History of Psychology in Latin America: A Cultural Approach [1 ed.] 3030736814, 9783030736811

Table of contents :
Contents
Part I: General Notes on a History of Psychology in Latin America
1 Historiography of Latin American Psychology: Notes and Challenges • Julio César Ossa, Gonzalo Salas, and Hernán Scholten
2 The Jesuits in the History of Latin American Psychology • Marina Massimi
3 A Comparative History of Psychology During the South American Dictatorships (1964–1985) • Fernando Andrés Polanco, Josiane Sueli Beria, Martín Gonzalo Zapico, and Rodrigo Lopes Miranda
4 The Development of Psychology in Latin America: Geopolitical Contexts and Psychosocial Processes • Walter L. Arias Gallegos, Ramón León, and Mitchell Clark
Part II: Narratives for a Social, Political and Cultural History of Psychology
5 Culture, Politics, and Society in the History of Psychology in Argentina • Hugo Klappenbach and Catriel Fierro
6 Psychology in Brazil: The Trajectory of a Science and a Profession • Ana Maria Jacó-Vilela
7 Psychology in Colombia: A Story from Violence • Juan Fernando Aguilar, Julio César Ossa, Claudia Burbano, and Jean Nikola Cudina
8 Psychological Approach to the Studyof the Original Peruvian Man • Tomás Caycho-Rodríguez, Miguel Barboza-Palomino, and José Ventura-León
9 Psychology, History, and Culture in Paraguay • José E. García
10 Psychology and Education: Childhood Mental Hygiene in Chile (1920–1946) • Gonzalo Salas, Hernán Scholten, and Rodolfo E. Mardones
11 A Different Source for the Study of Psychology in Mexico: Catholic Education • Salvador Iván Rodríguez Preciado
Index

Citation preview

Latin American Voices Integrative Psychology and Humanities

Julio César Ossa Gonzalo Salas Hernan Scholten   Editors

History of Psychology in Latin America A Cultural Approach

Latin American Voices Integrative Psychology and Humanities Series Editor Giuseppina Marsico, University of Salerno, Fisciano, Italy Editorial Board Alicia Barreiro, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina Antônio Virgílio Bastos, Institute of Psychology, Universidade Federal da Bahia,  Salvador, Bahia, Brazil Angela Uchoa Branco, Institute of Psychology, Universidade de Brasília,  Brasília, Brazil Felix Cova-Solar, Department of Psychology, University of Concepción,  Concepción, Chile Maria Virginia Dazzani, Institute of Psychology, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil Gabriela Di Gesú, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina Ana Maria Jacó-Vilela, Institute of Psychology, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil María Noel Lapoujade, School of Philosophy and Literature, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mxico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico Maria Lyra, Graduate Program in Psychology, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil María Elisa Molina Pavez, School of Philosophy and Literature, Universidad del Desarrollo, Santiago, Chile Susanne Normann, Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway Julio Cesar Ossa, Fundación Universitaria de Popayán, Popayán, Colombia Gilberto Pérez-Campos, Psicología, School of Higher Studies Iztacala, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Tlalnepantla, Estado de México, Mexico Lilian Patricia Rodríguez-Burgos, University of La Sabana, Chía, Colombia Mónica Roncancio-Moreno, Psychology Department, Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, Palmira, CAUCA, Colombia Lívia Mathias Simão, Institute of Psychology, Universidade de São Paulo São Paulo - SP, Brazil Luca Tateo, Dept of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University Aalborg Øst, Denmark Jaan Valsiner, Dept of Communication & Psych, Aalborg University Aalborg Øst, Denmark Floor van Alphen, Department of Basic Psychology, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

In the last decades, Latin America has been a productive and fertile ground for the advancement of theoretical and empirical elaborations within psychology, social and human sciences. Yet, these contributions have had a hard time to be internationally recognized in its original contribution and in its transformative heuristic power. Latin American Voices – Integrative Psychology and Humanities intends to fill this gap by offering an international forum of scholarly interchanges that deal with psychological and socio-cultural processes from a cultural psychological perspective. The book series seeks to be a solid theoretically-based, though still empirical, arena of interdisciplinary and international debate, as well as a worldwide scientific platform for communicating key ideas of methodology and different theoretical approaches to relevant issues in psychology and humanities. It will publish books from researchers working in Latin America in the different fields of psychology at interplay with other social and human sciences. Proposals dealing with new perspectives, innovative ideas and new topics of interdisciplinary kind are especially welcomed. Both solicited and unsolicited proposals are considered for publication in this series. All proposals and manuscripts submitted to the Series will undergo at least two rounds of external peer review. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/16145

Julio César Ossa  •  Gonzalo Salas Hernan Scholten Editors

History of Psychology in Latin America A Cultural Approach

Editors Julio César Ossa Fundación Universitaria de Popayán Popayán, Colombia

Gonzalo Salas Universidad Católica del Maule Talca, Chile

Hernan Scholten Universidad de Buenos Aires Buenos Aires, Argentina

ISSN 2524-5805     ISSN 2524-5813 (electronic) Latin American Voices ISBN 978-3-030-73681-1    ISBN 978-3-030-73682-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73682-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

Part I General Notes on a History of Psychology in Latin America 1 Historiography of Latin American Psychology: Notes and Challenges������������������������������������������������������������������������������    3 Julio César Ossa, Gonzalo Salas, and Hernán Scholten 2 The Jesuits in the History of Latin American Psychology ������������������   15 Marina Massimi 3 A Comparative History of Psychology During the South American Dictatorships (1964–1985)������������������������������������   43 Fernando Andrés Polanco, Josiane Sueli Beria, Martín Gonzalo Zapico, and Rodrigo Lopes Miranda 4 The Development of Psychology in Latin America: Geopolitical Contexts and Psychosocial Processes��������������������������������   63 Walter L. Arias Gallegos, Ramón León, and Mitchell Clark Part II Narratives for a Social, Political and Cultural History of Psychology 5 Culture, Politics, and Society in the History of Psychology in Argentina����������������������������������������������������������������������   95 Hugo Klappenbach and Catriel Fierro 6 Psychology in Brazil: The Trajectory of a Science and a Profession ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  141 Ana Maria Jacó-Vilela 7 Psychology in Colombia: A Story from Violence����������������������������������  163 Juan Fernando Aguilar, Julio César Ossa, Claudia Burbano, and Jean Nikola Cudina

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8 Psychological Approach to the Study of the Original Peruvian Man ����������������������������������������������������������������  179 Tomás Caycho-Rodríguez, Miguel Barboza-Palomino, and José Ventura-León 9 Psychology, History, and Culture in Paraguay�������������������������������������  191 José E. García 10 Psychology and Education: Childhood Mental Hygiene in Chile (1920–1946) ����������������������������������������������������������������  221 Gonzalo Salas, Hernán Scholten, and Rodolfo E. Mardones 11 A Different Source for the Study of Psychology in Mexico: Catholic Education ��������������������������������������������������������������  243 Salvador Iván Rodríguez Preciado Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  259

Part I

General Notes on a History of Psychology in Latin America

Chapter 1

Historiography of Latin American Psychology: Notes and Challenges Julio César Ossa, Gonzalo Salas, and Hernán Scholten

Introduction The history of psychology has been an area of the discipline with a broad development in Latin America. This development has been crossed by important advances to make the history of psychology a field that currently enjoys relative autonomy and is legitimized by the academic community of psychologists as a specialized field (see Peiró & Carpintero, 1981; Klappenbach, 2000). Historiographic research situates the field of the history of psychology as a fundamental component for the advancement of the discipline, within which theoretical, epistemological, and methodological care must be sought (Jovanović, 2010). This premise has made it possible to strengthen historiographical studies through the consolidation of various schools of thought in some Latin American countries. In this chapter we present the impact of historiographic research in Latin America from its arrival in the 1960s to the present, in light of the legacy of Edwin Boring and the debates of the international academic community on historiographic studies in psychology. We also show the adoption of this field of study and the ways in which historiographical research in the region has positioned itself as one of the referents in current global debates. The latter is presented in terms of the social, cultural, and political histories that have made possible the development of Latin American psychology. Histories with points of encounter and disagreements make possible the need to carry out the publication of this work.

J. C. Ossa Fundación Universitaria de Popayán, Popayán, Colombia G. Salas Universidad Católica del Maule, Talca, Chile H. Scholten () Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. C. Ossa et al. (eds.), History of Psychology in Latin America, Latin American Voices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73682-8_1

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This book seeks to expose the notes of a general history of Latin American psychology with the specificity of the narratives that the countries of the region share in common. The existence of a multitude of cultures in a multiform and heterogeneous universe provokes contradictions between coexistence and particularism, determines vital spaces in which the dynamism of cultures finds its own developments, and verifies its possibilities (Augé, 2007).

 he Strengthening of a Tradition in the Historiographic Studies T of Psychology in the Region Until the 1960s, the history of psychology developed in the shadow of the famous account published by Edwin Boring in 1929. Indeed, with the publication of A History of Experimental Psychology (Boring, 1929), he managed to consolidate a version of the origins of the discipline that placed, as an initial milestone, the creation of the first laboratory of experimental psychology [Leipzig, 1879] by Wilhelm Wundt. From that event, psychology would have acquired its maturity and its autonomy and left behind its millenary dependence on philosophy: this is the central argument of what became the traditional history of psychology, which was reaffirmed in later publications by Boring himself (1950), and taken up again in other research and publications (Dennis & Boring, 1952; Boring, 1953, 1954, 1961, 1963). E. G. Boring in his article “Great Men and Scientific Progress” indicated that the “Great-Men Theory” could not be wrong since in his thinking these men die having a different social efficacy than others and in greatness lies their impact. At the same time, he referred that not everything can depend on the zeitgeist, since clearly some brains are better than others (Boring, 1963), which is the essence of celebratory stories (Harris, 1997) that have a legitimizing and homage framework by clearly looking for heroic figures. As mentioned at the beginning, it was during the 1960s that the proposal of a new perspective for the history of psychology began to be elaborated, which would seek to show the limitations of Boring’s historiographical approach, and even denounce his uses of history in the face of the controversy over psychology as a pure or applied science (O’Donnell, 1979). Robert Watson, in his famous work entitled “The History of Psychology: A Neglected Area,” provided the turn that the history of psychology needed to reformulate its program (Watson, 1960). In the course of the 1960s and 1970s a “new history of psychology” emerged that developed a more contextual, critical work that began to incorporate the gender perspective, including the forgotten contributions of women to psychology (Furumoto, 1989). Particularly significant, in this sense, is the publication of Psychology in Social Context (Danziger, 1979), within the framework of the centenary of psychology. This book compiles a series of texts, among which the chapter written by Kurt Danziger, perhaps the most prestigious historian of psychology today, entitled The Social Origins of Modern Psychology (Danziger, 1979), stands out. Although

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Boring is hardly mentioned, the text seeks to show that “Wundt is a singularly inappropriate figure to choose as originator of the modern psychologist’s professional identity” (p. 32) and that “[p]sychology as an autonomous discipline is an American and not a German invention” (p.  31). To this end, he drew on various historical documents, especially Wundt’s own texts, from which he proposed a comparison between the German and American academic and political context of the late nineteenth century, to highlight the mythical character of Boring’s historical reconstruction. Subsequent publications by Danziger (1980, 1984, 1990) deepened these criticisms and proposed a conceptual framework for a critical history of psychology inspired by one of the most radical strands of the sociology of knowledge called the “strong program” (Bloor, 1976). This program proposes to study the psychological, social, and cultural conditions that make it possible to generate a certain type of knowledge. A few years later, in the introduction to the book Points of View in the Modern History of Psychology (Buxton, 1985), Claude Buxton gave an account of the “knowledge explosion” that had taken place in the field of the history of psychology. The author was clear in pointing out that decades ago it was very easy to identify the key figures in the field—such as George Brett, Gardner Murphy, or Boring himself. This picture would have changed significantly since 1980, as the number of scholars had multiplied. However, it is important to note that, in spite of all the objections that have been directed at him for decades, the myth about Wundt seems to remain standing, unscathed: we see it present and reproduced in academic manuals of psychology around the world. Even a student of psychology at the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina), where the training is predominantly psychoanalytic, would not hesitate today to answer that Wundt, and not Freud, is the father of psychology. By all accounts, the criticism formulated by Danziger seems to have proved ineffective. In a text published in the mid-1990s, sociologist Nikolas Rose wondered about this particular phenomenon and proposed an interesting answer: if psychologists continue to reproduce these stories, it is because, beyond their proven fallacy, they play a significant role within the field of psychology, especially in the training of new specialists in the discipline. These “recurrent stories” (as Rose calls them, taking this concept from the French epistemologist Georges Canguilhem) give an account of an origin, present a paternal figure of reference, and provide an organizing axis for the discipline, whose continuous and progressive scientific development would be carried out through generations of “sons-disciples-continuers.” This account proposes a narrative that presents an illusory homogeneity, which seeks to order diversity and appease the tensions that prevail in the field of psychology (Vezzetti, 2007), which would make it possible to confront the problem of the crisis of the discipline.1

 The Spanish psychologist Antonio Caparrós (1991), around the same time, dealt with this topic in his critique of the application of the concepts of the historian of science Thomas Kuhn to the history of psychology. 1

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In this sense, for Rose, this traditional history has a fundamental function or role in contemporary psychology: it looks not so much to the past (of which it is clearly an unreliable account) but to the present and even, preferably, to the future. Recurrent histories take the present as both the culmination of the past and the standpoint from which its historicity can be displayed. Recurrent histories are, however, more than ‘ideology’; they have a constitutive role to play in most scientific discourses. For they use the past to help demarcate that regime of truth which is contemporary for a discipline –and in doing so, they not only use history to police the present, but also to shape the future (the most discussed example is, of course, Boring, 1929) (Rose, 1996, pp. 42–43).

Given this panorama and after more than 90  years since the publication of Boring’s text, and given that his arguments continue to circulate widely today, although they were totally contested more than 40 years ago, it is worth asking: Is it possible to think of another function for the history of psychology? In other words, is it possible to formulate a history that does not lead to a pre-assembled mythical account of the past? And can the teaching of the history of psychology to future professionals, to students of psychology, be anything more than a mere continuous repetition of the same story, whose purpose is merely legitimizing? In light of this issue, it is pertinent to note a significant move towards specialization in the development of the history of psychology in the last 20 years, moving towards the formation of psychologist-historians. As Vaughn-Blount et al. (2009) put it, “Historians of psychology have come to occupy a relational position vis-à-vis their nonhistorian colleagues not unlike that between any two specialists in different subdisciplines in an increasingly fragmented field” (p. 118). This has been reflected in the academic spaces dedicated to professional training since, although in 2010 the doctoral training program in the history of psychology at the University of New Hampshire (in operation since 1967) was closed, specialization programs were established in Canada (Historical, Theoretical, and Critical Studies of Psychology, York University), Holland (Master in Theory and History of Psychology, Groningen University), and Brazil (Graduate Program in History and Philosophy of Psychology, Federal University of Juiz de Fora). Furthermore, although there is no specific research on this topic so far, the academic teaching of the history of psychology, at the undergraduate level, also seems to show a certain tendency towards specialization, or at least a concern regarding the training of the teacher in charge of courses dedicated to disciplinary history, present in a large part of university undergraduate careers (Kaulino & Jacó-Vilela, 2018; Salas et al., 2019). On the other hand, within the framework of research in the history of psychology, perspectives began to develop that sought to offer alternatives to its predominant universalist perspective, mostly focused on the developments of the discipline in the USA and Europe. Beyond publications focused on the local history of psychology in various countries (Mardones, 2016), a polycentric history of psychology has been proposed (Brock, 2014; Danziger, 2006) that seeks to expose its particularity in different regions of the world. This historiographical perspective takes as its starting point the argument that “the model of center and periphery is now obsolete and should be abandoned in favor of a polycentric approach” (Brock, 2014, p. 649).

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In this sense, rather than thinking of a global or world history of psychology from the sum of local histories, mostly national, we seek to emphasize the articulations and interconnections between the developments of different centers. Within the framework of the studies carried out from this approach, we find those that deal with the problem of indigenization, for example “the transfer of psychological theories and practices from one place to another and the changes that occurred as a result of this transfer” (p. 653) (Mardones, 2017). A very similar perspective is presented in the case of reception studies, inspired by the proposal that was, from the history of literature, formulated by Hans R. Jauss (1970), and which shifts its axis from the analysis of the great authors or works of the disciplines to the study of the public and readings in different moments and contexts. For his part, along the same lines, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1997) proposes distinguishing between the mere reader-commentator of texts and the auctor, who “reads in order to do something else,” who appropriates the text “to advance knowledge” (p. 13). On a more methodological level, this implies taking into account the context of production and the context of reception of a work, considering the positions of the author and the reader or auctor in their respective fields and moments. Just as these models seek to present a broader and more complex panorama of the history of psychology, including in their research framework aspects that were not part of their agenda, research on the history of psychology in Latin America began to consolidate at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Although there are works that can be considered classic literature in this area of the world (Ardila, 1986; Beebe-Center & McFarland, 1941; Foradori, 1954), in recent decades working groups, networks, and societies have been established that organize periodic scientific events of both national and regional scope. This has led to a notable increase and refinement of the literary production which, from different perspectives, attempts to account for the particular characteristics of the history of psychology in this region of the planet which, until then, had received scant consideration. The new forms and dynamics of academic production have led to forge currents of thought with this historiographic tradition and Latin America is no exception. On the one hand, Argentina is the country in the region with an important tradition in the development of historiographical research in psychology, specifically with a critical interest in situating the debate in the teaching of psychology, professional orientations, and role of the psychologist (Di Doménico, 2015). Several research teams on the History of Psychology have been organized in different academic centers (Buenos Aires, San Luis, La Plata, Córdoba, Rosario, Tucumán) which, since 1999, hold every year the Encounters on the History of Psychology, Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis. In part, these efforts were transferred from the work led by Alberto Vilanova, Cristina Di Doménico, Ana María Talak, Hugo Vezzetti, Lucia Rossi, and Hugo Klappenbach, among others. Brazil is another country with an important academic production in the field of the history of psychology (Freitas-Campos, Jacó-Vilela & Massimi 2010). The works promoted by scholars such as Carmo Guedes, Ana Maria Goldfarb, Marina Massimi, Regina Freitas-Campo, and Ana Jacó-Vilela are essential to foster and strengthen history in psychology, in order to promote debate and advance

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historiographical research in Brazil. Materialized work teams such as the Laboratório de História e Memória da Psicologia—Clio-Psyché (Jacó-Vilela et al., 2001) and the working group of “History of Psychology of the National Association of Research and Graduate Studies in Psychology of Brazil” (Fierro, 2018) allow us to account for a widely consolidated field in Brazil. In Chile, the research led by Luis Bravo Valdivieso, Manuel Poblete, Julio F. Villegas and María Inés Winkler, was an incentive to promote the development of historiographic research in that country. Currently, Chile has an important strengthening of research in this field. The formation of the Chilean Society for the History of Psychology and the events that bring together the Chilean congresses on the history of psychology are a space that energizes this research (Salas et al., 2019). The historical work developed by Professor Rubén Ardila was pioneering in Colombia and Latin America. Ardila championed historical research and contributed to the psychological training project in the country and the region (Pérez-­ Acosta, 2003; Puche-Navarro et  al., 2020). In Peru, Reynaldo Alarcón’s vast academic trajectory as well as the studies that Ramón León has published since the 1980s, has been an essential resource to promote the advancement and development of historical research on Peruvian psychology (Arias, 2018; Camasca et al., 2005). A characteristic that can be decanted from the advance of historiographic research in Latin America has to do with the close relationship that was established with the promotion of professional training programs for psychologists and in turn the early inclusion of history chairs in the nascent psychology curricula in the region (Fierro, 2018; Fierro, Di Doménico & Klappenbach, 2019). The history of psychology constitutes an essential subject in a professional training program in psychology (Klappenbach, 2003). In this regard, the role of scientific associations in promoting the development of historiographical research in psychology and collaborative work among colleagues has been important; for example, the European Society for the History of Behavior and Social Sciences, the Spanish Society for the History of Psychology, the History Division of the German Psychological Society, the History Working Group of the Interamerican Psychological Society, the Rede Iberoamericana de Pesquisadores em História da Psicología and Division 18 of the International Psychological Association, among others, constitute organizations that have maintained the task of promoting advances and discussions within this field.

 bjectives and Scope of a Cultural Approach to the Historical O Studies of Latin American Psychology The centuries preceding the arrival of Europeans in the Americas witnessed the formation of diverse cultures, loaded with symbolisms provoked by an intense closeness to nature and a strong weight of collective and communal life (Gabbert, 2019). Already at the end of the fourteenth century, Europeans were astonished to contemplate an immense variety of cultures that presented manifestations unknown to them.

