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Dear Colleagues,
The community of psychologists, who since 1985 used
to meet in different places of Europe at Workshops on Activity and
Task Motivation (WATM), entered its early adulthood.
It is not the age of the project that brings to this conclusion,
but rather the number of interested participants (over 200 at the
6th and 7th conferences) and the range of topics and approaches.
Our community seems to acquire a new quality, and one of the ideas
widely discussed at the 7th WATM in Leuven, May 2000 was the idea
of establishing a full-range international association. We would
greatly appreciate your opinion on this issue that you are kindly
invited to express online at the
website.
The new quality requires new ideas and new approaches.
The disastrous events of September 11, 2001 present a special challenge
to the psychology of motivation, proving that straight rational
models of human motivation that are so in fashion nowadays cannot
account for all the variety of human activity. That is why more
comprehensive approaches must take more place in our work. Fanaticism
cannot be precisely studied in a laboratory or deduced from a combination
of Achievement, Power, and Affiliation; the worse for us, not for
it.
The place for the 8th conference is Moscow, Russia.
The conference will be hosted by Russian University for the Humanities,
where Lev Vygotsky studied philosophy and psychology in 1914-1917.
The participants can not only see the 850-year-old city that changed
so much during the last 10 years and learn Russian hospitality by
personal experience, but also know more on the original approaches
and studies in the field of motivation and activity regulation by
the disciples and followers of A.N.Leontiev, D.N.Uznadze and other
prominent scholars. Russian psychology assimilated (and elaborated)
sociocultural and historical methodology, experienced strong influence
of Kurt Lewin, absorbed existentialist thinking… Cross-fertilization
of Western and East European approaches must be so favorable for
both.
My colleagues and I will do our best to help you
both work fruitfully and enjoy your stay in Moscow.
See you soon,
Dmitry A.Leontiev,
Chair of the Conference,
Professor of Moscow State University
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