| Kornilov was one of the most significant Soviet psychologists of the postrevolutionary period. He was a member of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences and served as president from 1944 to 1950. Earlier he had been director of the Institute of
Psychology. In A theory of human reaction from the psychological point of view, Komilov presented the basic aspects of his psychology. He developed the idea of a reaction psychology, rather than the simple reflexology proposed by V. M. Bekhterev. The reaction referred to all the response movements of an organism and not simply the reflex of a single organ. Reactions were considered biosocial. This involved all the phenomena of the living organism, from the simplest responses to the most complex forms of human behavior. He distinguished psychology from physiology, which dealt with simple human reactions but ignored social relations. He also attempted a synthesis between the subjective and objective aspects of
psychology. Kornilov was one of the earliest Soviet psychologists to build a psychology based on Marxist philosophy. His theory of the reaction has been considered an eclectic combination of Marxist principles, including mechanical and energy propositions. He stressed the application of the reaction to both biological and social phenomena. He believed that humans had as many instincts as animals, but that human instincts were masked by socially acquired reactions. As a result, he received much criticism. His opponents claimed that he failed to understand the inherited features of behavior. |
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