Stefan Szuman – A Multidimensional Person

The paper presents Stefan Szuman as a multidimensional person both in his personal life and academic work. He was characterised by his academic knowledge in several areas: medicine,
psychology and art. He communicated with professionals from various fields – philosophy, pedagogy, literary studies, linguistics and musicology – such as: Witkacy, Bruno Schulz or Jan
Puget. In his research, he was interested in topics related to mental development (the essence of development; developmental factors; cognitive, emotional, personality changes), education, teaching (students’ attention, teaching skills) and communing with art. He used different research methods: observation, conversation, quasi-experiment and tests. He presented the results of his researches using appropriate and sophisticated language. The paper shows the current remembrance of Szuman and his works both through public events (e.g. art exhibitions) and conferences.

On friendship: Ingarden – Witkiewcz – Szuman

The main purpose of the article is to present the correspondence between Ingarden and Szuman, which necessarily requires including Witkacy in the discussion as a link between the scholars. The article has been divided into several parts, which cover the pre-war period, the time of war and the post-war era. Each of the periods had its own thematic specificity; the first discusses personal matters, the second scientific ones, and the third scientific-administrative ones.

Szuman on Historical Character of Personality Development

At the beginning of his scientific career Szuman (1930a) indicted the individual personality development to be the object of his psychological investigations. He put a stress on historical
character of the personality development and the role of significant deeds in it. He placed psychology of human development among humanistic disciplines of investigation in his book on human personality and character (Szuman 2014). Psychology of child and adolescent development also belong to them and are irreducible to the development of human biological organism. Child’s own actions and upbringing as well as education branch the development of individual human beings out of biology without detaching it from biology nonetheless. Szuman’s historical psychology of the individual personal development did not completely abandon a stance represented in the theory of cognition called the British empiricism, although he clearly put aside positivistic philosophy of science. It is necessary to emancipate historical psychology from the obstacles of the British empiricism’s theory of cognition in order to continue its progress. Niemczyński (2017) seems to go in this direction.

Stefan Szuman – the unknown pioneer of cognitivism. Genesis of the object compared to Neisser’s cycle of perception

Urlic Neisser (1928–2012) is widely considered to be one of the leading figures of contemporary psychology. This scholar is also thought to have come up with an original idea concerning the constructive nature of the perception process referred to as Neisser’s cycle of perception (1976; 1978). The thesis has contributed to the development of scientific psychology, but few notice that the idea ascribed to Neisser had been developed much earlier by Stefan Szuman (1889–1972) in his concept known as the genesis of the object (1932). Comparing the two concepts makes one conclude that they are strikingly similar and that novel ideas originating on the fringes of a given field are not given enough credit.

Urlic Neisser (1928–2012) is widely considered to be one of the leading figures of contemporary psychology. This scholar is also thought to have come up with an original idea
concerning the constructive nature of the perception process referred to as Neisser’s cycle of perception (1976, 1978). The thesis has contributed to the development of scientific psychology, but few notice that the idea ascribed to Neisser had been developed much earlier by Stefan Szuman (1889–1972) in his concept known as the genesis of the object (1932). Comparing the two concepts makes one reach the conclusion that they are strikingly similar and that novel ideas originating on the fringes of a given field are not given enough credit.

The article points to the original strategy of reading Stefan Szuman’s works, which has already been documented in monographic studies by the author of this text. Szuman’s classical achievement in the field of Polish psychology studies has been put into the context of the phenomenon of the „duality turn-over”, which came to theoretical maturity through the works of the „Great Generation” of the Polish pedagogues of the Interwar period, in which the author situates Szuman’s research involvements and his achievements. The paper recalls the chosen aspects, extracted from the psychologist’s works thanks to the above mentioned approach of the author. Both Szuman’s ingenious intuition and drive as well as the „epistemological obstacles” of the thought tradition in the psychology of his time – from the first decades of 20th century – are emphasised here.

Stefan Szuman in Family Memories: A Life Full of Passions, The Search for Truth and Communing With Beauty

The paper presents aspects of Stefan Szuman’s activities and passions that influenced both his scientific interests and friendships. He was involved in various forms of fine arts: painting, wood carving, hand weaving, poetry writing and joint music making in small home bands. For both him and Zofia Szuman – his beloved wife – aesthetic impressions were extremely important for building up their lifestyle and creating relationships with others, including famous Polish painter – Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy), philosopher – Roman Ingarden and writer – Bruno Schulz. The paper references the old family correspondence which creates genuine and trustworthy foundation for the image of their lives.