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From food to crops, from the relationship with animals to the occupation of geographical space, from the way of working to the way of relating to the transcendent, and from social relations to the ways of understanding the community, it is not possible to speak of a Latin American culture prior to the arrival of Europeans, but of several or many original cultures (Bagnulo et  al., 2009). From this premise, it is necessary to stop and recognize that the historiographical approach to psychology in Latin America is always a difficult task. It is always a complex attempt if we conceive, within the framework of the approach to the history of Latin American psychology, a cultural narrative of the countries of the region. The scenario is permeated by a plurality and an imminent multiculturalism that forces us to conceive Latin America in the existence of several or many “Latin Americas.” This premise speaks of an immense complexity. Within the framework of the panorama presented so far in a schematic way, this book on the history of psychology in Latin America proposes an approach that is linked to cultural history, which is closely associated with the “new history of psychology,” since it is a perspective that invites to consider the established social, economic, or political circumstances and also the cultural environment to capture the framework in which the facts are inscribed (Serna & Pons, 2013). In this way, it is possible to account for the particular conditions that contributed to the shaping of Latin American psychology. This is the case, as shown in some chapters, of the coups d’état that imposed an alternation and tension between dictatorial-military regimes and democratic periods throughout the region. At the same time, as can be seen, the texts in this volume also allow us to account for a certain heterogeneity or diversity. In fact, proposing a regional approach or perspective does not imply assuming a global process that develops in a uniform and homogeneous way, but should also invite us to contemplate the variety and the peculiarity (Roxborough, 1984). From this perspective, it is possible to reconsider the case of the Latin American military dictatorships, mentioned previously, in order to contemplate the diversity both in their chronology and in their dynamics in the various sectors of the region, which must be taken into account in light of their disparate impact on the development of regional and local psychology. It is also possible to consider the tensions that, in the case of Paraguay, introduced the impact of the Guarani culture on the development of local psychology, or the course of Colombian psychology in the 1940s–1950s in the light of the contemporary bipartisan violence between liberals and conservatives, or even the studies on the “Peruvian man” in the light of the characteristics of the local native populations. From an approach that proposes to the reader a portrait, a general image of Latin American psychology in the light of a cultural framework, of its articulations with the social and political dimension, it also seeks to account for the more or less subtle variants that cross this vast region. In this way, the aim is to contribute to the development of a perspective that allows the history of psychology to exercise an analytical as well as a critical function of the discipline itself. This requires, of course, the construction of a narrative that is no longer limited to sustaining an identity of the discipline based on a uniformity of the field, on a forced consensus, or on a hegemonic model on a planetary scale. This requires, of course, a history of psychology

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that moves away from a global and generic approach to conquests, victories, and victors and that is a reflection of the confrontations, fragmentation, and diversities that traverse the discipline,2 an image in which, for a long time, psychologists have been reluctant to recognize themselves.

 ets for the Advancement of Historiographic Research B in Psychology The multicultural richness of Latin American peoples immersed in the complexities of social and political realities where the development of psychology as a profession in the region finds its unfolding makes the discipline an important handle to be constantly evaluated and monitored and in turn, in historiography, an increasingly elaborated and captivated method to achieve this purpose. Historiographic research in psychology in Latin America has managed to position itself in the canons of contemporary academic debates and its studies have been a reflection of the rigor with which this task is carried out (Miranda-Gierbolini & Rivera-Santana, 2014). The bet focuses on maintaining the rigor with which this specialized field has been developing, preserving the tradition that has emanated from the different schools of thought in the history of Latin American psychology and, in turn, proposing new proposals and research horizons. The purpose of this book is to contribute to the advancement of historiographical studies of Latin American psychology. The novelty of the chapters published in this book focuses on the inclusion of cultural, social, and political narratives in the development of psychology in the region. It is a bid to present to the international academic community a history of psychology with the particularity of the social, political, and cultural aspects that have had an impact on Latin American peoples and that have influenced the advancement of psychology in Latin America. Narrating a history with these characteristics is a pending debt and is assumed as one of the bets that should continue to be made within the historiographical studies of psychology in the region. The approach of this premise to the history of psychology makes it possible to contribute elements to make psychology an indispensable discipline to address the social realities of Latin American peoples. Undoubtedly, one of the great challenges of the historiography of Latin American psychology is the ability both to generate knowledge and identify historical processes and to transmit them and ensure that society perceives the weight of these processes when orienting itself and making decisions in our daily lives (González, 1983; Valdés, 1997). This makes us think about the advance towards the development of a critical social history of psychology whose characteristic is to think in the approach of an

 It is even possible to revalue these aspects of psychology, usually criticized, and to find in them one of the sources or conditions of its wide diffusion at a global level. An analysis in this line of argument can be found in some texts by Nikolas Rose (1990, 1996). 2

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applied history at the service of society (Black & MacRaild, 1997; Buckley, 2016; Millán et al., 2020). This is a desire that we seek to disseminate with the publication of this work, that is, to expose the role and responsibility of psychology as a discipline in the war conflicts suffered by Latin American peoples. We expose a history that allows us to explain our own performance in the recent past with a critical purpose and with the declared objective of influencing the academic community. In this perspective, one of the most interesting historiographic concepts of this current period has been that of historical consciousness, which translates into the valuation and appreciation that societies have of their past and which conditions their present actions (Rüsen, 2005). Finally, we believe that this work can contribute to the academic and social prestige of historiographic research in psychology, starting from the basis of our society and culture. In this way, we assume the commitment to captivate historical thinking in Latin American psychology and develop critical thinking skills as a psychologist’s working method, while establishing the basis for future young people and the academic community in general to become interested in the history of psychology and to have sufficient conceptual and procedural background to renew the topics, questions, and answers that historical research requires: in short, to restore to the profession of psychology the enthusiasm for renewal and historiographical commitments.

References Ardila, R. (1986). La psicología en América Latina. Pasado, presente y futuro. Siglo XXI. Arias, W. (2018). Una revisión de La Psicología. Pasado, presente y problemas (1ª Ed.). Revista de Psicología (Santiago), 27(1), 224–226. https://doi.org/10.5354/0719-0581.2018.50754 Augé, M. (2007). El objeto de la antropología hoy. Psicoperspectivas, 6(1), 7–21. Bagnulo, A., Muñoz-Sastre, M.  T., & Mullet, E. (2009). Conceptualizations of forgiveness: A Latin America-Western Europe comparison. Universitas Psychologica, 8(3), 673–682. Beebe-Center, J. G., & McFarland, R. A. (1941). Psychology in South America. Psychological Bulletin, 38(8), 627–667. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0056421 Black, J., & MacRaild, D. M. (1997). Approaches to history: Sources, methods and historians. In Studying history. How to study. Palgrave. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­1-­349-­14396-­2_4 Bloor, D. (1976). Knowledge and social imagery. Routledge & K. Paul. Boring, E. G. (1929). A history of experimental psychology. Clark University Press. Boring, E. G. (1950). A history of experimental psychology (2nd ed.). Prentice Hall. Boring, E. G. (1953). A history of introspection. Psychological Bulletin, 50(3), 169–189. https:// doi.org/10.1037/h0090793 Boring, E. G. (1954). The nature and history of experimental control. The American Journal of Psychology, 67(4), 573–589. https://doi.org/10.2307/1418483 Boring, E. G. (1961). Fechner: Inadvertent founder of psychophysics. Psychometrika, 26(1), 3–8. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02289680 Boring, E. G. (1963). Great men and scientific progress. In E. G. Boring (Ed.), History, psychology and science: Selected papers (pp. 29–49). Wiley. Bourdieu, P. (1997). ¿Qué es hacer hablar a un autor? A propósito de Michel Foucault. In Capital cultural, escuela y espacio social (pp. 11–20). Siglo XXI. Brock, A.  C. (2014). What is a polycentric history of psychology? Estudos e Pesquisas em Psicologia, 14(2), 646–659.

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Klappenbach, H. (2003). La globalización y la enseñanza de la psicología en Argentina. Psicologia em Estudo, 8(2), 3–18. Mardones, R. E. (Ed.). (2016). Historia local de la psicología. Discusiones teóricas, metodológicas y experiencias de investigación. Ril. Mardones, R. E. (Ed.). (2017). Invención de la psique nativa. Construcción discursiva de las caracterísricas psicológicas atribuidas al sujeto indigena en América Latina. Ril. Millán, J. D., Cudina, J. N., Ossa, J. C., et al. (2020). Academic networks of critical social psychology in Brazil. An analysis of the impact and the intellectual roots. Current Psychology. https:// doi.org/10.1007/s12144-­020-­00827-­9 Miranda-Gierbolini, D. S., & Rivera-Santana, C. (2014). Latin American psychology. In T. Teo (Ed.), Encyclopedia of critical psychology. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­1-­4614-­5583-­7_626 O’Donnell, J. M. (1979). The crisis of experimentalism in the 1920s. E. G. Boring and his uses of history. American Psychologist, 34(4), 289–295. Peiró, J. M., & Carpintero, H. (1981). Historia de la psicologia en España: A traves de sus revistas especializadas. Revista de Historia de la Psicología, 2(2), 143–181. Pérez-Acosta, A. M. (2003). La contribución de Rubén Ardila a la organización profesional de la psicología. In L. Flórez-Alarcón (Ed.), El legado de Rubén Ardila (pp. 194–2003). Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Puche-Navarro, R., Cerchiaro-Ceballos, E., & Ossa, J.  C. (2020). ¿Hubo futuro en el pasado? Apuntes para una historia del desarrollo en Colombia. Editorial Bonaventuriana. Rose, N. (1990). Governing the soul. The shaping of the private self. Routledge. Rose, N. (1996). Inventing ourselves. Psychology, power and personhood. Cambridge University Press. Roxborough, I. (1984). Unity and diversity in Latin American history. Journal of Latin American Studies, 16(1), 1–26. Rüsen, J. (2005). History: Narration, interpretation, orientation. Berghahn. Salas, G., Urzúa, A., Larraín, A., Zúñiga, C., Cornejo, M., Sisto, V., Zambrano, A., Urra, M., Polanco-Carrasco, R., Caqueo-Urízar, A., Pérez-Salas, C., Acuña, P., & Kühne, W. (2019). Manifiesto por la Psicología en Chile: A propósito de la revuelta del 18 de Octubre 2019. Terapia Psicológica, 37(3), 317–326. Recuperado a partir de http://teps.cl/index.php/teps/ article/view/266 Serna, J., & Pons, A. (2013). La historia cultural. Akal. Valdés, M.  J. (1997). Collaborative historiography: A comparative literary history of Latin America. Neohelicon, 24, 85–93. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02558067 Vaughn-Blount, K., Rutherford, A., Baker, D., & Johnson, D. (2009). History’s mysteries demystified: Becoming a psychologist-historian. The American Journal of Psychology, 122(1), 117–129. Vezzetti, H. (2007). Historias de la psicología: problemas, funciones y objetivos. Revista de Historia de la Psicología, 28(1), 147–165. Watson, R. I. (1960). The history of psychology: A neglected area. American Psychologist, 15(4), 251–255. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0044284

Chapter 2

The Jesuits in the History of Latin American Psychology Marina Massimi

Introduction The contribution of the Jesuits in the history of psychological knowledge in Latin America has its roots in the period of colonization of this immense territory. This period is extended from the sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth century. It is the arc of time between the beginning of the sixteenth century and the end of the eighteenth century, which marks the dependence of Latin America as colonies of Spain and Portugal. The Jesuits, at the invitation of the two Crowns, settled in the colonies with the task of evangelizing the native populations and taking care of the religious life of the Christian colonizers. The presence of the Jesuits was especially significant in the territories of Brazil (a Portuguese colony, occupied by various indigenous nations including the Tupi-­ Guarani and Tupinambá ethnic groups), and in the region of the Spanish colonies located between the territories of the present states of Paraguay, Argentina, Southern Brazil, Uruguay, and Bolivia, occupied by the Guarani ethnic group. The Jesuits have created an innovative experience in these areas: the so-called reductions. In the territories of Brazil, at the time of the arrival of the Portuguese armada led by Pedro Álvares Cabral on April 22, 1500, the territory was populated by approximately five million natives. These were divided into tribes, according to the linguistic trunk to which they belonged: Tupi-Guarani (coastal region), Macrojê or Tapuias (Central Plateau region), Aruaques or Aruak (Amazon), and Caribbean or Karib (Amazon). The history of Portuguese colonization of Brazilian territory is part of the broader colonial history of the West, parallel to the process of modernity. It makes clear what Mignolo describes as “a hidden dimension of the events that took place at the same time, both in the economy and in knowledge: the dispensability (or disposability) of human life, and life in general” (Mignolo, 2017, p. 4; Mignolo, M. Massimi (*) University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. C. Ossa et al. (eds.), History of Psychology in Latin America, Latin American Voices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73682-8_2

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2011). Indeed, in Brazilian colonization, the entire productive system was based on the use of the labor of African slaves deported from Africa. This system lasted in the country from 1539 to 1888. At the same time, the territorial extension that configured Brazil’s empire as an independent nation at the beginning of the nineteenth century was obtained at the cost of progressive expropriation and the extinction of the indigenous ethnic groups that previously populated that territory. In these conditions, over the centuries in which Brazil was structured as a territory and Brazilian society was formed, a complex process of mixing took place between different peoples who, in various ways, came into contact and mixed. Several ethnic groups with very different cultures were displaced and brought into contact with each other (in many cases by the use of force) and had to live together and adapt to each other, not without conflict and loss. These subjects reflect the composition of Brazilian society, marked by complex cultural stratification. In this environment, some social groups have played a role of agglutination: the work of the missionaries of the Society of Jesus stands out. The Jesuits acted in Brazil in the long period beginning in 1549 and ending in 1760 with the expulsion by decree of the Portuguese Minister Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo. They pushed the mixture in the perspective of what they understood as the Christian social body of the Cologne, where all social and racial components were inserted and united by a vision of the Christian world. In this effort, they contributed to the constitution of knowledge and practices aimed at the knowledge and care of the person according to the demands of individual and social life (Massimi, 2020). The Jesuits’ presence in Spanish territories began in 1567–1568 with their arrival in Lima and then Cuzco and Potosí. There they founded churches and schools. The same settlement pattern was reproduced in Nueva España: in 1572 they settled in the cities of Mexico, Puebla, Oaxaca, and Pátzcuaro. In Peru, they concentrated mainly on the southern slopes of the Andes and the highlands. In Ecuador and Colombia they developed their activities in some cities and among the surrounding rural populations, to evangelize and baptize them. In Bolivia, in the eighteenth century, they founded several missions in Chiquitos and Moxos. The Society of Jesus moved southwards from Upper Peru to settle in the Tucuman region, with three main settlements: Asunción, Buenos Aires, and Córdoba. After settling in the cities, where they dedicated themselves to educational work by founding colleges, the Jesuits began to enter virgin territories to carry out missionary work among the Indians. In 1576, they settled in Juli, Peru, creating a first mission, a model for those that would later be established in the area of Paraguay. These missions were called Reduções. Reduction was understood in the sense of redirecting (reductio ad unum) the native populations for Christianity. This is how A.R. Montoya defines them: “We call them reductions to the Indian peoples who, living in their old way in mountains, hills and valleys, in hidden streams, in three, four or six houses, separated by a league, two, three and more from each other, were reduced by the diligence of their parents to large populations and political and human life” (de Montoya, 1993, p. 58). The installation of the reductions began when some Guarani groups joined the proposal. Among the reasons for this adhesion, two should be highlighted: the

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possibility of a partial preservation of the Guarani way of being in territories already colonized by the Spanish and the labor relations adopted. This was made possible by the legislative effort undertaken by two men: the Jesuit Diego de Torres Bollo and the lawyer Fernando Alfaro. The “Instructions” (1609–1610) drawn up by Torres Bollo were an internal regiment which founded and organized social life in the area of reductions: they were rules of social conduct which ensured good relations between the indigenous communities and the religious living there. In the area of the reductions, this regiment had the force of law, becoming an effective legal instrument also with regard to the organization of economic production and the regulation of indigenous labor. The “Ordinances” of Alfaro (1611) are legislation enacted to regulate indigenous labor in the reductions and to regulate the relations between indigenous communities and the Spanish State. The Ordinances extended the legal personality of the indigenous people, making them subjects of the Spanish State and stipulating the direct payment of the tax to the government. In this way, they established a specific legal category: the reduced Indian, recognized as a vassal of the Crown, producer, and worker in Spanish America. In this way, the reduced Indians were guaranteed freedom of “encomienda.” The encomienda was a Spanish institution in force since the Middle Ages in the Iberian territories reconquered from the Moors and introduced in the American colonies. Under the encomienda system, the inhabitants of an indigenous village were entrusted to a Spanish settler (encomendero), who was authorized to collect tributes from the natives in kind or in the form of compulsory labor. In this way, this system degenerated into mistreatment and enslavement. The area of the Guarani reductions was composed of urban and rural areas: “In the urban space there were places of sociability, work, differences, pluralities, where the majority of the population of indigenous Christians lived, on average 3000–5000 inhabitants, tutored by two or three missionary priests members of the Society of Jesus. The rural area occupied most of the land with its farms, cowsheds, estancias, herds and outposts, where the other indigenous Christian biases lived, which included the families of postmen, pedestrians, farmers. The rural environment were the areas of animal husbandry, food planting and matt grass” (Santos, 2012, p. 25). These Indian missions extended from the areas corresponding to present-day Paraguay and Chile to Arizona and Lower California and constituted a fundamental chapter in the American Jesuit enterprise. The reductions, an attempt of integration between local ethnic groups and the modern Western world, such as those carried out over about 150 years by the Society of Jesus with the Guarani, were violently extinguished. Wilde (2018) states: “The Jesuit missions in the South American lowlands constituted true regionally articulated systems of which other establishments of the Order also take part, such as schools, residences, trade offices, and ranches. Over time, some mission regions reached enormous territorial, demographic, and political dimensions. In the first decades of the eighteenth century, the Paraguayan missions had a population of 140,000 indigenous people. After the expulsion of the Jesuits (1767–1768), the missions began a gradual phase of decline that culminated in the dissolution of many of the missions during the wars of independence begun in the 1810s” (Wilde, 2018,

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p.  6). Still according to Wilde (2017), until the time of expulsion, the Jesuits remained in Latin America for about two centuries. In most areas of colonization, they succeeded in promoting a real process of cultural, political, and religious transformation, from which new identities emerged. In this sense, the missionary spaces have been set up in large transformation laboratories. Among the means used to trigger this process, Wilde recalls: the creation of typologies based on ethnic names, the introduction of political institutions (cabildo, church, militia, brotherhoods), the standardization of “general languages,” the dissemination of forms of devotion, and the introduction of new technologies (such as writing), materials, and ways of designing space and time. A new territoriality has thus been created, often marked by the blood of the martyrs, whose “traditions survived the expulsion of the Jesuits for several decades, forming a missionary memory incarnated in the imagination and in practice” (Wilde, 2018, p. 7). In fact, education and social integration have become the two main means of the evangelizing mission of the Jesuits in the Latin American context. The Novitiate of Córdoba was established in 1608, while the first mission in the Guaranies’ territory, that of San Ignacio Iguazú, was founded in 1609. The two initiatives developed in parallel until the expulsion of the Order in the second half of the eighteenth century. In this context, the Jesuits, very attentive to the dimension of the person and the knowledge of themselves cultivated since the formation of the members of the Order, from the vision of the founder of the Society of Jesus, Ignatius of Loyola, also introduced their psychological knowledge. They have accommodated this knowledge to the worldviews of local cultures and have also used it to persuade and adhere to their evangelizing project. Of these knowledges, we will present below some examples, organized by the genres of their production.

 hilosophical Psychology of the Jesuits and Its Transmission P in Latin America A set of books in the luggage of the missionaries of the Society of Jesus, who arrived in Latin America, consisted of newly printed treaties and are nicknamed Conimbricenses. The nickname derived from the fact that they were written in Coimbra, whose ancient Roman name was Conimbrica. The knowledge of the content of these texts will help us to understand the way of thinking of the Jesuit missionaries and of those who were trained in the schools they created in Latin American territory. In all, these are eight volumes of Commentaries from the Conimbricense College of the Society of Jesus. The parts referring to the “scientia de anima,” that is, the philosophical psychology of Aristotelian and Augustinian origin, were printed in Coimbra and Lisbon from 1592 to 1606. The topics related to psychological study are covered in the following texts of the Conimbricenses treatises: the commentary to De Anima (On the Soul, Góis, 1602), the commentary to Parva Naturalia (Small Natural Things, Góis, 1593), the

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commentary to Ethics of Nicomaco (Góis, 1593), and the commentary to De Generatione et Corruptione (On Generation and Corruption, Góis, 1607). In the texts, all written in the Latin language, the main concepts concerning psychological knowledge are highlighted. The proposition of Aristotelian psychology involves the appropriation of it by the philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century in the context of the anthropological vision shaped by Christianity; it assumes, therefore, the denomination of Aristotelian-Thomist doctrine. However, the vision of man and the psychism conveyed by the medieval philosophical tradition are interpreted in the light of the cultural changes that marked the humanist and Renaissance period. Such influences are philosophical, but also medical, or other areas of “natural philosophy.” The quality and quantity of the cited sources are significant of the position of the Jesuit philosophers who seek to discuss and when possible to reconcile sometimes very different theories among themselves; that is, they are seeking to reconcile ancient and modern doctrines. The analysis of the commentaries on Aristotelian psychological works allows one to know the broad panorama of the time with regard to anthropological and psychological knowledge. It allows one to understand the problems, the solutions, the themes and the concepts, and the methods of knowledge, which at the time were considered essential components of the domain defined as the study of “anima.” An important component of this knowledge transformation process is the challenges arising from the need to open up to the “new” worlds outside Europe with which Europeans came into contact in the sixteenth century. This is a real revolution produced in the field of knowledge by the discovery of New Worlds, new men, new peoples, and social forms. Some fundamental theses referring to the Aristotelian-Thomist definition of the human soul constitute the foundations of the proposed knowledge about the soul phenomena. The soul is defined as the first substantial act of the body, form of the body, and principle of our activity, according to the classical Aristotelian doctrine (Aristotle, 2006). The soul has peculiar abilities called powers (δυναμις). These are classified into four types: first, the vegetative power with the nutritive and generating functions; second, the sensory power, responsible for the sensitive knowledge that acts through the external senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch) and the elaboration of this knowledge through the internal senses. These are the common sense whose function is to gather the sensations coming from the five external senses, distinguishing them and comparing them among themselves; the fantasy, which composes and divides the sensations among themselves; and the cogitative power, or estimation, and the memory. Thirdly, there is the appetitive power, which distinguishes itself in sensitive appetitive power, oriented towards sensitive and singular objects (i.e., passions, or emotions, or affective life itself) and intellectual appetitive power, directed by reason (or will). The intellectual power is composed of intuitive intellectual knowledge (information about a present object) and abstract intellectual knowledge (apprehension of an object that is not present). In the view of the Jesuit philosophers, there is a deep intersection between the corporeality and the psychism of the person. The Conimbricenses treatises teach that the functioning of the psychic dynamics is grafted in the dynamism of the

