Aron Zalkind
Soviet psychoanalyst (1888–1936)
Aron Borissovich Zalkind (Russian: Аро́н Бори́сович За́лкинд; 17 June 1888 – July 1936) was a Soviet psychologist, paedologist and psychoanalyst.
Life
He was born in Kharkiv, and became a student of Vladimir Serbsky. Before World War I he developed an interest in the theories of Alfred Adler.
After the October Revolution, Zalkind worked for the People's Commissariat for Education where was involved in the development of communist pedagogy.
In August 1928, Zalkind was the chairman of the Interdepartmental Planning Pedological Commission under the People's Commissariat of Education; in the same year a new journal was founded, Zalkind was appointed to the position of the first editor-in-chief of the Pedology journal.
Originally trained as a psychoanalyst, Zalkind was involved in an attempt to promote "Freudism" as an interpretation of psychoanalysis compatible with Marxism-Leninism. When this proved politically impossible, he became an advocate of paedology and when he took over as Director of the Psychological Institute of Moscow it was renamed the Institute of Psychology, Paedology and Industrial Psychology.
At the end of 1931, he was accused of "Menshevik-idealistic eclecticism", and was also subjected for his Freudianism and "perversions at work"; Zalkind publicly admitted the fallacy of his scientific and social work, in particular in the field of psychoanalysis and Freudianism. Nevertheless, in December 1931, Zalkind was removed from the post of director of the Institute of Psychology, Pedology and Psychotechnics and from removed from his position as editor of the Pedology journal.
In July 1936, he died on the street from a heart attack after a meeting at which his scientific and administrative activities were criticized.
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