processes

Abstract

L. M. Vekker was a leading theorist for general psychology at Leningrad State University after 1960. A student of B. G. Ananiev, he helped his teacher continue and extend the scientific principles and organizational style of I. M. Sechenov and V. M. Bekhterev, the founders of the Saint Petersburg school of psychology. Vekker’s work toward a metatheory for psychological science began with research on the sense of touch and expanded into a generalized theory of perception and mental processes; he made use of ideas from reflex theory and cybernetics and proposed a model of hierarchical levels of signal systems that managed codes. As his major works were completed in the 1980s, he fell out of favor with leaders of the Faculty of Psychology and emigrated to America; however, his ideas for a general theory of psychology lived on in the minds and the work of his Russian students.