INSTRUMENTATION IN SOVIET PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH: A CONTRIBUTION TO THE METHODOLOGY OF TOURISM.

This article focuses on study related to soviet psychological research. With the present dearth of published research in English on Soviet psychology and the fewness of those with the language competence and experience necessary for direct inspection of psychological material in the original Russian, it is not surprising, in view of the great interest of Americans in Soviet science since sputnik, to find the visitor to Soviet institutions of psychology regarded, on his return, as somehow endowed with special knowledge and insight. In consequence, the tourist in the Soviet psychological domain finds himself slipping into the inadvertent role of substitute for the scholar with results that sometimes are very much on the unfortunate side. Since very many of the research problems in biophysics, physiology, medicine, ophthalmology, etc., as the latter are understood in the Soviet Union, would be bracketed in the West as definitely within psychology or some hyphenated aspect of it, this meant consultation of both psychological and nonpsychological journals.