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“natural complexion” of each person, that is, in the psychophysiological condition of the body, expressed by the concept of temperament. The link between these two levels is considered so important that the knowledge of temperament is considered part of the study of the soul. The origins of the concept of temperament date back to Greek medical theory, systematized by Hippocrates (460aC–370aC) and Galen (129–217). The theory considers the constitution of man determined by the presence of four fundamental humors. These correspond to the four basic elements of the composition of the universe. The humors are black bile (or melancholy), yellow bile, phlegm, and blood. The theory establishes a correspondence between the preponderance in the body of a type of humor and the temperament of the individual. Thus, excess black bile (melanê kolê) corresponds to melancholic temperament; excess yellow bile corresponds to choleric; excess blood, the blood; excess water, the phlegmatic. Temperaments determine the psychosomatic characteristics of the subject: his/her organic condition as well as his/her psychic states. However, an excess, or defect, of one or another mood may degenerate into psychic and physical pathologies. From this theory, an area of knowledge defined as Medicine of the Soul, or Medicine of the Spirit, emerged in the West. The Medicine of the Soul is based on an analogy between the soul and the body. It presupposes the existence of “diseases of the soul.” Thus, it admits the specificity of psychological pathology. At the same time, the psychological dimension is taken as an intermediary between the organic and the spiritual. The knowledge about the natural complexion of individual bodies can be found in various treatises prepared by the Jesuit masters of Coimbra. Among them, the Commentarii Collegii Conimbricensis Societatis Iesu, in Libro de Generatione et Corruptione stands out. This book discusses the theories of physicians and philosophers about the diversity of temperaments (Góis, 1607). The Jesuits continued this tradition and spread it in their areas of missionary presence. From the perspective of Coimbra’s philosophers, a complex interweaving between body and soul characterizes the personal being. In this way, health results from balance and care in both its dimensions. It is not a question of neutralizing or disregarding the action of psychic powers. They are constitutive elements of human experience. However, it is necessary to learn how to deal with these phenomena in order to make them constructive factors of one’s development. It is evident that the psychological knowledge conveyed and elaborated by the Conimbricenses places themselves within the framework of the nascent modernity. In fact, they discuss issues of contemporary interest, even if they seek to reaffirm aspects of the traditional worldview. One example is the great space dedicated in De Anima’s Commentary to the question of individual and racial differences and the human soul. This theme has already been approached by Thomas Aquinas in the Suma Teológica in a somewhat dubious way, and interpreted by Peripatetic philosophers in different ways. It is treated with great emphasis by Manuel de Góis in the chapter on the qualities of the soul. In this, it is firmly stated that, as far as the soul and its powers are concerned, men of all races and of all times are equal. Thus, the deficiency, or perfection as to the operations of a psychic power, should not be attributed to the lesser or greater perfection of the power, but to the defect, or perfection, of the organ of the body involved. Every intellectual inequality which exists

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from individual to individual comes only from the unequal constitution of individual bodies. The importance of the discussion becomes clear as we recall the debate held by contemporary Catholic theologians and philosophers, especially in the Iberian area, about the humanity of the Amerindian peoples (Hanke, 1985). The transmission of this discussion in the Jesuit cultural production in colonial Latin America can be found in the Diálogo sobre a conversão do gentio (Dialogue on the conversion of the Gentile), written by Manoel da Nóbrega (1988) in the middle of the sixteenth century, dedicated to the theme of evangelization of the Brazilian Indian. In any case, the psychological knowledge elaborated and transmitted by the Conimbricenses treatises informed the view about themselves and about the other, of the Jesuit missionaries recently arrived in Latin America.

 he Process of Building Knowledge of the Indigenous Peoples T and Their Psychological Characteristics in Epistolary Correspondence and in Writings The letters, used as a communication link between the New and the Old World, are of particular relevance in the Europe of the time. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the letter was seen not only as a means of communication, but also as a literary genre close to autobiography. In this, the author of the writing is also the protagonist of the narrative (Longo, 1981). In this way, the letters became a space to ask personal questions, propitious grounds for the elaboration of experiences lived by their authors, and not only vehicles for the transmission of theories and ideals. In this context, the use of the letter as a vehicle of psychological knowledge is also evident. Such knowledge also shapes the elaboration of the experiences narrated by the authors. The writing of a letter is a complex process. On the one hand, the letter is the result of personal and sometimes community elaboration. On the other hand, it is also part of a given universe marked by precise historical and cultural demands in terms of contents and styles, rhetoric, and poetics (Pécora, 1999). An extensive body of letters was written by the missionaries of the Society of Jesus living in Latin America. The use of epistolary correspondence was a widely used instrument by this religious order. O’Malley refers to the extraordinary emphasis that the Constitutions of the Order have given to correspondence as an instrument to obtain the union of hearts. The historian comments, “As far as possible, the rectors had to write to Father Provincial and the Provincials to Father General once a week; Father General had to respond to the Provincials at least once a month, and the Provincials had to correspond with the local rectors of the residences. These prescriptions were too demanding to be observed except in special cases, such as the first months of the opening of a new college. In any case, they proposed an ideal of frequent and frank communication” (O’Malley, 1993, p. 71). The Jesuits maintained correspondence among themselves, official and not, in the vernacular languages and not in Latin. Therefore, most letters from that period

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were written in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and other languages. Besides bringing information and seeking, or giving advice, some letters, or parts of them, had a declared purpose of edification both for the Jesuits and for others. Like all the epistolary correspondence of the time, also in the case of the Jesuit correspondence, writing employs resources of the rhetorical arts that also manage to mobilize the psychic dynamism of the recipients through persuasion. The Jesuit missives are dense communications full of information also about this sphere of phenomena that we today define as psychological. The Jesuits used the psychological knowledge of their own cultural universe not only for the knowledge of themselves, but also for the understanding of the Indians with whom they lived. This was particularly challenging given the anthropological and cultural diversity between the world of missionaries and that of natives. And, as we will see, the Jesuits will try to understand the Indians from the cultural categories provided by their world of origin, the same applied to the knowledge of their own experience. The use of these categories before the other is guided by the observation of behavioral signs. A first aspect of this knowledge was constructed by the use of a set of knowledges spread in Western medicine and which we have already seen employed in the bosom of the Society of Jesus: the Galenical-Hippocratic humoralist theory. Among the authors of the letters, José de Anchieta shows a particularly attentive look at the psychosomatic traits of the natives’ temperament: he states that the Indians “are somewhat melancholic” (Anchieta, 1988, p. 442). As far as the external and internal senses are concerned, the theme of imagination stands out in the observation of the Indians. In a letter written by Piratininga in 1557, when he reported the removal of the Indians from the newly created Jesuit school, Anchieta wrote, “most of these Indians (...) made other addresses not far from here, where they now live, because (...) now persuaded them a diabolical imagination, that this church is made for their destruction in which we can close them.” This “diabolical imagination” comes from the fact that “other Indians tell you this,” especially “some of their wizards, whom they call shamans” (Anchieta, 1988, p. 366). Possibly Anchieta followed the Thomist doctrine on this subject. According to the Thomist conception, the imagination can be diabolical because the devil has power to act in the internal and external senses of man. In the case of the imagination, the devil acts on the individual by making him/her appear as real, something deceptive, or by making him/her see something different than he/she is, by modifying the sensitive species received by the external senses. The Jesuits portrayed in their letters the force that, in the psychic dynamism of the Indians, seemed to have sensitive appetites: according to the priests, their excessive movement towards inappropriate objects would determine “unnatural” conducts such as anthropophagy. In reporting to Inácio de Loyola the situation of the natives on the coast of Brazil, Anchieta pointed out, “from Pernambuco (...) over 900 miles, (...) the Indians without exception eat human flesh; in this they feel so much pleasure and sweetness that they often travel over 300 miles when going to war. And if they captivate four or five of their enemies, without taking care of anything else, they return to the village with great voices and parties and copious wines,

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which manufacture with roots, and eat them in such a way that they do not lose even the slightest nail, and all their lives boast of that egregious victory” (Anchieta, 1988, pp. 108–109). However, the question is complex: for the understanding of anthropophagic conduct, Anchieta also referred to the movement of intellectual appetites. How can we explain the behavior of the prisoners condemned to this atrocious death, who accepted it as an honor, except by judging and adhering to the will of the Indians to the values of their cultural tradition? “Even the captives think that it is a noble and dignified thing for them, facing such a glorious death, as they judge, because they say that it is proper to the timid and unsuitable for war to die so that they have to bear in the grave the weight of the earth, which they think to be very great” (Anchieta, 1988, p. 109). The appetites of the Indians become disordered because they are guided by inadequately valued objects; they are accentuated by the “unbridled passion of the drinks”: “when they are drunker, the memory of past evils is renewed, and they begin to boast about them soon burning with the desire to kill enemies and the hunger for human flesh.” Anchieta’s position referred to anthropological theories of contemporary authors: the Jesuit José de Acosta and the former Jesuit Giovanni Botero. Father José de Acosta, Spanish writer and Jesuit (Medina del Campo ca. 1539— Valladolid 1600), sent as a missionary to Peru (1571), published a catechism in the Aymaran language, the first book printed in Peru. Back in Spain, he composed the Historia natural y moral de las Indias (Seville 1590), which was translated into several languages. In the first four books Acosta sets out his observations on the physical geography and natural history of Mexico and Peru, and in the next three books he offers information on the psychology, customs, and political and religious institutions of the natives. José de Acosta stated that “barbarians” are those who depart from the straight inspiring reason of human habitual practices. The definition of right reason and customary habits is grafted onto the Aristotelian-Thomist view. According to Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), human intelligence has a natural tendency towards its Creator. At the same time, man is a composite of body and soul and, therefore, his thinking is an act that takes place within the corporeality and material conditioning in which he lives (example: climate, geographical space). In this way, by changing some conditions (e.g., politics), an educational process could take place that leads to and transforms the condition of barbarity into another, of civilization. Acosta pointed to “monstrous deviations” from the conduct of indigenous populations that he classified within an established hierarchy of human conditions, as “wild men” in a state of absolute barbarism. Among them, described as “without law, without king, without covenants, without fixed magistrates or regime of government,” anthropophagi and without fixed abodes, capable of carrying out crimes that made them “like beasts,” would be “a good number of Brazilian peoples” (Acosta, 1984–1987, pp. 68–69). The stereotype of the Latin American natives was conveyed by the writings of Giovanni Botero (1544–1617), author of the voluminous work Universal Relations,

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a great compendium of elaborated anthropological geography (the five volumes were written in 1591, 1592, 1594, 1596, 1611). Giovanni Botero, after entering the Society of Jesus at the age of 16, in 1580 left the order because of disagreements with his superiors and from 1582 he resided in Milan as secretary to Cardinal Carlo Borromeo and then to his nephew, Cardinal Federico. The volumes of Universal Relations are an anthropological geography, with detailed news about the physical, demographic, military, and political configuration of the nations of the Old and New World. In Botero’s work, the spirit of the Company is evident, and most of the sources used are Jesuit. The objective of the treatise was to portray the characteristics of what the author considered to be the new Christian orb, based on the reading of letters, reports, and other Jesuit documents, among others. Botero’s work has an apologetic intention: the description of the missionary movement in the world evidences the strong expansion of Christianity conceived according to the vision of the Council of Trent. Extensive parts of the work are dedicated to Latin America. Botero shows a concern for underlining both the characteristics of socioeconomic and cultural underdevelopment of these peoples and describes in detail its population, geography, flora, fauna, and political and economic conditions, building a large compendium of information derived from reading the letters and narratives of Jesuit missionaries. Botero suggests some methods based on the consideration of the anthropological diversity among the different American peoples and inspired by the work of Acosta. Botero takes up the opposition between the wild man and the civilized, having as comparison criterion the straight use of reason, formulated by Acosta. In the third part of Relations (1595), he defines Brazilian Indians among the most barbaric peoples, “for leading a wild and bestial life without chiefs, without laws, without any form of civility and politics” (Botero, 1595, vol. 3, p. 2). The writer also formulates a derogatory assessment of his psychological characteristics: “his understanding seems obscured by the senses, reason by appetites, and judgment by passions. His thought does not depart from the earth, nor does it extend beyond the present object” (Botero, 1595, vol. 3, p. 2). For this reason, the natives do not worship any divinity, although they rely on “the sorcerers and their false prophecies.” Botero believes that it is appropriate to deal with the anthropophagous Indians as if they were “madmen,” and should also resort to the use of weapons (Botero, 1595, vol. 3, p. 53). The fourth part of Relations (1596) relates the missionary work of the Jesuits in Brazil: Botero tells of the great difficulty encountered by the missionaries, caused by the “bestiality” of those populations. To exemplify his judgment, he again describes in detail the anthropophagous ritual (Botero, 1596, vol. 4, p. 78). Botero attributes the state of bestiality to the action of demonic powers. It describes the emergence of superstitions that it defines as “madness” (Botero, 1596, vol. 4, p. 84). He states that these “sick outbreaks” are stimulated by the use of the juice of a herb called Petima, which induces in the users symptoms similar to those we would define today as epileptic: “they fall as dead to the ground, with their mouths twisted and their tongues out, they stretch and turn all over with trembling of the whole body and speak between their teeth” (Botero, 1596, vol. 4, p. 85).

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Therefore, the similarity between Anchieta’s interpretation of indigenous behavior in his letters and the texts of Acosta and Botero is evident. They are all inspired by the model of Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophical psychology of sixteenth-­ century Jesuit thinkers. When the prevalence of sensitive powers, especially sensitive appetites, over intellectual appetites and cognitive powers occurs, individuals are unable to judge and evaluate the objects of their desires. The resulting dissatisfaction leads them to excesses in their behaviors and experiences of sensations and affections. They present unruly habits, among which are violence, cruelty, and anthropophagy. Such processes can also be determined by supernatural influences (the demons) and the consumption of herbs and drinks. These influences can act not only on the sensory level but also on the functioning of intellectual appetites. However, we have seen that Anchieta was also a man of humanist background, who believes in the power of education in the modification of human habits and personal dynamism. By writing in 1555 to Ignatius of Loyola of Piratininga, where the tribe headed by Tibiriçá lived, he sought to show how coexistence with the missionaries has achieved some positive effects. He affirmed that “the other nefarious ignominies also necessarily diminish; and some are so obedient to us that they dare not drink without our permission, and only with great moderation if we compare it with the old madness” (Anchieta, 1988, p. 194). Anchieta pointed out the change of habits and values “in the way of Christians,” starting from the coexistence of that same population that before thought could be converted only by the intervention of military force. He wrote: “the subjection of these Indians is too much to admire, not living obliged to any laws, nor law, and not obeying anyone’s authority” (Anchieta, 1988, p. 110). In Anchieta’s pondering, this fact is inexplicable in the light of the civilizing theory of the authors already cited, according to which there would be a foreseeable need for law, religion, and obedience to a king, to enable religious conversion. But the fact is explained by the strength of educational coexistence and this is an argument used to highlight the importance of the presence of the Society of Jesus in colonial territory in view of the creation and preservation of a “Christian Republic.” The Jesuits used Aristotelian-Thomist terminology to refer to the cognitive processes observed in natives. The main category used was understanding. The evaluation about the understanding of the Indians is present in several letters, and acquires different valuations. Meaningful in this respect is a letter sent by Anchieta to Inácio de Loyola in which the author described the condition of the various Brazilian ethnic groups and established differences between them. The description is similar to the aforementioned political theories of José de Acosta and Giovanni Botero that peoples who do not have in their political and social organization a sovereign, a jurisdiction, or a religion live in a condition not according to reason, while peoples who have at least one of these three pillars develop towards an increasingly rational condition. In fact, according to Anchieta (and the tradition to which he is inspired), these three aspects (legal organization, government, and religion) belong to natural law. Referring to the Indians of the Porto Seguro region, the author stated that “they are indomitable and fierce, nor do they bend reason.” On the contrary, “the carijós are much meeker

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and more prone to the things of God” in a way similar to “other people to the west, through the interior to the province of Peru.” These “are very meek, they come closer to reason, they are all subject to one head, each one lives with his wife and children separately in his house, and in no way eat human flesh.” Continuing the description, Anchieta dealt with the “people who call themselves Ibirajaras, who we think are ahead of all these in the use of reason, intelligence and meekness of customs.” And he explains the reasons for this judgment: “All these obey one lord, have horror to eat human flesh, are content with one woman (...). They believe in no idolatry or sorcerer, and they advance to many others in good manners, so that they seem closer to the law of nature” (Anchieta, 1988, pp. 117–118). In the opinion of the Jesuits, the demand for learning manifested by the natives proved their intellectual gifts while justifying missionary work. Nóbrega wrote in a letter to the Provincial of Portugal in 1549 at the beginning of the mission of the Society of Jesus in Bahia: “They have schools to read and write; it seems to me a good way to bring the Indians from this land, who have great desires to learn and, when asked if they want to, show great desires” (Nóbrega, 1988, pp. 110–111). Therefore, the evaluation about the cognitive powers was associated with the response of these to the evangelizing initiative of the Jesuits. When the Indians showed resistance to the missionaries, they were evaluated as not very rational. An example is the following excerpt from a letter written to Torres de Rio Vermelho by Nóbrega in 1557: “I have come to understand by experience how little one could do in this land in the conversion of the gentiles for lack of being subjects, and they are a form of people in a condition closer to wild beasts than to rational people” (Nóbrega, 1988, p. 400). And in a letter written to the same recipient the following year, Nóbrega outlined a picture quite different from that set out in his initial letters. He placed the need for the Indians, once “subjected” with force, to be taught how to live “rationally,” and then to be evangelized: “First of all, the Gentiles must subject themselves and make them live as rational creatures, making them keep the natural law” (Nóbrega, 1988, p. 447). José de Anchieta, in the “Information of the Province of Brazil” (1585), a long letter addressed to the Father General of the Company, affirmed the importance of preaching as a fundamental instrument for the indoctrination of the Indians. It justified the statement by the observation that the Indians attach an enormous value to speech and the word. He wrote: “They make a lot of case among themselves, like the Romans, of good speakers and call them masters of speech. And a good speaker gets from them what he wants: he gets them to kill or not to kill in wars; or to walk one part or the other; and he is lord of life and death. They listen to him all night and sometimes also throughout the day, without sleeping or eating. To experience whether he is a good orator and eloquent, many listen to him all night long to overcome him and tire him out, and if they cannot, they have him for a great man and speaker. That is why there are preachers among them very esteemed who exhort them to war, to kill men and to do other deeds of this sort” (Anchieta, 1988, p. 441). Anchieta’s attention to language and use of the word here is also an expression of his interests and skills. The theatrical records written by Anchieta have used plurilingualism as a form of acculturation. It was common to use the three languages in

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the same writings. Thus, for Anchieta, the word would be the great resource for the transformation of the customs and ideas of the natives, according to the evangelizing objectives. Anchieta’s position is inserted in a broader context. In a colonial country where the majority of the population was illiterate, the use of the oral word as a vehicle for transmitting ideas and as a “therapeutic” means was a priority.

