Je to Pavlov? Či snad Canguilhem? Ke genealogii československé socialistické defektologie

This study examines the sources Miloš Sovák’s socialist defectology drew on. Sovák’s concept of defectology, published in 1953, was based on the doctrine of I. P. Pavlov, but at the same time resembled the teachings of the French physician and philosopher Georges Canguilhem on the “normal” and the “pathological”. The paper argues that at the roots of Sovák’s theory, politically relevant to the Czechoslovak revolutionary utopia of the 1950s, and thus accommodating the values and demands of the Czechoslovak communist dictatorship, lies the holistic and anti-mechanistic professional interest in and thinking about the individual/organism relationship and its totality, characteristic of the first years and decades of the 20th century.