ABSTRACT
Bruner’s lectures in 1965 reveal a sustained effort to meld evidence from physical and cultural anthropology with experimental psychology. He used Vygotsky to correct and extend Piaget. He used Brown & Lenneberg to provide mechanisms for the Whorfian hypothesis. He used Jean Berko’s pivot word experiments to understand how children construct syntax. By looking at the prehistory of narrative psychology, we find a master synthesizer of the literature in many fields, alert to evolutionary and linguistic mechanisms wherever he could find them. Toward a Theory of Instruction came out in 1966, so he clearly had practical educational innovation on his mind. This rich background is overlooked by psychologists who cite Acts of Meaning (1990) as the origin of Bruner’s cultural (narrative) psychology.