The Therapeutic Power of Words The use of the word “oral” as a vehicle for transmitting ideas and as a “therapeutic” means was the first point of convergence between the indigenous tradition and the actions of the Jesuits in colonial Latin America (Pawling, 2004). In fact, the word was widely valued in its connotation of communication, government, and healing, within the indigenous cultural tradition: since the sixteenth century, the accounts and missives of travelers and missionaries highlight the important role attributed to it by the natives (Massimi, 2005). One of the oldest pieces of information about it appears in a narrative from 1593, already cited, written by the visiting priest of the Society of Jesus, the Portuguese Fernão Cardim (1548–1625). The account highlights the peculiarities of indigenous rhetoric and stresses the great propensity of the natives to practice the word. Cardim relates that in the village of Espírito Santo, after the reception by the “principal” (an expression used in the missionary accounts of the time to indicate the political authorities of the native populations), he together with the other two visitors (Father Cristóvão de Gouveia and Brother Barnabé Telho) was taken in procession to the Church by the Indians with dances and flute music. He writes: “When they had prayed, the priest sent them to speak in the language, and they were very comforted and satisfied. That night the main Indians, great orators, preached about the life of the missionary priest in their own way. The way is as follows: they start preaching at dawn lying on the net for half an hour. Then they get up and walk all over the village, foot to foot very slowly. And the preaching is also paused, phlegmatic, and slow; they often repeat the words with gravity. In these sermons they tell of all the works, storms, dangers of death that the priest suffered, coming from so far to visit them, and to console. Together they begin to praise God for the mercy received and ask the people to bring their gifts to the priest, in gratitude. It was to see them come with their things, etc., ducks, chickens, piglets, flour, kisses with some roots and vegetables from the earth” (Cardim, 1980, p. 146). The chiefs of the tribe, appropriating the missionary preacher’s discourse, translated it into their own language to transmit it to the community. In this way they legitimized the presence of the missionary and, at the same time, placed themselves as irreplaceable mediators between him and the people. In the same document, Cardim provides information about the value of preaching with the Indians. He tells us that in each “oca” there lived a principal, whose authority was exercised mainly by the use of the word: he exhorted them to work, excited them to war, and was very respected by all. These exhortations, initially, were made inside the “oca,” “by way of preaching,” “which he does out loud, very slowly, repeating the words many

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times” (Cardim, 1980, p. 146). Cardim’s account tells that among the main Indians and preachers, “there are some old men of great name and authority among them, who have fame all over the sertão, three hundred and four hundred leagues, and more.” He states that the natives esteem so much “a good speaker that they call him the lord of speech. In his hand he has death and life, and he will take them wherever he wants without opposition.” When the Indians want to test whether an individual possesses this ability, “many come together to see if they can tire him out, speaking heavily with him every night. They stay like this sometimes two, three days, without getting bored” (Cardim, 1980, pp. 152–153). This description of Cardim reveals the surprise of the Portuguese religion in view of the importance attributed to the use of the word by Brazilian Indians. It is an unexpected point of convergence between the culture of these populations, unknown to the missionaries, and the immense effort to communicate the European culture of the time, evident in the creation of new instruments such as the press, in the search for contacts and knowledge of new peoples, new cultures, and new languages, and in the great development of rhetorical art and its infinite possibilities as a pedagogical and doctrinal means. The value of the word is also present in the Guarani populations in reductions. Among the Mbyá-Guarani of Guairá, language reveals the origin of the divine portion of the human soul and the word is taken as the expression of the manifestation of the soul (Cadogan, 1959). The importance of the word in Guarani culture is attested to by Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, who worked and lived among them and was the first observer after the foundation of the reductions to write and publish an account. Montoya’s Conquista espiritual is one of the great Jesuit eyewitness accounts of the seventeenth century. It is the richness of Montoya’s observations on the first contact and the spiritual politics of the meeting that distinguish Montoya’s account from all the others (Ganson, 2016, p. 202). Montoya, in portraying the figure of a shaman called Zaguacari, provides a description of his physical characteristics and comments that he demonstrated as “exceptional intelligence and eloquence—he possessed a natural rhetoric that kept his hearers spellbound” (cited in: Ganson, 2016, p. 204). The use of words, images, and gestures, in oratory practices, may have constituted a common and fertile ground for such processes, favoring the dialogue between different identities. This dialogue led to finding points of convergence and to making “porous” the boundaries that demarcated the various sociocultural components involved in the cultural practice of preaching. This “porosity” would have, among its genetic factors, the constant use made by preachers, of the norm of classical rhetoric, called “accommodation,” which we will soon address. In other words, the practice of preaching has contributed to a process of cultural hybridization. Cultural hybridization refers to a set of processes that have provided exchanges and blends of cultures (Canclini, 2005). In fact, in the colonial context, the practice of sacred oratory was a privileged means of using the word to evangelize listeners and for cultural transmission. Among others, the sacred oratory conveys psychological knowledge. At the same time, it had acted in the field of persuasive communication using the resources of

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rhetorical art and influencing, and through them, the psychic dynamism of the listeners. By the force of the word, concepts, practices, and beliefs from the classical, medieval, and Western Renaissance tradition were communicated to the population, aiming to induce changes in the habits and mentality of individuals and social groups. The famous Luso-Brazilian Jesuit Antônio Vieira (1608–1697) in a sermon in 1669, given before the Royal Chapel of Lisbon, presents the preacher as the true physician of the wounds of the spiritual body and the social and political body. He claims to be “the obligation of this chair (which is the medicine of souls) to dispute the illness, and to prescribe the remedy. And if it is proven, and not costly, it will be easy to apply” (Vieira, 2001, p. 101). This function corresponds to the anthropological vision in which Vieira is inspired, according to which the individual, community, and political dimensions are expressions of the unitary dynamism of the human person. The frequent use of the term “physician of souls,” to nickname the preacher, and the analogies between states of mind and body in the preacher sermons in colonial Latin America highlights the appropriation, articulation, and transmission of a long tradition. We have already seen that the Medicine of the Soul is a set of knowledges that aim to provide a healthy life and the use of the word is a resource to reach this objective. Health is conceived as a quality of personal life, in its integrity. The association between word and the health of soul and body was already found in the texts of the Greek physician-philosophers and was made explicit by Plato in the Timaeus dialogue. Consolidated by the Greek physician Hippocrates and later by the Roman physician Galen, it was applied by the speakers and philosophers Cicero and Seneca. It spread throughout the Middle Ages and was resumed and expanded in Humanism and the Renaissance. We propose an example of the way in which in a sermon a very important psychic phenomenon is approached in the field of emotions: sadness. We saw that emotions were defined by the philosophical psychology of the Jesuits as phenomena of appetitive power. We have also seen that this psychology warns of the need to consider psychic phenomena as inserted in the body constitution of the person. The psychosomatic complexion of the human being and the action of the preacher’s word on it are focused on the Sermon of the Fourth Dominga after Easter, preached in São Luís do Maranhão, where Vieira addresses the question of sadness. In portraying the experience of the disciples after Christ’s death, he describes them as affected by sadness: “They were astonished and out of their minds, and penetrated by a sadness so profound that together they were all speechless” (Vieira, 1993, vol. 2, p. 762). Vieira promises, by the sermon, to reveal “a very certain art, very useful, very pleasant and very brief, which is the art of not being sad.” The importance of this art is highlighted by the affirmation that sadness is “the most universal disease, which suffers in this world human weakness” and “not only more contrary to the health of the bodies, but also the most dangerous for the salvation of souls” (Vieira, 1993, vol. 2, p. 763). The symptom of the universality of sadness is crying, a symptom that every human being presents at birth. The universality of this sickness depends on the fact that there is no earth “so healthy and with airs so benign and pure that it is not free from this contagion and no man so well-complexed with all

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the humours that it is almost normally not subject to the sad accidents of melancholy” (Vieira, 1993, vol. 2, p. 763). In this way, Viera explains the Hippocratic-­ Galenic matrix of his theory on sadness: the imbalance between the elements of nature and the humors of the human body. Vieira points out that the pathological somatic effects of sadness are described in the seventeenth chapter of the Book of Proverbs, where it is said that sadness dries up the bones, these being the most solid, interior, and hard parts of the “human building.” So that, affected by sadness, it has no way of sustaining itself, because the necessary humidity for vital heat is dried out. And again, quoting the sacred scriptures (above all texts of the Apocalypse and the ecclesiastic), Vieira describes the clinical picture of a subject who suffers the physical and psychological effects of “poisonous and hidden melancholy, which in hasty steps leads the sad to death”: “Pale, pale, emaciated, shriveled; his cheeks are faded, his eyes are dimmed, his eyebrows are fallen, his head is bowed to the ground and his whole body is curved, shy, diminished. And if he were to let himself be seen inside the house, or grave, where he lives as enchanted, you would see him fleeing from the people, and hiding in the light, closing the doors to his friends, and the windows in the sun, with boredom and universal boredom to all that he sees, hears, or imagines can taste” (Vieira, 1993, vol. 2, p. 765). The melancholy, when deposited in excess in the heart, causes him innumerable wounds. Vieira takes up without quoting the author the galenical theory that the heart is the central organ of the human organism from which “all vital spirits that are distributed in the members of the body come out” (Vieira, 1993, vol. 2, p. 766). In this way it is possible to explain why sadness leads to death. In fact, the deadly poisons of melancholy are carried by the vital spirits that come out of the heart to the whole body and in all its parts produce wounds that gradually become lethal. These “wounds injure the head and disturb the brain and confuse your judgment. They wound their ears and make their voices dissonant. They wound the taste, and make the sweetness of flavours bitter. They hurt his eyes, and make his sight darker. They hurt his tongue, and make his speech mute. They hurt his arms, and break them. They wound his hands and his feet, and numb him. And wounding one by one all the members of the body, there is none who will not be sick of that evil” (Vieira, 1993, vol. 2, p. 766). The most serious effects of melancholy, however, occur on the soul level and the death it brings to the soul is the very separation from its life, that is, from God. It achieves this effect by creating a predisposition to sin. Quoting the doctrine of the Fathers of the Church, the theologians Basilio and John Chrysostom, Vieira explains that “this very strong and dark passion drowns the mud. Just as those who suffer dizziness in their heads fall, so it causes men to fall into sin for lack of judgment and counsel” (Vieira, 1993, vol. 3, p. 727). In fact, sadness impedes the good functioning of understanding and will, thus causing disorder in all psychic dynamism. So that, even in the natural search for the remedy, the individual affected by sadness does not know how to judge what is offered to him/her as such, and for this reason it is easier to target the temptations of the devil. The value of objects is distorted and so is the evaluation of one’s own abilities. Thus, in the search for relief, the

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individual uses resources that worsen his/her condition and builds images that do not correspond to reality, creating illusions. The “art of never being sad” remedies suggested by Vieira are all placed on the spiritual-spiritual plane and are condensed in man’s reflective capacity about his destiny. Vieira says: “In these two words: Quo vadis?, in this very brief question and in this single maxim or precept consists the art of never being sad” (Vieira, 1993, vol. 2, p. 772). The man who asks himself this question and “sees that with the steps of time, which never stops (..), he puts under his feet everything that usually saddens those who do not consider this” (Vieira, 1993, vol. 2, p. 774). In fact, it was seen according to the humoral doctrine that the excesses of melancholic humor are caused by several factors accentuated by the intemperance of habits. In this way, the moderation that springs from the disillusionment of human vanity practiced daily having “before the eyes” the very mortal condition is true medicine. Thus, the individual acquires the knowledge of himself/herself: “Understand the souls who are souls and that the end to which they have been created and towards which they walk is heaven” (Vieira, 1993, vol. 2, p. 790). In this sense, Vieira’s attempt to return psychosomatic deviations to ontological and ethical roots is clear, thus shifting the field of the Medicine of the Soul to those areas of competence of a spiritual and psychological nature that belong properly to preachers. These are the true “doctors of the soul.” The soul-corporal complexity can be controlled by the spiritual dimension: it is in this perspective that self-knowledge is necessary. Because of this, the preacher presents himself/herself as the authentic physician of the soul, understanding it as the psychic dimension and the spiritual dimension of the human being, both always intertwined with corporeality.

 he Person as to Become and Education as a Process, T from a Jesuit Perspective From the second half of the sixteenth century, due to the demands of European society and the missionary territories, the creation of schools for the education of children and young people became the main way of missionary action of the Society of Jesus (O’Malley, 1993). The emphasis on education as a ministry of the Society of Jesus goes back to its origins. Ignatius of Loyola recounts in his autobiography that in 1524, he saw the need to devote himself to study in order to help souls. According to him, there is a close correlation between the acquisition of virtue and the study of letters. In a letter sent through secretary Pedro Ribadaneira to Emperor Philip II of Spain, Loyola justifies the Company’s commitment to the foundation of colleges. He affirms that all the welfare of humanity and of Christianity depends on an adequate education of young people (Giard, 1995). In the reductions and in the urban centers of the Latin American missionary provinces, education and colleges become an important space to gain the trust and

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support of the natives, to create new spaces of living and coexistence, and to modify habits, customs, and cultural practices of the young generations. The letters of the missionaries reveal the importance given to the work in the colleges and the architectural spaces of the reductions and of the cities highlight the fundamental function of the college in the urban structure conceived by the Jesuits. The foundation of a school for reading and writing for children and young people was one of the first acts carried out by the missionaries when they initiated the reductions, as evidenced by the analysis of the annual letters (Leonhardt, 1927–1929). In Brazil, the pedagogical commitment of the Jesuits, together with the children, is based on the humanist conviction of the religion that the cultural inferiority of the native peoples is due to the lack of education and not due to a structural anthropological or psychological diversity. This is what was stated by Manuel da Nóbrega in the text Diálogo sobre a conversão do gentio. The passage from the conversation between two Jesuits representing two different emerging positions in the Society about the methods and objectives of missionary work has already been mentioned. In comparing the “rudeness” of the Indians to the civilization (“police”) of ancient pagan peoples, one of the interlocutors states: “to have the Romans and other Gentiles more police, that these, did not come to them from naturally having a better understanding, but from having a better creation, and creating themselves more politically” (Nóbrega, 1988, p. 240). José de Anchieta states in a letter of 1557 that the children of the Indians raised in the colleges of the Society “will become firm Christians” (Anchieta, 1988, p. 159). In this way, through the Jesuits, the conviction about the possibility of man “doing himself” through the educational process, characteristic of Humanism and the Renaissance, finds in Brazil, recently discovered by the Europeans, a great laboratory of experimentation. Through education, the religion intended to act in the transformation of the natives, of their culture and society, into members of the “Christian social body” of the colony. From this perspective, the important role of Jesuit schools should also be highlighted. The first schools built in Latin America were intended to teach reading and writing. In the various places of missionary presence, the Jesuits created primary schools for teaching catechism and literacy; Latin and grammar schools; schools for the study of classics and for the practice of theatre and rhetoric; and courses in philosophy and arts, mathematics and physics, and moral and dogmatic theology. The studies in these schools were governed by precise norms promulgated by the Society of Jesus and condensed into the Ratio Studiorum (1559). The Ratio recommended that studies should be free, schools should accept students from all social classes, pedagogical methods should take into account the psychological characteristics and character of each student, and there should be a balance between humanistic and scientific instruction (Giard, 1995; Giard & Vaucelles, 1996). The working method developed in these schools is condensed in the treaty dedicated to the art of educating children and disciples written by the Jesuit Father Alexandre de Gusmão: “Arte de criar bem os filhos na idade da puerícia” (Art of raising children well at the age of childbearing). The treaty was published in Lisbon in 1685, since in Brazil there was still no press because of the prohibition of the Portuguese Crown. Gusmão was born in Lisbon in 1629 and died in Bahia in 1724.

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Gusmão came to Brazil at the age of 10, and joined the Company in 1646. He held several important positions in various colleges: master of novices, professor of humanities, mayor of studies in Rio de Janeiro, rector of the college of Santos and Bahia, and, finally, Provincial of Brazil. Gusmão was founder and director of a school, the Seminary of Belém, in Cachoeira do Campo, a place near Salvador da Bahia, created in 1686. Over 73 years, it has received the first education and taught about 1500 Brazilian students. The book Arte de criar os filhos (…) is the result of the pedagogical experience carried out at the Seminar. At the same time, it is part of the extensive work of Father Gusmão as a writer. In fact, this Jesuit was attentive to the value of writing for the transmission of values and for the Christian formation of the new generations and employed different kinds of writing in his works. Among them, he used the genre of the allegorical novel, of which he was a precursor in Brazil: “História do Predestinado Peregrino e de seu irmão Precito” (History of the Predestined Pilgrim and his brother Precito, 1682) (Massimi, 2017). The objective of the composition of the voluminous treatise is pointed out in start: the formation of a “perfect boy” (Gusmão, 1685, p. II). The author intends to explain to parents and teachers what “good upbringing” consists of and “how to do it properly” (Gusmão, 1685, p. III). It should also be noted that this book is also intended for women: “daughters and mothers of families” (Gusmão, 1685, p. IV), something innovative at the time. Gusmão defends the right of women to receive training in the first letters and liberal arts, the same as men. The statement by the importance of the work of the Society of Jesus for the educational work of society runs through this entire treaty, from the Prologue to the Reader where Gusmão writes: “It is so proper to the Company of Jesus to attend to the good institution of children in the early years of their childhood that it makes special mention of it in the form of his profession; because his Institute is to teach the good arts, and to inculcate good morals to all for the greater glory of God and the good of souls, in this particular matter of instructing children, his Founder, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, wished that there be a special obligation in the Company (...). If the parents are careful to read and practice this treatise on their children, and the children are curious to study what belongs to them, I hope (...) there will be much improvement in the families, in the Republics much reform, in the Church many Righteous, and in Heaven many Saints” (Gusmão, 1685, p. I). In the treatise, the pedagogical experience acquired by the Society of Jesus in the two centuries of life is cited, by means of numerous examples. In fact, the treatise does not aim to present a mere pedagogical theory but to discuss the results acquired through practice: in this sense, the works of many educators of the Society of Jesus are cited. The method of argument used by Gusmão to support his positions interweaves the doctrines of the ancient with the experiences of the modern. In the book, pedagogical advice is intertwined with psychological knowledges. First, Gusmão points to importance of the development process of the person from the very beginning and the decisive role of parental relations. In considering the first phases of the educational process, Gusmão emphasizes the need for parents to take care of their children in the first person from the first months and years of

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life. Gusmão warns mothers about the importance of breastfeeding their own children, and dedicates the entire third chapter to this need. The reasons given are several: first, the fact confirmed by the authority of Galen and Avicenna that “the mother’s milk is healthier for her child” (Gusmão, 1685, p. 80); second, a psychological reason, extremely interesting: the fact that with milk one communicates the “inclination” (Gusmão, 1685, p. 184). In fact, the humors would also be transmitted through milk, and this transmission could modify the original individual complexion. The question becomes important in a social environment where it used to be the case that breastfeeding children were handed over to milk nannies, usually slaves. The book’s thesis on the “importance of good upbringing of children” from the early years of life is also based on Aristotle’s conception of Ethics to Nicomachus (basic text of Renaissance Aristotelianism). Gusmão states that “all the good of the children depends on their good rearing.” In fact, at birth, “the children’s spirits are like a shallow board.” He uses the metaphor of painting to explain how the educational process can shape the personality: it is such that “an outstanding painter has the equipment to paint any image on it. what he wants to paint on it will represent, if Angel, Angel; if Demon, Demon will represent. Just as a picture comes out well, or badly painted, depends on the first lines that the painter drew, so the fact that the son is bad or well educated, depends on the first dictates, which in the child, as in shallow board, the father inspired” (Gusmão, 1685, pp. 2–3). The plasmability of the human being, the infinite possibilities of being that he/she can choose for himself/herself, was a common Aristotelian place taken up by the humanist philosophy and pedagogy of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Gusmão emphasizes that the diversity and the result of the “paintings” possible in the shallow tablet that is man in his birth depend on the “first lines, the first blurs.” And he affirms: “the same happens in childish moods, which, like shallow tablets, are disposed to form any images in them. According to the first doctrine, which you give to your children, you will be able to know what is to be. They will be good children if they are well brought up in childhood, and bad children if they are badly formed in the beginning. For as well as going out well, or badly painted, the panel depends on the first lines, which threw the officer’s hand into it, so the fact of going out well, or badly raised the son, depends on the first raising, which his father gave him” (Gusmão, 1685, p. 4). The development experienced by the child in its early years of life has, over time, a decisive social impact: “From ordinary children know how to raise their own, when they become parents, and these to their own; and so all the other offspring come to form a good generation and good procedures. From this comes that in some generations certain virtues and certain vices are reigned as hereditary” (Gusmão, 1685, p. 31). Gusmão begins the treatise “Art of raising children well at the age of childhood” (1685) with this statement: “By the teaching and education you give to your children at the beginning of their life, they will be able to know what they will become.” It has already been said that the art of raising children well is inspired by the conception that “the human being as a child is arranged in such a way that any image can be formed in him.” This statement refers to the aforementioned Aristotelian theory of knowledge that we saw shared by the Jesuit philosophers of Coimbra. This

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theory considers that the psychological powers that provide knowledge have their foundation in the activity of the senses. Therefore, the changes that occurred in them in the early stages of life would have the effect of shaping the cognitive processes of the adult. A particularly interesting chapter of Gusmão’s treatise is dedicated to “as if there are to be parents with children in poor condition” (Gusmão, 1685, p. 134). Gusmão defines as “children of bad condition” those who “are not docile in nature to discipline.” He attributes this situation to three different causes: the “bad understanding,” that is, lack of intellectual capacity; the “rebellious will,” that is, difficulty at the level of motivation; and the whole of the previous causes (Gusmão, 1685, p. 135). All three conditions are “disciplinable,” for “no child is in such a bad condition that he cannot be corrected, and domesticated, if in the father or the master there is vigilance and prudence to raise him while he is little” (Gusmão, 1685, p. 137). A very important consequence of this statement, on the pedagogical level, is that “the parents should not forsake their children, who have felt bad conditions, distrustful of making fruit in them, because none can be of such natural evil, that indoctrinated and tamed cannot be of benefit through good education” (Gusmão, 1685, p. 139). When parents feel unable to perform this training task, they should seek the help of those who are competent in the matter. In this case, the father is recommended to “consult the politicians foreseen in this matter, i.e. those who have written children’s policies, or as experienced may give him advice” (Gusmão, 1685, pp. 141–142). In short, the pedagogical proposal of Gusmão and the Jesuits, in general, is part of a person’s conception that he/she realizes his/her destiny through the good use of his/her personal, including psychological, dispositions. Among these dispositions, the life of the soul has a fundamental function of articulation between the corporal and the spiritual dimension. The knowledge of the psychic life provides the practical objective of their ordination, to which the Jesuits dedicate all their efforts. In their pedagogical action the Jesuits aim at the incorporation of the person to the whole, mobilizing and exercising senses, affections, judgment and will, and body and soul, according to a path oriented to the achievement of the ultimate goal. The orderly development of the personality shaped by education would contribute to the formation of the Christian Social Body, which the Jesuits intended to accomplish in the Latin American missionary universe.

Psychological Knowledge and Cultural Practices The Jesuits were in charge of promoting the process of mixing the different components of the social body of the colonies, through various practices aimed mainly at the education of children. Thus, parties and games were employed in such a perspective, as can be seen from the accounts of the authors of the Society of Jesus. Descriptions of these cultural practices present in the cultures of Indians and of the blends that took place with the European tradition, especially the Lusitanian and

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Spanish, on the occasion of the colonization and Christianization of Latin America, can be found in the sources prepared by the Jesuit missionaries. Abundant evidence indicates that celebrations, festivities, and rituals were intrinsic practices of social life in the Jesuit-Guarani reductions (Wilde, 2003). Daily ceremonies and festive celebrations are a fundamental organizing element in the daily life of the Jesuit-­ Guarani Missions, particularly the productive activities.1 According to the Aristotelian-Thomist psychological knowledge, on which the Jesuit evangelizing action is based, people’s experiences gain intensity as senses are provoked, sensations and affections are awakened, and understandings are mobilized. Affections of joy and pleasure are linked to sensations stimulated in the senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. The mobilization of this dynamism contributes to the formation of understandings and motivations that promote the integration of the social, political, and religious body. This is the social function of festive practices. The epistolary narrative, elaborated in 1590, by Fernão Cardim, about the trip and Jesuit mission of the visiting priest Cristóvão de Gouvêa through the regions of Bahia, Ilhéus, Porto Seguro, Pernambuco, Espírito Santo, Rio de Janeiro, São Vicente, etc., between the years 1583 and 1590, describes festive practices of various kinds developed in these territories (Cardim, 1980). These are reception parties, celebrations (called “spiritual festivals”) of a religious nature (mass, baptisms, weddings), and finally dinners and parties in the indigenous fashion. An example is the reception received by visitors when they arrive at the village of São João, near the city of Salvador. Cardim reports that when the Jesuits approached by sea, through a “path of large fields and deserts, before the village more than a mile, came the main Indians. They took turns to take the priest in a net, and because the path was already short, at each step they took turns so that none of them remained without taking the priest. They were very happy to have that as a great honour and favour. We were received with many feasts.” After this ceremonial reception, the Jesuits carried out their religious practices with the indigenous community (baptisms, Eucharist, solemn masses). The Indians, “after the spiritual feasts, had another dinner according to their tradition and all afternoon they dedicated to their feasts” (Cardim, 1980, p.  155). In another section Cardin refers to three feasts that were celebrated by the Indians in an effusive way. All of them are festivals of Christian tradition, brought to Brazil by the Portuguese and then by the Jesuits: “The first is the bonfires of St. John: on this occasion, his villagers burn in fires. They jump over the bonfires without bothering to burn their clothes (...) The second is the feast of Palm Sunday: it’s beautiful to see, the words, flowers and decorations they use (...). The third one that everyone celebrates the most is Ash Wednesday: on this one, no one is missing, and comes from far away to participate and receive the ashes on his forehead in the form of a cross (...) If it happens that the  The original manuscripts from these sources are preserved in the Archives of the Society of Jesus in Rome and have been later reproduced in modern editions. They are predominantly letters and reports. As we have already emphasized in analyzing the letters, these narratives bring the filter of the observers and writers who elaborated them; the evangelizing objectives are evident in them. 1

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priest doesn’t go to the mildew, they give the ashes to each other, as it happened to an old lady who, lacking the priest, called all the residents of the mildew to the church and gave them the ashes, saying that this is how the Abarés, sc. and that they would not remain in such a solemnity without ashes” (Cardim, 1980, p. 156). The letter of 1556 sent from Bahia do Salvador, to “Our Father Inacio,” by the Jesuit Antonio Blasquez, emphasizes the great affective force exerted by “music and songs” among the indigenous population. He narrates that “around the church, the children said a song, and the other chorus responded with the flutes. It was something very beautiful, maximum for happening among these Indians, who in extreme are attached to music and singing. Even the wizards who call them saints among them, use this way when they want to catch some stuff” (in: Navarro, 1988, p. 188). The letter written by Father Antônio Pires in 1560 describes the visit of Father Luiz da Grã in Bahia, to the village of Espírito Santo, and refers to a reception with “folia de tamboris” (in Navarro, 1988, p. 302). In general, the narratives of parties and celebration present in the Jesuit letters show the occurrence of a successful mixture of festive traditions, the indigenous and the Lusitanian, in a clear communicative effort to persuade the readers about the success of the missionary activities: “all this night, not only on the part of the Indians, with their dances and dances, but also on the part of the Whites, with their drum and revelry, the party was celebrated with great pleasure and joy” (Navarro, 1988, p.  446). And further: “finally, in the middle of this procession there were dances, drums, with their flag, revelry, not only on the part of the Indians but also of the Christians, who were not little rejoicing and rejoicing at the feast. With this order and manner, they went around the village with great satisfaction of all” (Navarro, 1988, p. 452). The procession is interspersed with dances, drums, revelry, and presence of the flag, all elements still present today in Brazilian religious and playful traditions. In the Information from the Province of Brazil to the Father General of the Society of Jesus, written in 1585 by José de Anchieta, among the news reported about the missionary context, the author describes the villages of Bahia and some feasts and jokes that occur there. In the “festivals” of the Indian children, he reports the joint presence of elements of the Portuguese ludic tradition (“they do their dances to the Portuguese with tambourins and violas, with much grace as if they were Portuguese children”) and elements of the indigenous playful tradition (“and when they do these dances they put some diadems on the head of feathers of birds of various colours and of this luck they also make the bows, warp and paint the body, and thus painted and very gallant, in their own way make their parties very enjoyable”) (Anchieta, 1988, p. 412, 417). The use of the tambourin at parties is common in Brazil: it is a small drum that is easy to execute and build. Together with the bagpipe, it was one of the first European instruments to come to Brazil. There are reports of the tambourin enchanting the Tupiniquim Indians since the beginning of colonization (Cascudo, 2003/1999). Anchieta uses the account of these practices to prove the conclusive argument: these children “are already made political and Christian men.” The festive and playful practices are, therefore, a significant element of the Jesuit project of acculturation and Christianization of the natives.

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In the villages of the reductions, the Jesuits sought to replace the festive practices of Guarani tradition with religious celebrations of a Catholic nature. Father Pedro Oñate relates in “the way in which the feast of our Blessed Father Ignatius, patron saint of this reduction, was also conducted, in which he also had luminaries arranged on the walls of our dwelling for lack of (...) windows and galleries. The two suits of chirímias (small indigenous oboes of wood), some of them of reeds, the others of calabashes, were also joyful for these feasts, being more admirable our feasts because of the extreme poverty with which they are made, more than those of other parts” (Oñate, 1620, in: Leonhardt, 1927–1929, p. 93). In their encounter with the Guarani, the Jesuits realized that they had a great love for music and immediately used it to make contacts and then in daily life in the reductions. The Jesuit Antonio Sepp, founder of the São João Batista reduction, writes about it: “There is nothing they like better than music. When I showed them my instruments, the scores brought from Europe and played a little (...), they could not contain themselves with joy” (Sepp, 1973, p. 9). The missionary recounts in his diary that, on feast days, before the solemn mass, and during processions, groups of young Indians dressed in festive clothes performed their dances and, for example, “during the feast of the Body of God, some danced in front of the Blessed Sacrament” (Sepp, 1973, p. 91). The drama, theatre, and opera were heavily exploited by the Jesuits in this context for catechetical and pedagogical purposes. The sources repeat references to the staging of fights and battles between characters in Christian history, especially Moors and Christians, or the Archangel Michael and the dragon. Religious festivals, an important moment in the reduction’s calendar, seem to want to retranslate the ancient tribal festivals, with the aim that in those aspects the civilizing and evangelizing ideal is proposed by the life of the reduction: “The old custom of gathering together is in force on Sundays and major holidays for the instruction of catechism and to hear the sermon preached to them by their Father (...). They celebrated St. Ignatius Day with great solemnity.” On this occasion, there were “popular games, horseback riding exercises, music, triumphal arches ...” (Torres Bollo, 1612, in: Leonhardt, 1927–1929, p. 84). The missionaries recognized the importance of the festivities among their catechumens, understanding that they “serve for honest entertainment in their villages, so that they will not be tempted to flee and so that for the and with delight of soul and body let the things of God enter into them” (Torres Bollo, 1612, in: Leonhardt, 1927–1929, p.  84). They understand the value that music and dances have for the Guarani people. In short, the feasts organized by the missionaries in the indigenous villages had the objective of promoting cultural miscegenation, arousing the participation of all the social actors present and aiming at persuasion with regard to the evangelizing objectives. In this way, they sought to stimulate the process of formation of “Christian social body.” The festive and playful practices were aimed at promoting communicative and persuasive processes, and, as we have already said, were built on knowledge that articulated philosophical and rhetorical psychology, spread in the Western tradition and appropriated by the Jesuits in view of the evangelizing end. We have already

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seen that, according to the precepts of classical rhetoric interpreted in the Christian perspective from Augustine of Hippo, the processes of communication through words, images, and gestures aim to delight, move, and convince through understanding the recipients. The delight experienced by the senses moves the affections, mobilizing the interest, the attention, and the knowledge of those who participated in these practices. From this follows the importance of the emotional involvement observed by the authors of the letters. Expressions found in the letters, such as “they could not be happy,” or showed “extreme affection for music and singing,” reveal the importance and attention given by the narrators to the degree of emotional involvement of the villagers in the parties and games promoted. Participation in these celebrative events activated people’s psychic dynamism, primarily through sensory involvement. This was provided by the provision of sensory stimuli (such as lights, colors, sounds, smells) and by the presentation of figures (images, allegories, masked actors, etc.), movements (dances and gestures), and words. From the perspective of psychological knowledge inspired by the Aristotelian-­ Thomist philosophy still in force at the time, the sensitive soul, responsible for sensitive knowledge, sensitive appetites, and movement, has as its first function the sensation. The sensitive faculties are capable of receiving sensory stimuli, which are updated in sensations. Therefore, the ability to feel is only actuated when the personal and psychic organism is in relation to the sensory object and produces the sensation. Among the five external senses, the sense of sight is especially stimulated. It has been seen that already in Jesuit accounts, on the occasion of the feast of St. John, villages burn with fire because of the bonfires: the light enchants and mobilizes people to jump over it. Hearing is another sense that is evident in the accounts of feasts and jokes. Like light, sound, connected to music, has the power to unite people and get them involved with the proposed cultural or religious practice. The instruments of the flute, tambourin, and viola, in addition to the songs and chants, are elements through which the sound is used in the mobilization of the participants, who because they have “extreme affection for music and chants” get involved intensely. One can also consider the importance of the senses of taste, smell, and touch in celebrations and games. It was frequent during the celebrations, a banquet (with turkeys, chickens, piglets, etc.), through which the aspect of taste and smell is highlighted. The dances, running rings, games in the water, fur, hoop, and pawn show the importance of the body and touch in the activities of festivities and games. Sensations of pleasure, joy, and charm are awakened as diverse senses are explored, generating understanding and positioning in the participants. If, according to Aristotle, all the actions of man seek an end, but all of them together seek an ultimate end, a supreme good, happiness, it is to this ideal that understanding and will must be guided. The perfection of the rational soul is called by Aristotle a dianoetic virtue and has two dynamisms in its relationship with the world: that of turning to the world itself and to worldly things (wisdom), and that of looking at the supreme and necessary truths (wisdom).

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In the narratives of the celebrations that took place in colonial Latin America, the celebrated object (the Eucharistic sacrament, the image of a patron saint or of the Virgin Mary) is part of an order present in the world but that signals a transcendent order (the divine presence). In this way, a constant transition between the invisible and the visible is affirmed. In celebrations, what is presented are sensory stimuli and movement of ephemeral bodies and apparatuses, but what is experienced are sensations, feelings, thoughts, and positions that somehow realize in each one and in the social body the political, cultural, and religious effects targeted. And they refer the participants to the ultimate plan of invisible realities. The psychism is the interface between the bodily and the spiritual dimension of the person. Thus, all the psychic powers of the participants in the celebrations are mobilized by the presentation of the worldly and ultramundane body which is the protagonist of the celebration, at the same time as their physical bodies are involved in the participation of the festive action taking place. The mobilization of the dynamism of the soul aims at capturing adhesion and integration, including at the spiritual level. In this way, each one becomes part of this material, soul, and spiritual organism that is the Christian community of the city or the reduction. To promote such adhesion and integration, understanding, judgment, and prudence are taught and persuaded through the ingenious creations of the party organizers. The effectiveness of this transmission is promoted by the action of a decisive psychic and cultural process: the collective memory.

References Primary Sources Acosta, J. (1984–1987). De procuranda Indorum salute. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 1984-1987. 2 v. (Corpus Hispanorum de Pace 23, 24). Anchieta, J.  S. (1988). Cartas, Informações, Fragmentos Históricos e Sermões. Editoras EDUSP-Itatiaia. Botero, G. (1595). Terza parte delle Relationi universali di Giovanni Botero Beneze terza parte nella quale si descrive qual sia lo stato della religion christiana per il mondo, aggiongendosi in che termine sia il giudaismo, il gentilismo, il mahometismo e tante altre sette d’impietá per l’universo all.ill.mo e ver.mo sig. il sig. Cardinale Borromeo. Compagnia Bresciana. Botero, G. (1596). Delle relationi universali di Giovanni Botero Benese Quarta parte nella quale si dà notitia dello stato in che si trova la religione nel Mondo nuovo e della meravigliosa riduttione di quei popoli nel grembo della Chiesa Christiana. Compagnia Bresciana. Cardim, F. (1980). Do princípio e origem dos índios do Brasil e a Narrativa epistolar de uma viagem e missão jesuítica, em: Cardim, F., Tratados da Terra e Gentes do Brasil, Belo Horizonte, Editoras Editora da Universidade de São Paulo-Editora Itatiaia. Coleção Reconquista do Brasil, n. 13. (Original: 1593). de Montoya, A. R. (1993). The spiritual conquest accomplished by the religious of the Society of Jesus in the Province of Paraguay, Paraná, Uruguay, and Tapé (Clement. J. McNaspy, S.J., John R. Leonard, S.J., and Martin E. Palmer, Trans.). Institute of Jesuit Sources.

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Góis, M. (1593). Commentarii Collegii Conimbricensis Societatis Iesu, in Libros Aristotelis qui Parva Naturalia appellantur. Simão Lopes. Góis, M. (1602). Commentarii Collegii Conimbricensis Societati Iesu, in tres Libros de Anima. Vincenzo Amadino. Góis, M. (1607). Commentarii Collegii Conimbricensis Societatis Iesu, in Libro de Generatione et Corruptione Aristotelis Stagiritae nunc recens omni diligentia recogniti et emendati. Vincenzo Amadino, 760 p. Gusmão, A. S. I. (1685). A arte de criar bem os filhos da idade da puerícia. Deslandes. Leonhardt, C. (1927–1929). Cartas Ânuas de la Provincia del Paraguay, Chile y Tucumán de la Compañia de Jesus. Com advertencia de Emili Ravignani e introducción de P.  Carlos Leonhardt. Talleres, Casa Jacobo Peuser. 2v. (Documentos para la História Argentina, tomos XIX e XX. Iglesia). Navarro, J. A. S. I. (1988). Cartas avulsas. Cartas jesuíticas 1560-1568. Publicações da academia brasileira. Editora Itatiaia-Edusp. Nóbrega, M. S. I. (1988). Cartas do Brasil 1549-1560. Editora Itatiaia—Edusp. Sepp, P.  A. (1973). Viagem às Missões Jesuíticas e Trabalhos Apostólicos. Tradução de A. Reymundo Schneider. Introdução por Wolfgang Hoffmann Harnisch. Editora Martins. 1973. Biblioteca Histórica Brasileira, n. XI. Vieira, A.  S. I. (1993). Sermões, (organizador: Gonçalo Alves). Lello E Irmão. Cinco tomos. (Original publicado em 1679–1748). Vieira, A. S. I. (2001). Sermões. Tomo II. (Organizado por Alcir Pécora). Hedra.

Secondary Sources Aristotle. (2006). De Anima. (apres., trad. e notas M.C.G. dos Reis). São Paulo: Editora 34. (Original século IV a.C). Cadogan, L. (1959). Ayvu Rapyta—Textos míticos de los Mbyá-Guarani del Guairá. Boletim n.0 227 (Antropologia, n.0 5) da Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras da. Cascudo, L. C. (2003/1999). Antologia do Folclore brasileiro. Vol. I. São Paulo: Global. Canclini, N. G. (2005). Hybrid cultures. Strategies for entering and leaving modernity. São Paulo: Universidade de São Paulo. (1959). Ganson, B. (2016). Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, Apostle of the Guaraní. Journal of Jesuit Studies, 3, 197–210. Giard, L. (1995). Les jésuites á la Renaissance. Système éducatif et production du savoir. PUF, Bibliothèque d’histoire des sciences. Giard, L., & Vaucelles, L. (1996). Les jésuites à l’âge baroque, 1540-1640. Millon Historie des jésuites de la Renaissance aux Lumieres. Hanke, L. (1985). La humanidad es una. Fundo Cultura Economica. Longo, N. (1981). De epistola condenda. L’arte di “componer lettere” nel Cinquecento. In A. Quondam (Ed.), Le carte “messaggiere”. Retorica e modelli di comunicazione epistolare. Per um índice dei libri di lettere del Cinquecento. Bulzoni Editore. Massimi, M. (2002). A Psicologia dos jesuítas: Uma contribuição à História das Ideias Psicológicas. Psicologia. Reflexão e Crítica, 14, 625–633. Massimi, M. (2005). Palavras, almas e corpos no Brasil colonial (Vol. 1, p. 330). Edições Loyola. Massimi, M. (2017). “The pilgrim predestined and his brother reprobate”: Jesuit formative paths in the seventeenth century. Journal of Jesuit Studies, 4(1), 56–75. Massimi, M. (2020). Psychological knowledge and practices in Brazilian colonial culture. Springer International Publishing. Mignolo, W. (2011). The darker side of Western modernity: Global futures, decolonial options. Latin America Otherwise Duke University Press. Mignolo, W. (2017). Colonialidade O lado mais escuro da modernidade. Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais, 32(94), 1–18.

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O’Malley, J. (1993). The first Jesuits. Harvard University Press. Pawling, P. C. (2004). De la compositio loci a la Republica de las Letras, Predicación jesuita en el siglo novo hispano. Universidad Ibero Americana—El mundo sobre el papel. Pécora, A. (1999). Cartas à Segunda Escolástica. Em Adauto NOVAES (Org.). A outra margem do Ocidente (pp. 373–414). Companhia das Letras. Santos, J. R. Q. (2012). A regulamentação do trabalho indígena nas Missões Jesuíticas. Revista Latino-Americana de História, 1(3), 24–44—março de 2012 Edição Especial—Lugares da História do Trabalho. Wilde, G. (2003). Poderes del ritual y rituales del poder: un análisis de las celebraciones en los pueblos jesuíticos de Guaraníes. Revista Española de Antropología Americana, 33, 203–229. Wilde, G. (2017). Foundations of a Jesuit Praxis. Missionary Profile, Disputes of Jurisdiction and Modes of Auto-Representation in the Southern Borderlands of the Iberic Empires. In P. A. Fabre & F. Rurale (Eds.), Claudio Aquaviva SJ (1581–1615). A Jesuit Generalship at the Time of the Invention of the Modern Catholicism (pp. 83–108). Institute of Jesuit Sources, Boston College. Wilde, G. (2018). Jesuit missions’ past and the idea of return: Between history and memory. In I. G. Županov (Ed.), The oxford handbook of the Jesuits. Online Publication Date: Oct 2018. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190639631.013.33

Chapter 3

A Comparative History of Psychology During the South American Dictatorships (1964–1985) Fernando Andrés Polanco, Josiane Sueli Beria, Martín Gonzalo Zapico, and Rodrigo Lopes Miranda

Introduction The American continent is subdivided into several regions according to different criteria. From a geographical perspective, it is divided into North America, Central America, and South America. The last of these is known for the homogeneity of its Ibero-American culture and for the similar geopolitical processes that many of its nations have undergone. Through colonization and land expropriation, South America was colonized primarily by Spain and Portugal (both of which reigned on the Iberian Peninsula) and Spanish and Portuguese became the official languages of the continent. Geopolitically, the region went through a process of colonial liberation after Napoleon’s invasion of the Iberian Peninsula (Ocampo, 2017). This process lasted from the end of the first decade of the nineteenth century until the establishment of new republics at the end of the third decade of that same century. After that time, a subtle Anglo-Saxon socioeconomic dependence developed, initially British and later American. These processes of socioeconomic development had a direct impact on South America’s political stability. The influence of Anglo-Saxon countries over South America shifted during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the mid-­ twentieth century, especially after World War II, the United States became the most influential nation in the region. The United States influenced the economy, politics, and education, and an important part of its influence occurred during the military dictatorships that took place during the second part of the twentieth century.

F. A. Polanco (*) · J. S. Beria · M. G. Zapico Universidad Nacional de San Luis—CONICET, San Luis, Argentina R. L. Miranda Universidade Católica Dom Bosco—CNPq, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. C. Ossa et al. (eds.), History of Psychology in Latin America, Latin American Voices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73682-8_3

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Studies of the late 1950s to the end of the 1980s claim that, in a broad sense, the process known as the Cono Sur (Southern Cone, a geopolitical region of South America, including but not limited to Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay) dictatorships held sway over the region. This process was characterized by an economically liberal-­capitalist and socially conservative perspective that decidedly impacted the development of psychology. However, it should be acknowledged that academic disciplines—their subdisciplines and their manner of research and practice—are not isolated. On the contrary, the historical and political context leaves a profound mark on them. This is why, in this chapter, we will revise the conclusion of previous studies of the academic, scientific, and professional consequences for psychology of South America’s dictatorships.

Some Methodological Premises for This Study The historization and problematization of the different aspects of this recent period of time are unfinished because they are marked by politicization and subjectivity (Franco & Levín, 2007). That is why it is worth asking: What is the ethical implication of our social and political commitments as historians to this period in the history of psychology? What should the framework of our research be: society, history, or academia? Especially if we are to reflect on the possible effects of our investigations on the present and on future projections of society and the discipline of psychology. To answer these questions, it will be necessary to first define psychology’s place among the sciences. Of the many possible, we will focus on two extreme and antagonistic definitions. On the one hand, from within a universalist and positivist epistemology, in which knowledge has no history, our contribution is to honor and celebrate the discoveries of great men. On the other hand, from within a dialectic epistemology, we know that a reconstruction of the development of psychology must be interwoven with a reconstruction of social development. So, our function will be to rewrite history in order to define our identity, which will help guarantee our sovereignty over our future. As Martín-Baró stated (1987/1992): A science, to be historical, should look both into the past and into the future and, thus, cannot make do with partially reconstructing what is given but must make an effort to build that which is not given but should be—not the facts but what is “to be done.” In other words, psychology as a science must focus more on building the truth of Latin American man, rather than finding it. Scientific prediction, in the best sense, must revolve around this and not so much around saying what will happen on the basis of current circumstances. The sharing of dialectic knowledge should enable what must take place (p. 15).

Thus, it is possible that one of the main characteristics of a critical history of psychology may be re-politicization, in addition to rigorous archival research and sophisticated hermeneutic analysis (Harris, 1997). It is clear that, for those of us who advocate this model, we can no longer work from a naive perspective or from

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a perspective that praises the discipline. A critical history should connect accuracy of information to a critical commitment guided by relevant aspects of our countries’ sociocultural development (Slaney, 2020). And such is the context in which the political, institutional, and social commitments of psychology historians must be read. The current reconstruction will be based on two methodological pillars: (a) the development of a critical historiographic revision based on primary and secondary sources, both written and oral, and within the framework of a systematic reconstruction of academic dimensions of psychology during the period of the dictatorships (1956–1976), and (b) a comparison of the diverse processes observed in different countries in relation to said academic dimensions, with the aim of achieving a heterogeneous perspective capable of demonstrating the historical complexity in which these phenomena were entangled and that modified the history of psychology in our region. Of the 13 countries in the region, we will focus on the recent military histories of Paraguay (1954), Bolivia (1964), Brazil (1964), Chile (1973), Uruguay (1973), and Argentina (1976), since these initiated “Operation Condor.” In the beginning, these were the major dictatorships in the Cono Sur and were assisted by La Escuela de las Americas under the Cold War pretext of protecting national security against any political process that showed an independentist, left-wing nationalist, or communist character (Avery, 2020; Tartakoff, 2013; Calloni, 2001; Garcia, 2013b). Although the first two dictatorships occurred between 1954 and 1964, a regional process of establishing dictatorships was finally consolidated in the 1970s. These dictatorial governments were dismantled in the 1980s. Even though our research will refer to certain aspects of the early years, it focuses on the culminating point of the process of national organization against the so-called subversion.

Some Important Characteristics of the Cono Sur Dictatorships These dictatorships took place in a regional Latin American framework of dictatorial technocratic governments. A joint plan of persecution and disappearances was carried out under Operation Condor. These dictatorships were also known for profoundly altering sociocultural structures. According to their supporters, these dictatorships would facilitate proper social and economic development (Rodríguez & Soprano, 2009). This is why: There are some similar characteristics in all technocratic militarism such as its distrust of any personal leadership; its dislike of political ideologies, politicians, and political parties; and its opposition to any mass movement. The army was against any type of class analysis of its politics, which was always interpreted as being favorable to the common welfare. The country had only to support the technically correct politics implemented by a professional elite of honest patriots (Sotelo, 1977, p. 89).

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An emphasis was also placed on the antagonistic and contradictory character of these governments’ statements. For instance, in official speeches, the military advocated for a Western, modern, and efficient state; free market economic policies; and establishment of a modern consumerist society. However, these claims were in clear opposition to their support of a traditionalist culture based on the importance of family, national identity, and Catholic morality. This last stance is plainly visible in the totalitarian aspects of their regimes, which displayed xenophobic and antisemitic features and disrespected constitutional principles, a fundamental part of any modern state (Ryan, 2005). This political model is also known as state terrorism. State terrorist regimes rely on violence with the intent of producing a psychological state of terror and generating social disorder that must be controlled by force. It promoted a maximum justification of so-called counterinsurgency programs, military intervention, and psychological warfare, employing applied social sciences, psychoanalysis, and even cybernetics against popular movements. State terrorist regimes were supported by the ideology of the National Security Doctrine, which manifested in some countries as civil-military coups, as was the case in Brazil and Paraguay, or as clerical-civil-military coups, as in Argentina (Garcia, 2013a, b; Grinsvall & Lora Fuentes, 2012; Pierre-Charles, 1978; Silveira Bauer, 2007). In this context, South American dictatorships can be recognized by the different characteristics of their state terrorist regimes. The main tool of these regimes was the dissemination of fear through the institutional exercise of physical and psychological coercion (Hur, 2012). New institutions were built and old ones reborn, ones that had been responsible for kidnapping, torture, and disappearances, such as the Department of Political and Social Order (DOPS) in Brazil. State actions extended beyond their own borders, as regimes collaborated with one another for the purposes of fighting “internal enemies,” that is, their own citizens. One mechanism of this collaboration between South American dictatorships was joint military training, which led to the mutual support of the violence and repressive activities within each country. Furthermore, these collaborations were legitimized by the proposal of an “ideological frontier” anchored in the National Security Doctrine, creating the notion of an “internal enemy” common to every country (Silveira Bauer, 2007). Hence, such ideological borders defined the contours of the nations of the Cono Sur. It is in counterinsurgency courses taught at US military academies that the collaborations between the Argentine, Brazilian, Chilean, and Uruguayan militaries were established in the 1960s. These practices intensified during Operation Condor, which was conceived of and organized by Manuel Contreras, head of the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), Augusto Pinochet’s information agency. Contreras traveled to Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, Paraguay, and the United States to expose his repressive supranational project, with the purpose of eliminating communism and defending Western society. At the Primer Encuentro de Trabajo de Inteligencia Nacional, held in Santiago (Chile, November 1975), delegates discussed the necessity of centralizing any information either directly or indirectly connected to subversive elements. Delegations from Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay

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attended the meeting; the Brazilian delegation merely observed, joining the operation in 1976 (Calloni, 2001; Silveira Bauer, 2007).

 raining, Research, and Academic Development in the Context T of the Cono Sur Dictatorships As highlighted in this chapter above, the dictatorships have a major and highly significant impact on universities, which affected the programs responsible for educating psychologists. We considered the circumstances of the geopolitical and institutional aspects of the higher education system as it was immediately before the establishment of the dictatorships. Some South American countries concentrated psychological training in their capitals or in one or two representative universities in other parts of the country. For example, there were Paraguay’s Universidad Nacional de Asunción and la Universidad Católica Nuestra Señora de la Asunción and Uruguay’s Universidad de la República, Universidad Católica del Uruguay, and Universidad ORT.  In other countries, such as Chile and Bolivia, there was a mix of private and public universities. In the former, there were the public Universidad de Chile and at least five private institutions, including Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. In the latter, three public universities were located in different parts of Bolivia: Universidad Mayor, Real y Pontificia de San Francisco Xavier de Chuquisaca (Sucre), and Universidad Mayor de San Andrés (La Paz). Universidad Católica Boliviana San Pablo was founded after the military coup d’état. Finally, in Argentina and Brazil, the number of higher educational institutions was much larger, relatively speaking. There were 25 national public universities and 22 private in Argentina and 36 public and 13 private institutions in Brazil. This is the context in which government intrusion in the universities occurred. As can be seen already, consideration of the patterns of intrusion by the dictatorships and their impacts should not obscure the more idiosyncratic and heterogenous aspects of each case.

The Case of Paraguay In Paraguay, though Alfredo Stroessner (1954–1989) came to power in 1954, the repressiveness of his regime only became clear in 1959. The circumstance that provided this clarity was the demand of a group of university students and parliamentarians for greater public liberties. The state answered their demands with violence, which established a pattern of response. In addition, the opportunities for making social demands and for civic and intellectual debates were drastically restricted. Within the milieu of the universities, debate topics were severely limited; the public

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university, especially, suffered from vigorous and strict control (Caballero, 2019; Garcia, 2013a, b). During the 1970s and 1980s stringent control of the educational system, and universities in particular, continued. In a state of uninterrupted siege, without any evidence of its necessity, the state turned a tool for the prevention of international conflict, armed invasion, or serious internal conflict into a repressive weapon. A paradigmatic example was the 1976 intrusion into Cristo Rey, a Jesuit primary and secondary school, because the school had been influenced by Paulo Freire (1921–1997), one of the most critical and liberating Brazilian educators of his day. To the Paraguayan Government, this made Cristo Rey a locus of subversion (Freire, 1985; Garcia, 2013b; González Delvalle, 1998, 2011). Another example is the case of Instituto Paraguayo de Cultura Ignacio A. Pane-­ Blas Garay. In the 1970s the institute held lectures that clearly opposed Stroessner’s dictatorship. The lectures included several social dissidents, particularly intellectuals and active militants who had been removed from government administration because their views did not align with the dominant political power (Garcia, 2013a). One lecturer was Epifanio Méndez Fleita (1917–1985), author of Psicología del colonialismo: Imperialismo yanqui-brasileño en el Paraguay (Méndez, 1971). Though not trained as a psychologist, Fleita’s oeuvre is considered one of the most important precursors of political psychology in the Cono Sur. His book explains the development of Paraguay’s economic dependence, which began with the War of the Triple Alliance (1864–1870), and how such dependence is a common feature of Paraguayan history. The book also describes the actions undertaken by Brazil, the UK, and the United States in this connection (Garcia, 2013a, b). Undergraduate psychology programs were established in Paraguay during the period of repression, constraining psychologists’ training opportunities. The first program was established in 1963 at Universidad Católica and the second in 1967 at Universidad Nacional de Asunción. These two undergraduate programs made psychology an autonomous discipline in Paraguay and, until 1989, they were the only two such programs in the country (Garcia, 2009, 2015). There is evidence that clinical psychology was the predominant focus, and particularly psychoanalysis, which was prevalent until the mid-1980s; this suggests that psychological training was fundamentally oriented to producing graduates to operate as part of an independent, liberal profession (Garcia, 2009, 2013b, 2015). Basic science was secondary, which impacted the consolidation of psychology as a scientific discipline in Paraguay. In addition, the military regime severely restricted academic foreign exchange, further impacting the development of psychology and scientific research. In 1989, the restoration of democracy positively affected the universities. New undergraduate psychology programs were created and meetings were organized that promoted analysis of the political and social aspects of Paraguay (Garcia, 2009, 2013a, 2015). For instance, 1er. Congreso Internacional—Salud psicosocial, Cultura y Democracia en América Latina occurred in November 1992. The number of opportunities for psychological training increased from 1996 onwards, and now, there are approximately 40 undergraduate psychology programs located throughout nearly the entire country.

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The Case of Bolivia In Bolivia, the dictatorship lasted from 1964 until 1982. The military coup d’état occurred after one of the first popular insurrections in Latin America—Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario (MNR). The first military dictator was René Barrientos (1919–1969) who implemented a model of state capitalism with a paramilitary apparatus (Palomera & Norambuena, 2018). The Psychopedagogy Department of Universidad Católica Boliviana (UCB) was founded under these conditions. The department was organized by Italian psychologists and was later converted into a psychology department. Its founder and first director was Alberto Conessa, who ran the undergraduate psychology program for the university beginning in 1971 (Aguilar, 1983; Palomera & Norambuena, 2018; Vía Orellana, 2000). Another military coup d’état occurred in 1971. The coup was led by Hugo Banzer who favored US influence in the Cono Sur. As soon as his regime took power, the number of political prisoners and exiles increased. Among the latter were several psychologists and psychiatrists, including Alberto Conessa. Banzer’s dictatorship ignored the Constitution and other pivotal legislation. Repressive agents dominated the country, creating a period of violence in which freedoms of expression, association, political affiliation, and trade union organization were restricted. A thorough investigation into the university system reveals that the impacts were massive. Between 1971 and 1972, the universities were closed and some scientific societies, such as Sociedad de Psiquiatría, Neurología y Neurocirugía, were dissolved (Aguilar, 1983; Mesa et  al., 2003; Palomera & Norambuena, 2018; Schulmeyer, 2013). Violence against faculty members and students increased. One emblematic event was the execution in the public square of several students of Universidad de Santa Cruz. From 1972 onwards, undergraduate psychology programs and other societies and centers for research were restructured. Pierre Carlo Perotto became head of the undergraduate psychology program at UCB in this year, and Calderón Soria reorganized the Psychology Department at Universidad Mayor de San Andres (UMSA), becoming its head soon after. Another example is the restructuring of Sociedad de Psiquiatría, Neurología y Neurocirugía, which was irregularly active until 1973 (Aguilar, 1983). At UCB in 1974, through the Department of Psychology, Centro de Investigación y Orientación Psicológica (CIOP) was created, with Ricardo Castañón as director. In the same year, social psychology was introduced into the curriculum of the department, a course of study absent from previous programs. In addition, a training program for psychometric technicians was created. In 1976 an undergraduate psychology program was created at Universidad Mayor de San Simón de Cochabamba, and Colegio de Psicólogos—the governing body for the psychological profession in Bolivia—was founded. However, the latter organization would only be authorized by the Ministry of Health in 1979, making it legal at last (Aguilar, 1983; Schulmeyer, 2013; Vía Orellana, 2000). Finally, in 1978 the program at Universidad Autónoma Juan Misael Saracho de Tarija was created. This time period

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is also marked by an intense development of behavioral psychology through the activities of Erick Roth (Aguilar, 1983; Vía Orellana, 2000). In 1978 Banzer was ousted, commencing a period of instability in Bolivia that lasted until 1982. For instance, during this time, nine individuals served as president, and a military coup took place in 1980 organized by Luis García Meza. This coup d’état also impacted the development of psychology and psychiatry, destabilizing it. The Conferencia Episcopal ended the undergraduate psychology program at UCB, while within the same period, the government shut down the Colégio de Psicólogos. The government also ended the undergraduate psychology program at Universidad Mayor de San Andrés (UMSA) for 2 years (1979–1980). In 1980, René Calderón Soria (who in 1959 became one of the first Bolivians to be a university chair in psychology at UMSA) was forced into the position by the government. Additionally, several psychologists and psychiatrists were exiled and others, faced with the chaos, voluntarily left the country (Aguilar, 1983; Martinez & Pinto, 2007; Schulmeyer, 2013; Vía Orellana, 2000). For psychology and psychiatry, a more stable situation began in 1981. In this year, the activities of Sociedad de Psiquiatría, Neurología y Neurocirugía were resumed under the presidency of Aldo Strauch. Colégio de Psicólogos also reopened under the guidance of José E. Candia. However, in 1983, an undergraduate psychology program was only offered at Universidad de San Simón de Cochabamba. Psychology departments in other universities were suppressed due to allegations concerning their political views, though some psychology courses were taught in other disciplines (Aguilar, 1983). One of the consequences of this governmental control of public universities was the establishment of undergraduate psychology programs in private institutions in order to supply the market with personnel with training in psychology (Schulmeyer, 2013). Therefore, training in psychology occurred predominantly at private universities. There was also a lack of job opportunities in psychology. This meant that Colégio de Psicólogos and Asociación Boliviana de Análisis del Comportamiento served as the pivotal agencies for the scientific and professional training of psychologists. However, this impacted the focus of psychological expertise in Bolivia, which was largely clinical and industrial. Due to constraints, there was a lack of psychologists and psychiatrists dedicated to research, and so, scientific publications were characterized by a lack of continuity. Scientific journals and publications were mainly the result of the personal effort of individuals rather than professional associations (Aguilar, 1983).

The Case of Brazil In Brazil (1964–1985), University Reform (Law No. 5540/68) was passed a few years after the establishment of military dictatorship. The law froze sources of income for public universities while promoting training in private institutions. Much conservative and repressive legislation was approved during this regime, including

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regulation that suspended students and teachers involved in “subversive activities” for up to 3  years. The military presence in public universities was constant. Intelligence agents infiltrated disguised as students, particularly in social science and humanities departments, which were believed to include many faculty and students belonging to organizations considered subversive by the regime (Conselho Federal de Psicologia, 2013; Coimbra, 1995). The first Brazilian undergraduate psychology programs were created in 1953 at two Catholic institutions: Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUC-RS) and Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-RJ). The first such program at a public university began in 1954 at Universidade de São Paulo (UPS). After legislation was passed regulating psychology training and degrees (Law No. 4.119/62), several other undergraduate programs were created, but they were concentrated in the southeastern states of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Minas Gerais. The creation of these programs was connected to University Reform. New universities were established and old ones rebuilt. The establishment of universities helped to promote the kind of society idealized by the regime while also appearing to respond to several social demands, especially insufficient human resources to meet the demands of the labor market, claims that universities were not satisfying market demands, and technological development (Motta, 2014). So, for a short time Brazil’s experience during this period was uncharacteristic of the region. The urban middle class of Brazil increasingly demanded the expansion of higher education, impacting public and private education systems. In addition, the psychologization of many aspects of social and political life in Brazil led to the expansion of the programmatic use of psychology. According to Coimbra (1999) and Mancebo (1999), the expansion of the middle class during the military dictatorship created the notion that social difficulties were the problem of individuals rather than structures. Therefore, the development of Brazilian psychology emphasized theory and diagnostic and clinical application (Conselho Federal de Psicologia, 2013). In this context, undergraduate psychology programs represented 66% of student enrollment at private universities as enrollment in history, philosophy, and sociology decreased (Coimbra, 1995). This impacted the professionalization of psychology. For instance, in 1974 there were 895 registered psychologists, but 4 years later there were 12,139. Another example is that in 1982—20  years after regulation regarding the profession of psychology and how professionals were trained (Law No. 4.119/62)—psychologists were among the highest number of graduates, surpassed only by education, administration, and law. Though more research is needed on the topic, there is evidence that this expansion was the result of inadequate training of psychologists and for the most part with professors who were themselves not psychologists (Margotto & Souza, 2017).

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The Case of Chile It is important to note that in Chile, the institutional processes of representative government were more stable over time than they were in other countries of the Cono Sur. Thus, the military coup (1973–1990) that breached Chile’s constitution was an unusual event. The major universities of Chile are located in the capital, Santiago. This consolidation of the higher education system facilitated governmental intrusion into the universities, which were considered, by many in the government of the time, to be subversive niches. According to General Augusto Pinochet, the university system was in unconditional service to Marxism, which had attempted to establish itself in Chile. To control the universities, the government appointed new rectors to implement subtler and more systematic suppression of subversive elements (Errázuriz, 2017; Garretón, 2015). The dictatorship had a profound impact on Universidad de Chile and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, where many students, faculty, and staff were investigated for their sympathies with Salvador Allende’s Partido Popular. For instance, on September 11, 1973, suspected sympathizers were taken to Estadio Nacional de Chile to be interrogated, where some were tortured and others murdered. Only two universities had any training in psychology in 1973: Universidad de Chile and la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. It should be noted that they were the most heavily impacted during the beginning of the military regime. Thus, by interfering with these two universities, expelling students and professors committed to the constitutional government of Salvador Allende, a fundamental change in psychological training occurred in Chile. Psychology would be subjected to a kind of great ideological corset, which in some ways changed the psychologist’s profile: education narrowed to become more about training psychology professors than professionals or researchers due to restrictions on the scope of research and professional practice (Departamento de Psicología de la Universidad Católica Silva Henriquez, 2005).

The Case of Uruguay In Uruguay (1973–1985), Decree No. 921/73 interfered with the operations of Universidad de la República in several ways, including restricted access and movement inside the university and changes to the curriculum of various undergraduate programs. These changes led to numerous protests, which ended with hundreds of students being imprisoned and suspended and with a large number of professors and students going into exile because of the impossibility of continuing in that institution (Bralich, 1991). At that time, psychological training in Uruguay consisted mainly of two programs at Universidad de la República. The first was an undergraduate program in psychology in the Faculty of the Humanities and Sciences; the second was

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connected to the training of technicians in child psychology, which was taught in the Faculty of Medicine. Both emphasized political and social debate, focusing on how psychology and other disciplines could serve the demands of the most vulnerable sectors of societies. This focus was interpreted by the military dictatorship as illustrative of their subversive character. Therefore, these programs were closed in 1973. Two years later, a 4-year psychological training program was created at the University School of Psychology [Escuela Universitaria de Psicología], which included a 2-year specialized track in organizational, clinical, educational, and experimental psychology and another 2-year track that led to the awarding of a doctoral degree. In 1976 the military government reopened the child psychology technician program at Escuela de Tecnología Médica. Thus, there were two possibilities for anyone seeking training in psychology during the years of dictatorship. Either option led to the same result: one became a professor who was also basically a physician—there were some psychiatrists—appointed by the government. These designations did not much account for the content of their training but was based on their ideological agreement with the regime (Baroni, 2006; Picos, 1998; Scarlatta, 1998).

The Case of Argentina In Argentina (1976–1983), interference with the universities had important precedents, such as the well-known The Night of the Long Batons (La noche de los bastones largos). One night in July of 1966, students and professors were violently removed from different higher education institutions under the dictatorship’s self-­ proclaimed Revolución Argentina, headed by Juan Carlos Onganía. The event concluded with the firing, resignation, and exile of many members of the academic community. It should be noted that, in the year before the last military coup, many intellectuals and academics left the country because of repeated attacks and constant threats from the paramilitary group known as Alianza Anticomunista Argentina, popularly called Triple A, and because of the systematic persecution initiated by the state during María Estela Martinez de Peron’s administration. Extensive research on the topic reveals a rather obvious conclusion: by the time of the coup d’état, military intelligence and other organization of systematic repression had already prearranged many of the bureaucratic procedures necessary for their success. Therefore, some hours after the first military report on the eve of March 24, 1976, the university interventions were enacted, and before noon, the first severances and expulsions of professors and students had already been ordered. It is estimated that, during the period of the dictatorial regime, at least 31 psychology faculty members disappeared. Specifically, 1 university was closed and 26 were encroached upon and 96 university programs were closed; a new enrollment system was introduced at every public university that reduced the enrollment rate by an average of 25%. Government funding of university education fell by 45%. Apart from psychology, social science

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programs were also closed, including sociology, anthropology, and, especially, social work (Buchbinder, 2012; Equipo de Educación del Comité de Solidaridad con el Pueblo Argentino, 1978). The National Committee on Missing Persons (Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas) (CONADEP) established that 21% of those missing were students. In 1977 Juan José Catalán, a Minister of Education in the Argentinian dictatorial regime, sent an informative leaflet to all educational institutions called “Subversion in the educational context (Let’s meet our enemies).” The leaflet inculcated a number of distorted concepts about national identity, war, education, and other themes relevant to the social constitution of a country. For example, it used a concept of internal ideological war to justify the disappearance and murder of people who had opposed the regime. As is stated in the leaflet: This is the way communism makes war and sometimes defeats the West, though it is stronger, as we still clung to the nostalgic illusion of peace. … “Peace is the continuation of war by other means.” ... While for the Western world war is an extreme situation, the communist bloc perpetually engages in it, disguised under subtle veils (Anónimo, 1977, p. 11).

Undergraduate psychology programs at public universities, which had been in operation since the mid-1950s, suffered partial and definitive enrollment closures. For instance, Universidad Nacional de La Plata experienced a freeze on new revenue, whereas Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, and Universidad de Buenos Aires experienced partial registration closures. Undergraduate psychology programs were closed at both public (Universidad Provincial de Mar del Plata and Facultad de Antropología Escolar in Mendoza) and private (Universidad Católica de Córdoba) institutions. The impact of the Argentinian dictatorship on both public and private systems was long-lasting. Soon after the restoration of democracy, the rebuilt Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata reopened its program, but the Universidad Católica de Córdoba did so only in the twenty-first century. Undergraduate psychology programs in the cities of San Luis and Rosario continued to operate though with some restrictions. During the dictatorial regime, a quota system was implemented in many public universities and undergraduate programs to reduce funding and, thereby, discourage students from pursuing higher education, with the ultimate aim of counteracting the development of subversive movements. Regardless of the details, the government’s interventions completed, in a period of 2–3 years, its goal of reconfiguring important ideological pursuits of academic curricula and rewriting the material used by these institutions. These processes, so full of explicit and implicit contradictions, led to the emergence of internal struggles at university institutions (with complex social, political, and ideological structures) where denunciations of faculty, staff, and students prospered. Denunciators were feared and despised and, in Paraguay, were labeled pyrague (from the Guarani for hairy feet, implying stealth). These sinister characters were ubiquitous and were the eyes and ears of the dictator. Any line of questioning that suggested delegitimizing an aspect of the regime would be labeled subversive without qualification (Garcia, 2013a, b). The universities were veiled by fear and persecution, which led to acts of cruelty for the sake of promotion or personal benefit and what could be defined as intellectual corruption.

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In opposition to all of this, there were acts of heroism and the practice of human solidarity. Many people put their integrity and that of their loved ones at risk to help those who had been persecuted by the regime. This is evinced by innumerable documents and witness accounts. The dictatorial regime especially targeted and persecuted anyone associated with political militancy, especially progressive or leftist groups. As a result, many faculty member and students disassociated themselves from any such activities, without regard for their worth or prestige.

Refuge and Exile in Psychology People in Brazil and Paraguay sought refuge in Uruguay and Argentina, whereas people in Bolivia fled to Peru and Chile. Chile received the highest number of refugees under Allende’s administration, following the 1951 Convention, which was ratified by a 1967 United Nations (UN) protocol that granted the convention important legal justification. Furthermore, progressive causes in Chile united. It is estimated that of the 13,000 officially recognized expatriates living in Chile in 1973, 5000 were from Latin America and had settled there as refugees (Garcés & Nicholls, 2005; Palomera & Norambuena, 2018). After Chile’s military coup, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, connected to the UN, sent General Secretary Luis Reque to visit the official detention and refugee centers in Chile. He claimed that the refugee centers held approximately 150 people, predominantly Brazilian, Bolivian, and Uruguayan, and that they were protected by the UN and the Red Cross (CIDH, 1974). Furthermore, many academicians, intellectuals, and political leaders who were able to evade detention during the first hours of the coup fled to Argentina or sought refuge in various embassies in order to apply for asylum. In the beginning, some psychologists settled in Mendoza, Argentina, where university rectors or chancellors (rectores) like Mauricio Lopez tried to accommodate these professionals, providing them with courses to teach and avenues for participating in the life of the university. During Argentina’s great political upheaval between 1973 and 1976, the restoration of democracy opened up the country as a place of transit and militancy. However, Perón’s death and the formation of paramilitary groups led to shootings, missing people, and threats of violence from 1975 onwards. Many who had immigrated after Chile’s military coup left to seek refuge elsewhere. Mexico, more or less constantly, received more exiles than any other country during the first dictatorships. Exiles settled down there mainly because of its receptive politics, the language, and their rapid integration into higher education institutions willing to hire them. Many renowned Bolivian intellectuals, like psychologist Marcos Dominich, were active in a variety of fields at Universidad Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM). Others were welcomed into Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (UAP). During this period, the Committee for the Defense of Democracy (Comité de Defensa de la Democracia or CONADE) was created to help persecute Bolivians arriving in Mexico (Andújar de Jesús, 2013).

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Another important and sizeable group of professionals who migrated to Mexico came from Argentina. They were welcomed at UNAM and UAP as well as Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM) (Yankelevich, 2010). In particular, renowned psychoanalysts who migrated to Mexico entered the field of psychology (Blanck-Cereijido, 2000). Some sophisticated Argentinian psychoanalysts also fled to Brazil (Coimbra, 1995). In Brazil, the apparatus of repression had weakened. To demonstrate that its regime respected human rights, the Brazilian Government admitted professionals and other exiles from the brutal dictatorships of Argentina, Paraguay, and Chile. Colombia also received Argentinian psychologists, particularly psychologists from Universidad Nacional de San Luis, who had forged bonds with Colombian psychologists while training in the field of behavioral psychology (Calabresi & Polanco, 2008). Finally, we should mention that some important intellectuals, some of whom were psychologists, migrated to France, Switzerland, and other countries outside of Latin America that welcomed political refugees. However, these cases were isolated and formed no permanent diaspora. To conclude this section, another aspect of exile related to psychology needs to be discussed, that is, its psychological consequences. Beyond malaise, the fact that forced exile can be felt as a choice by the person exiled generates feeling of guilt and of having betrayed those who died, a dilemma known as “survivor syndrome,” a feeling of guilt for having survived when others did not (Grinsvall & Lora Fuentes, 2012).

Torture, Disappearance, and Murder of Psychologists As a method of political repression, torture cannot be quantified in psychological terms, yet it involves processes of this nature. Dictatorial regimes used elements of physical and psychological torture in order to coerce citizens into submission. Instrumental aggression attempts to depersonalize a victim, specifically to alter the victim’s identity, making depersonalization a more fearful prospect than being disappeared. It is the fear of nonexistence as opposed to the fear of what might await one after death. A mixture of psychological techniques has been used in systems of repression. Although the cases are isolated, it is possible to find statements of psychologists and psychoanalysts protesting their part in torture (CODESECH, 1987; Coimbra, 1995; Luco, 2016; Martinez & Pinto, 2007). Psychological torture, including the disappearance of students and professionals, can be considered one of the most terrible practices of the dictatorships. We can cite several infamous cases of torture, murder, or disappearance: Argentine psychologists Beatriz Perozio (first president of the Federation of Psychologists of the Argentine Republic [FEPRA]) and Irene Orlando; Brazilian psychology students Marilena Villas Boas Pinto and Aurora Maria Nascimento Furtado; psychologist Pauline Philipe Reichstul, native of Prague and survivor of World War II who was tortured and murdered in Brazil; or Juvelino Andrés Gularte, a psychology student in Uruguay who disappeared in Argentina. For reasons of space, it is not possible to

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name all of the hundreds of psychology students and psychologists who were so unfortunate. We recognize that such an omission is unforgivable. We decided to list some of their names because doing so gives a kind of representative identity to each and every one of those who cannot be named. Names are more easily understood than numbers (Comissão de Familiares de Mortos e Desaparecidos Políticos, Instituto de Estudo da Violência do Estado, 1995; Comissão Nacional da Verdade, 2014). The account, discovered in Paraguayan documents, of psychology student Liliana Inés Goldenberg, from Buenos Aires, demonstrates the close coordination between Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. In 1980 Liliana and her partner were intercepted by Brazilian police aboard a boat returning to Argentina. Surrounded by the police and Argentinian customs agents, they knelt in front of a group of religious people, and after shouting that they were being persecuted for their political views and that they preferred death to torture, they ingested cyanide and died (Comissão de Familiares de Mortos e Desaparecidos Políticos, Instituto de Estudo da Violência do Estado, 1995; Comissão Nacional da Verdade, 2014). The murders that occurred in these dictatorships do not end with these stories. The psychological consequences of torture are various and include suicide. Such was the case with Roberto Moreira, a Bolivian who committed suicide in Mexico in 1973. Another emblematic case is that of Solange Lourenço Gomes, who studied psychology at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). Arrested in 1971, she suffered psychological stress and was detained until 1973. She graduated with a medical degree in 1981 and was interested in working on the psychological consequences of her torture, but ended up committing suicide at the age of 35 (Comissão de Familiares de Mortos e Desaparecidos Políticos, Instituto de Estudo da Violência do Estado, 1995; Comissão Nacional da Verdade, 2014). In a sense, these circumstances influenced the production of psychology in the region; there were a number of publications on the psychological effects of torture (Arestivo, 1993; Arriola-Socol, 1993), the social reintegration of torture victims (Riera & Corvalán, 1993), and the psychosocial health of returnees (Caballero & Torres de Gutiérrez, 1993), among others (Garcia, 2013a).

Final Considerations The main goal of this chapter was to review the different studies that highlight the impacts of dictatorship on the development of psychology in South America. However, it is important to clarify that it is a limited presentation of a larger narrative: this chapter did not discuss identical sets of features for each country or allot the same amount of space. The development of these regimes within each country was complex and was no brief incident. In Paraguay and Bolivia, dictatorship was quite lengthy. In the case of Bolivia, the country suffered a number of subsequent setbacks after the end of the dictatorial regime. Chile and Uruguay were under dictatorial regimes for a shorter period of time, and Brazil and Argentina for longer.

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Argentina was the last Cono Sur country to throw off its dictatorial regime, but its story is particularly complex because of the extent of state interference in the universities and the idiosyncratic, decentralized organization of the Argentinian system. It should be noted that the Argentinian dictatorship was one of the fiercest in the Cono Sur, with approximately 30,000 disappearances. The Brazil dictatorial regime, despite its longer duration, was more centralized and acted at a national level. Therefore, the histories of these regions had to be equally varied. Even with this caveat, it is important to highlight aspects of similarity in the narratives. Firstly, all of the regimes can be broadly labeled as economically liberal-­ capitalist, socially conservative, and headed by the military. Secondly, every regime impacted the development of university systems, restricted debate, and advocated some professions over others. Turning to psychology, two common aspects should be noted. Firstly, the theoretical framework and topics of psychological research were restricted. In every country, research was developed predominantly in public universities; thus these institutions, their laboratories, and their materials were under the strict regulation of the dictatorships. In both public and private institutions, research with social applications or implications was suppressed or, at least, controlled. We cannot assume that scientific journals were the primary vehicle of communication for scientists in the Cono Sur. However, it seems that one of the consequences of those regimes was to interfere with psychological publications. This is particularly clear in Bolivia. Psychological associations generally were also affected by closures, interference, or alterations of higher educational institutions, as they no longer fulfilled the public function of regulating the activities of psychologists. Thus, all dictatorships negatively impacted the production of indigenous psychological knowledge. Secondly, every dictatorship negatively impacted undergraduate training in psychology, especially through university closures or permanent dissolution of several undergraduate psychology programs in both private and public institutions. Besides those closures, the ideological control of curricula occurred concurrent with the use of terror, which often led to self-censoring and mutual distrust among faculty. Psychological training at the time expressly imported European and North American theories, among which were the hegemonic school of French and English psychoanalysis and variations on behaviorism from the United States. These influences steered professional training in the direction of liberal performance, especially clinical psychology but also industrial and occupational psychology. An analysis of the history of our discipline reveals that the democracy is still flimsy. In particular, democracies, when they face political pressure from more powerful countries or economic and social problems, are prone to destabilization. Thus, we should contrast the history of psychology of the Cono Sur with the current state of psychology, in order to recognize the importance of maintaining the active participation of our discipline in the defense of the rule of law, which is guaranteed by democracy. To this end, we must recognize that psychology continues to feel the effects of the dictatorship period. Some of these effects are consequences that have not yet been overcome, whereas others are psychological impacts from which citizens are still suffering. For example, the mothers and grandmothers of the victims

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of Plaza de Mayo continue to search for their missing loved ones in Argentina. In many countries, those responsible for crimes against humanity have not been tried, and some cases have been limited to the payment of compensation, which also impacts survivors. Finally, it is essential to emphasize the summary character of this chapter and the limitations that implies. A proper accounting of the complexity of this historical moment merits a separate study of each country. Each of the sections of this chapter could be a study of its own. This account is an attempt to demonstrate the importance of further research on the topic.

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Chapter 4

The Development of Psychology in Latin America: Geopolitical Contexts and Psychosocial Processes Walter L. Arias Gallegos, Ramón León, and Mitchell Clark

Introduction The history of psychology has followed a course of development in which celebratory and presentism perspectives have given way to sociological and historic studies, supporting the theoretical and epistemological maturity of the history of psychology as a specialty (Fierro, 2016). In this scenario, the contributions of the sociology of knowledge and the history of science have been crucial in advocating for objectivity and greater methodological rigor in historiographic research (Polanco & Fierro, 2015). From the history of science, the work of Kuhn (2006) has raised a number of questions that challenge the scientific status of psychology, while Lakatos (2011) positions the historical work as a rational activity that depends on the philosophy as far as epistemology. Both cases have favored a process of searching for answers in philosophy, history, and epistemology. In this way, the history of psychology is presented to us as an interpretive activity with a deep epistemological value and a critical vision of history, psychology, and science. On the other hand, the sociology of science has encouraged a more externalist vision of history because it does not develop in a contextual vacuum. In this sense, authors such as Alberto Merani (1976) have written a history of psychology with critical anchoring in Marxism that reviews the historical facts and the theories of most relevant authors, emphasizing the epistemological matrix that animates their

W. L. Arias Gallegos (*) Catholic University of San Pablo, Arequipa, Peru R. León Ricardo Palma University, Lima, Peru M. Clark Mount Royal University, Calgary, AB, Canada © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. C. Ossa et al. (eds.), History of Psychology in Latin America, Latin American Voices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73682-8_4

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worldview of man and psychology. Along the same lines, the work of authors such as Kurt Danziger (1990) has allowed psychology to analyze its historical roots and its disciplinary horizon on the basis of various socio-critical approaches that question the hegemonic domain of scientific knowledge tailored to the mold of Western thought. It also examines in detail how various theoretical and psychological categories (such as attitude, learning, intelligence, motivation, personality) have been changing over time and within very specific contexts (Danziger, 2018). It can be said, then, that this transition to a critical history of psychology rests, to a certain extent, on the dichotomy between internalism and externalism (Quintana, 1985), which, through the influence of the sociology of science, has meant reassessing historical, social, economic, political, and cultural contexts on which knowledge is constructed (Fierro, 2015). Thus, there have been several works that show a greater interest in the development of psychology within the framework of well-­ defined social contexts, such as the history of psychological institutions in Spain (Blanco, 1997) and Brazil (Jacó-Vilela, 2011) or socio-bibliometric works in various Latin American countries (Arias & Ceballos, 2016; Morgado-Gallardo et al., 2018; Polanco et al., 2017; Salas et al., 2017). This work holds great relevance for the history of psychology, inasmuch as it supports a more objective visualization of scientific production, revealing the most relevant lines of research, its main cultural dimensions, and the institutions that promote them. In summary, the new history of psychology puts more emphasis on social contexts and economic, political, and cultural variables to better understand the development of psychology as a science and as a profession. The purpose of this brief work is to analyze the sociopolitical circumstances that have shaped Latin American psychology, giving it a particular identity with respect to the psychology that has developed in other parts of the world. We will primarily focus on the geopolitical contexts and psychosocial processes that have enhanced or impeded the development of psychology (as the case may be), from several countries in Latin America. In that sense, oligarchic governments, dictatorships, and armed conflicts (to mention just a few) have been factors that have impacted the positioning and institutionalization of scientific and professional psychology. This has generated, as Ardila (1984) states, important differences in the progress that psychology has achieved in the countries of the region, while great gaps in scientific production, professional training, and legalization of the profession remain between these countries. Latin American psychology has not seen the scientific advances that have occurred in the United States or in several European countries due to ideological assumptions, religious dogmas, social prejudices, and political vicissitudes (Quiñones et al., 1992).

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 eopolitical Contexts and Psychosocial Processes in Latin G American Psychology Latin American countries have had a troubled history shaken by events detrimental to social and political order. These difficulties were a substrate of the Spanish conquest and the emancipation that left cracks in institutional structures and their social arrangements. On the one hand, the conquest propagated a culture of subjection of the native inhabitants of pre-Columbian America, and on the other hand, the independence of the Latin American nations, with respect to the Spanish settlers, was led by military caudillos and soldiers who assumed power and perpetuated a series of social deviations that remained until the twentieth century. In general, rather than solving the problems of inefficiency, military governments ended up exacerbating them through the use of violence legitimized by power. In the economic sphere, extractive systems were installed that privileged the exploitation of natural resources, as well as the exploitation of the most displaced sectors of the population. Indigenous, blacks, and Asians constituted a cheap labor force. The workers were easily manipulated according to the interests of the oligarchies. These systems contained the “creative destruction” that, adding to the low educational standards and the scarce qualification of the workforce, limited the scientific and technological development of the countries of the region, condemning them to informality and underemployment (Acemoglu & Robinson, 2012). On the social level this meant segmenting the population into very particular social classes, giving each of them a characterization inherited from the colonial order and based on differences of race, economic power, and family ancestry. There was a juxtaposition of systems, which repeated the formulas of the colony, but this time, at the hands of the aristocrats (Noejovich, 2006). Thus, societies were divided, sharing the same territory, but, nevertheless, living highly disparate lives, expressed in economic gaps, educational inequities, and lack of opportunities for equitable access to formality, justice, and health. These inequalities were later translated into poor health, unemployment, illiteracy, crime, and marginality. Although this panorama constituted the common denominator in most of the countries of the region, in some cases there are small differences and, in others, very notable differences. These political and socioeconomic characteristics also generated an adverse context for the development of science in general and psychology in particular. The turn of the century (from the nineteenth to the twentieth) brought with it an incipient industrialization, which was accompanied by political reform processes that were reflected in a growth of production, and in the insertion of positivist approaches that struggled with the dominant thought. In Argentina, for example, the need to expand public education and combat child delinquency encouraged the development of academic projects that relied on scientific contributions led by “Escuela Nueva” (New School), and were supported by the advances in the psychology of the time (Talak, 2014). In Brazil, the high rates of illiteracy and the psychosocial problems that affected children strengthened the mental hygiene movement that was implemented for preventive purposes in schools,

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also facilitating the insertion of psychological knowledge in educational processes (Freire & Boarini, 2014). In Chile, the Primary Education Law, promulgated in 1927 with the purpose of combating illiteracy, embraced the principles of Escuela Nueva along with various additional psychological approaches (Salas & Morgado-­ Gallardo, 2018). In Peru, the need to train teachers prepared with modern pedagogical strategies gave rise to the founding of the Normal School for Boys where the first laboratory of experimental psychology was created in 1916 (Orbegoso, 2015). It can be asserted that Latin American psychology adopted a characteristic educational bias from the first advances in education initiated at the beginning of the twentieth century. These developments demonstrate a common feature, the adoption of the postulates of the Escuela Nueva, that encouraged the creation of experimental psychology laboratories in schools, colleges, and universities. In addition, psychotechnical and psycho-pedagogical institutes, newsletters, and educational journals were created which served to develop and publish the first psychological investigations (Arias, 2011). Psychiatry also provided a driving force for psychology, as Latin American psychiatrists taught and trained the first generations of psychologists, a determining factor in the clinical orientation adopted by psychologists in the region (Arias, 2011). Psychiatrists were also the architects of the initial psychometric research. They developed lines of study on topics that would later be assumed by psychologists, such as ethnopsychology and psychology of poverty, and were subsequently located within the field of social psychology. The following subsections provide an analysis of the links between geopolitical contexts and development of psychology in several Latin American countries, critically assessing whether the political vicissitudes and socioeconomic crises have led to substantial contributions to psychology in general and social psychology in particular.

The Case of Argentina As the nineteenth century drew to a close, Argentina was adapting to the educational currents of the time by establishing a plan to manage psychosocial problems. The expansion of public education was seen as an opportunity to form a new model of the Argentine citizen and mediate the increase in juvenile delinquency resulting from high rates of poverty (Talak, 2014). In this context, the work of Víctor Mercante (1870–1934) and Rodolfo Senet (1872–1938), both educators, spread a range of psychological knowledge and promoted psychological research. In fact, Mercante founded in 1891 a laboratory of psychophysiology in the Faculty of Educational Sciences of the Normal School of Teachers, in San Juan, the first in Argentina and in Latin America (Arias, 2011). On the other hand, the increasing crime rates at the beginning of the twentieth century prompted José Ingenieros (1877–1925) to develop forensic psychology. He not only published the first work in forensics in 1903 (The Simulation of Madness)

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in Latin America, but also contributed to the institutionalization of this field with the founding of the Institute of Criminology and the publication of the journal Archives of Criminology, Legal Medicine and Psychiatry. In addition, Horacio Piñero (1869–1919), a psychiatrist, made an important contribution to Argentine psychology, founding two laboratories of experimental psychology in Buenos Aires, one in 1898 and the other in 1901 (Klappenbach, 2006). In the years before 1916, clinical psychology, experimental psychology, and social psychology began to develop. According to Klappenbach (2006), this progress was supported by interest in French philosophy and psychology, which was, in part, due to the politics of internationalization which were favored in Argentina. This interest was largely due to the migration of Europeans (mainly Italian and French) and the resulting economic growth brought about by the creation of companies and industries supported by the accompanying foreign investments (Finchelstein, 2012). Between 1930 and 1932 there was a brief military coup accompanied by the use of torture and political assassinations. This period coincides with the reactivation of the Argentine Society of Psychology (that had been founded by José Ingenieros in 1908) by Enrique Mouchet (1886–1977). Mouchet was another important exponent of Argentine psychology who, precisely between 1918 and 1934, had replaced Piñero as the chair of experimental psychology at the University of Buenos Aires. He published some papers proposing a vitalist psychology centered on language, self-consciousness, and cenesthesia (Papini, 1978). In 1943 the government was, again, controlled by the military. Then, in 1946, power returned to civilian control under the leadership of Juan Perón. In 1946 there was interference in university governance directed on the University of Buenos Aires resulting in the expulsion of 423 professors and the resignation of another 825. This was a devastating blow for the Argentine university, following the conquest of the 1918 university reform (Dagfal, 2009). There were significant implications for psychology. Philosophers and priests assumed the chairs of psychology at universities, and then introduced the neothomism and phenomenological existential currents (Klappenbach, 2006). Despite these deviations, during this period psychoanalysis was consolidated by Ángel Garma, Enrique Pichon-Rivière, Arnaldo Rascovsky, Marie Langer, and Celis Carcamo, who founded the Argentina Psychoanalytic Association in 1945. The processes of industrialization during the 1940s promoted the migration of rural people to the cities, leading to an increased interest in psychosocial factors, and greater attention to the psychology of groups and social psychology (Dagfal, 2009). The decade of the 1950s was the period in which the process of professionalization of psychology began. Developments in areas such as psychotechnics and professional guidance, led by authors such as Jaime Bernstein (1917–1988) and Enrique Butelman (1917–1990), promoted the dissemination of psychological evaluation books and instruments through the creation of the Paidós publishing house. The year 1955 was particularly significant as the normalization and reform of the universities took place. A large number of philosophers, psychiatrists, and psychologists, who had trained abroad, were appointed to university faculties, stimulating

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increased academic activity in the academic advancement of Argentine psychology. That same year, the first psychology degree was created at the Universidad del Rosario, following the first Argentine Congress of Psychology in Tucumán in 1954. Also, between 1955 and 1959, six professional psychology careers were created in the main universities of the country (Dagfal, 2009). In spite of this progress, political volatility in Argentina continued as demonstrated by the fact that between 1955 and 1963 there were five presidents (Lluch & Salvaj, 2012). This produced a complex economic situation that would worsen with the passage of time (Finchelstein, 2012). In the 1970s a new repressive period arose resulting from the military dictatorship of 1976. The authoritarian regime implemented systematic forced disappearances and cruel institutional repressive measures. To that end, 340 clandestine detention centers operated and nearly 9000 people disappeared (Vasconcelos, 2013). The impact on psychology was immediately felt through the interruption of various academic and professional activities, and the disappearance of a huge number of psychologists and psychology students (Klappenbach, 2006). In 1983 democracy was restored and Argentine psychology was consolidated through legislation establishing the profession of psychology. In Argentina, curiously, military governments have been accompanied by relative economic stability coinciding with small advances in the process of institutionalization of psychology. An exception to this trend is seen during the dictatorship of 1976 when human rights were systematically violated and psychology was demonized, deeply inhibiting the spread and specialization of the profession. This distressful situation was demonstrated within the specialization of social psychology. Social psychology was then transformed as a disciplinary cross between psychoanalysis and social psychiatry. It was not until the creation of psychology careers that the teaching of social psychology was formalized in undergraduate studies, and more recently in postgraduate studies when the Master in Social Psychology was created at the University of Mar del Plata in 1999 (Ostrovsky et al., 2018). However, a bibliometric study appearing in the Journal of Psychology at the National University of La Plata found that only 6.39% of the papers are located in this area between 1964 and 1983 (Klappenbach, 2009). Another bibliometric work reported that only 2% of papers published in the Revista Argentina de Psicología were within the field of social psychology, although volume 30 of this journal was dedicated to social and community psychology (Klappenbach & Arrigoni, 2011). Consistent with these studies, the development of social psychology in Argentina is not proportional to the political, economic, and cultural complexity that characterized the history of this country. However, it is striking that social psychology in Argentina generated original interdisciplinary connections between psychoanalysis, Marxism, systemic theories, group therapies, Lewinian psychology, etc. (Macchioli, 2014).

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The Case of Bolivia In Bolivia, in the beginning of the twentieth century Europeans arrived to settle in the highlands. Among these settlers was a Belgian, Georges Rouma (1881–1976), who made an important contribution. His reforms of the Bolivian education system involved the creation of the Normal School of Teachers in Sucre in 1909, the Higher Normal Institute Simón Bolívar in La Paz in 1917, and the National Society of Bolivian Education in 1919 (León, 2014). The third decade of the twentieth century was marked by an economic crisis that led to a military coup. The coup was the prelude to the Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay from 1932 to 1935 (Pérez, 2006). This military conflict resulted in 60,000 casualties among the Bolivian soldiers, as well as many physical and psychological afflictions among the survivors. In response the National Pacheco Manicomio (Bolivia’s mental health hospital) was established in 1937 and operated by the National Department of Hygiene and Health (Aguilar, 1983). In 1951 the government of Víctor Paz Estenssoro took office. It was during this period that psychiatry began a process of institutionalization with the creation of the Bolivian Society of Psychiatry in 1951, although it did not initiate its work until 1954 (Aguilar, 1983). In 1967, the Department of Psycho-pedagogy began operating at the Bolivian Catholic University leading to the first psychology degree at the University in 1971. However, General Hugo Banzer carried out a coup d’état in 1971, maintaining power until 1978. In 1972 the Department of Psychology in the Greater University of San Andrés would also be created, but both schools were closed in 1978 by the government of the day, due to conditions of sustained instability and political uncertainty (Schulmeyer, 2014). Between 1978 and 1982 there were nine governments; that is, on average, a new government was established in Bolivia every five and a half months. During the year 1982, Hernan Siles Zuazo was returned to power through democratic elections and amid an unfavorable economic context, because Bolivia was experiencing one of the most dramatic inflationary periods in history. In this decade many private universities were created and the career of psychology was supported in several of these institutions. Specifically, the psychology degree was available in 5 of the public universities and 11 of the 39 private universities that were functioning in the country (Schulmeyer, 2014). A fundamental milestone in Bolivian psychology was the arrival of Erik Roth in La Paz in 1975. He founded the first experimental psychology laboratory at the Bolivian Catholic University (Schulmeyer, 2015). Roth’s work, however, was narrowly focused on the dissemination and the systematic introduction of behavioral analysis in Bolivia by the establishment of the Bolivian Association for Behavioral Analysis in 1979, and by the publication of the Bolivian Journal of Behavior Analysis from 1982 through to 2009 (Arias, 2011). Progress in social psychology was assisted in 2005 by the establishment of the Bolivian Society of Social Psychology (Schulmeyer, 2014). This advancement was

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further supported by several studies conducted by Erick Roth on topics in community psychology (Roth, 1990), social change (Roth, 2000), prosocial behavior (Roth, 2017), and national identity (Roth & Garnica, 2017).

The Case of Brazil In Brazil, the first asylums were created in Rio De Janeiro in 1854 (Jacó-Vilela, 2014). Henrique Roxo, for example, completed the first psychological thesis in Brazil. It was titled “Duration of the elementary psychic acts in the alienated” (Alarcón, 2002). Following from this beginning, it was in the spaces opened by psychiatry and education that the development of nascent Brazilian psychology was fostered during the first decades of the twentieth century (Penna, 1992). In the first case there was a mental hygiene focus (Freire & Boarini, 2014), and in the second, the introduction of the New School approaches (Degani-Carneiro & Jacó-­ Vilela, 2012). In both cases, the advances occurred during the construction of the Nova Republic around the 1930s, and were promoted by the arrival of various notable figures in psychiatry, psychology, and European education such as Waclaw Radecki (1887–1953), Helena Antipoff (1892–1974), and Emilio Mira y López (1896–1964), among others (Jacó-Vilela, 2000). It was the psychiatrist Joaquín Medeiros who founded the first laboratory of experimental psychology in Rio de Janeiro in 1899, while Mauricio Medeiros founded the second laboratory in 1907. Ugo Pizzoli founded the first laboratory of experimental psychology in São Paulo in 1913 and then Waclaw Radecki founded another laboratory in 1923 (Arias, 2011). Between 1930 and 1964 the Brazilian economy grew significantly (Fernández & Casanova, 2012) and the professional consolidation of the career of psychology took place. During the administration of President Getúlio Vargas (1930–1937) the Pestalozzi Society began to operate in Belo Horizonte, under the direction of Helena Antipoff, a disciple of Édouard Claparède. This organization aimed at assisting children with special educational needs (León, 1997). Moreover, the work of Emilio Mira y López, a psychiatrist, who had migrated from Spain, was very relevant. Mira created the Institute of Professional Selection and Guidance in 1949 and published the first journal of psychology in Brazil: Arquivos Brasileiros de Psicotecnia (Arias, 2011). Later, in 1953, the first Professional School of Psychology was created at the University of Rio de Janeiro and in 1962, the Law 4119 was enacted to regulate the professional practice of psychologists (Jacó-Vilela, 2014); Brazil was, then, the first Latin American country to obtain legal recognition of the profession. Between 1964 and 1985 there was a military coup and a dictatorial government was established. This event did not stop the economic growth of Brazil; on the contrary, it reached a GDP growth of up to 13.5% in 1973 (Pérez, 2006). In that year, the worst phase of the military dictatorship began. There was heavy-handed political repression, with more than 10,000 political exiles, and human rights were

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violated with practices of torture, censorship, and restriction of information (Vasconcelos, 2013). Paradoxically, during the dictatorship some advances for psychology are recorded, such as the increase in demand for psychological care, the increase in the number of psychology students, and the strengthening of graduate schools (Jacó-­ Vilela, 2014). In fact, in 1974 there were 895 registered psychologists in the regional schools, and only 4 years later there were 12,139 enrolled. There was also an expansion of psychology courses and programs (Margotto & Cortez, 2017), as well as a dissemination of therapeutic communities with a strong emphasis on psychoanalysis (Loureiro, 2012). Although it was within a context of distrust, the psychiatric reform that proposed the replacement of inpatient hospital models to outpatient, ambulatory care occurred in 1970 (Arantes & Toassa, 2017). This approach produced an increasing interest in community mental health (Cruz, 2017), resulting in the Brazilian Association of Collective Health in 1979 (Ianni et al., 2017) and the Brazilian Association of Social Psychology in 1980 (Jacó-Vilela, 2014). In the 1980s there was a remarkable turnaround, mediated in part by the change to American models characterized by positivist positions, and by other models inspired by the liberation psychology of Ignacio Martín-Baró (1942–1989). These were socio-critical positions that problematized topics such as social representations, colonialism, and social construction of knowledge. Part of this movement originated by authors -social psychology- who dedicated to the analysis of races and the national identity of the Brazilian (Jacó-Vilela, 2018).

The Case of Chile In Chile, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there were various European influences. Andres Bello (1781–1865) introduced English associationism and common-sense philosophy; Juan Serapio Lois (1844–1913) and Valentín Letelier (1852–1919) introduced French positivism; while Jorge Enrique Schneider (1846–1904) and Wilhelm Mann (1894–1992) introduced German formulations and experimental psychology (Salas, 2012). From these impacts, primarily those from French positivism and German experimentalism, the first experimental psychology laboratories were created in Copiapó in 1905 and in Santiago in 1908 (Salas, 2014). Following the War of the Pacific between Peru, Bolivia, and Chile, for the latter country there was a period of relative political and economic stability which continued until Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 coup. In 1941, the Institute of Psychology was founded at the University of Chile, encouraging systematic research in experimental psychology, differential psychology, forensic psychology, educational psychology, and mental hygiene. The Institute ushered in the first professional career in psychology in 1946. In 1954 the Department of Psychology at the Catholic University of Chile was created; its director Bela Székely (1892–1955), a highly reputed Hungarian psychologist, published important books that served to disseminate the practice of psychoanalysis (León, 1997).

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The Chilean, Germán Greve, was also the first to discuss the use of psychoanalysis in Latin America in 1910 (Ruperthuz, 2012). As well as Greve, others interested in psychoanalysis included Fernando Allende, Ignacio Matte, Juan Marín, etc. They founded the Chilean Association of Psychoanalysis, which was recognized by the IPA in 1949 (Plotkin & Ruperthuz, 2017). In the 1960s, as was the case in other Latin American countries, population-based mental health and intra-community psychiatric programs were created under anthropological and sociological models that were dismantled during the military coup (Kaulino & Vergara, 2018). However, the military coup initiated by Pinochet on September 11, 1973, interrupted the mandate of Salvador Allende and dissolved the Congress. This fact would alter the development of Chilean psychology, as trade union meetings and political acts were prohibited. There was strict censorship and absolute control of the media. In addition, techniques of intimidation, and physical and psychological torture, were implemented, which, in many cases, involved psychologists who were forced to participate in these activities (Padilla & Comas-Díaz, 1987). The government intervened in the universities and, in particular, the schools of psychology were intimidated into submitting to the plans of the regime. Several psychologists escaped from Chile and entered self-exile in other countries. After the end of the dictatorship, in 1990, mass graves were found with the bodies of those executed and more than 3500 complaints were registered for the crimes and abuses committed against the civilian population (Ernst, 2017). Several investigations carried out in Chile examined the psychological effects on the affected civilians resulting from the forced disappearances of their relatives and the episodes of terror they survived during the dictatorship (Faúndez et  al., 2018). These studies indicate that generations born after the dictatorship experience high levels of indirect exposure to violence (Arnoso et al., 2012). For psychology, the return to democracy meant the growth of psychology careers, beginning with 2, and increasing over the next 27 years than previous years, to 11 psychology careers in 1990. Curiously, this increase was motivated by the General Law of Universities that was promulgated in 1981 during the Pinochet government (Salas, 2014). In that sense, as Pérez (2006) points out, the military was able to maintain economic growth rates longer than civilian governments, and a neoliberal economic system was strengthened that brought economic prosperity to the country during the following years, favoring private investment (Finchelstein, 2012). These social crisis situations have been consistently prompting the expansion of social psychology, especially its community branch, although there is no society of social psychology in Chile. In 2009 the Chilean Network of Trainers and Researchers in Community Psychology was created (Salas, 2014). It is also worth noting the contribution of Julio Villegas, who produced several works in social psychology, setting a fundamental precedent in this field (Villegas, 1989). Also, Dorna’s studies in political psychology have been important references in Latin American research (Dorna & Argentin, 1993).

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The Case of Colombia Colombia has seen a succession of civil governments, alternating between liberal and conservative parties, until 1953. By that time, Colombian psychology had made important advances, beginning with the teaching of psychology and other social sciences in the Escuela Normal Superior, which had been established in 1934 (Ardila, 2013). Additional progress is evidenced by the foundation of the first laboratory of experimental psychology in 1939 by José Francisco Socarrás (1906–1995) and the creation of the first professional career in psychology in 1947, due to the efforts of Mercedes Rodrigo Bellido (1891–1982) (Arias, 2011). In 1952 the first class of psychologists graduated in Colombia followed by a military takeover, a year later. In 1958 a civilian government was re-established. The economic dynamics were not impacted by the fluctuations between civilian and military governments (Pérez, 2006), as there has been a stage of sustained growth of the economy from 1930 to the present. Psychology acquired legal status in 1983 with Law 58, which was replaced by Law 1090 in 2006 (Ardila, 2013). In addition, there is increasing research and academic development consistent with other countries in the region, as evidenced by its research journals, with emphasis on social psychology (Ardila, 2014). In regard to this field, in Colombia it represents only 5.3% of academic production (Ardila, 2014), with lines of research established on issues related to poverty, terrorism, and drugs. According to López (1993, cited in Díaz, 2018), studies of social psychology represent 15.67% of those conducted in Colombia. Social psychology began in Colombia in 1967 with the presence of Florence Thomas and Marcel Zimmerman at the National University of Colombia. Later, in 1985, the Department of Social Psychology was founded at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. This Department initiated the first master’s degree in community psychology in 1987 which was influenced by the ideas of Ignacio Martín-­ Baró. Two years later the Colombian Association of Social Psychology (ACOPSI) was created and, in 2008, the First International Meeting of Researchers in Social and Community Psychology took place. With respect to research, the topics that have captured the attention and interest of Colombian psychologists include the psychology of poverty, which afflicts millions of Latin American inhabitants (Ardila, 1979). Also, the issue of drug trafficking has generated various investigations, given the psychosocial consequences for the population. Another issue of great relevance to Colombian social psychology has been the confrontation with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which has motivated various psychological and sociopolitical studies. FARC maintained an armed conflict for more than 50  years with a count of 7,624,299 victims. In the period between 1985 and 2014, 16% of the total population of Colombia has been seen psychosocially affected by the FARC conflict (Luna et al., 2018). It can be said that the armed conflict in Colombia has mobilized diverse resources oriented to the investigation of diverse range of relevant variables that, for psychology, provokes a systematic body of investigations in subjects relative to

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social and political psychology, or to the valuation of the affective and cognitive processes of the victims. At present, the armed conflict has come to an end, but it has also generated various political and legal controversies, which in the field of psychology have been subject to analysis from what is known as the “psychology of peace” (Ardila, 2011). In conclusion, we can say that, although socioeconomic conditions or political conflicts have not negatively affected the development of psychology, Colombian psychologists have taken advantage of these situations to develop lines of research on terrorism and armed conflict, generating some academic solvency in the field of social and political psychology.

The Case of Cuba The history of Cuba can be divided into three periods: the colonial period, from the Spanish conquest until its liberation from the Spanish Government in 1898; the pre-­ revolutionary, which covers the independence of Cuba in 1902 until the socialist revolution in 1958; and the postrevolutionary, which continues after the revolution to the present. In the first period we can highlight the work of José Agustín Caballero (1762–1835) and Félix Varela (1788–1843), who introduced the ideas of empiricism and associationism. In addition, Eugenio María de Hostos (1939–1903) wrote a moral treatise analyzing various psychological constructs and Enrique José Varona (1844–1933), who discussed issues related to the Cuban national identity, published the first psychology text in Cuba in 1905 (Roca, 2018). At the end of the Spanish-Cuban-American War in 1898, Cuba was liberated from Spain, but was submitted the authority of the United States until 1902 when it achieved full independence. Alfredo Aguayo (1866–1948) must be mentioned, who founded the first laboratory of experimental psychology in Cuba in 1912 and directed his work towards the education of children. Alfonso Bernal del Riesgo (1902–1975) founded the Cuban Society of Psychology in 1953 and edited the Cuban Journal of Psychology in 1955, while José Ignacio Lasaga (1913–2004) was the director of the first career in psychology in 1950 at the Catholic University of Santo Tomás de Villanueva (Gallegos, 2017). Within the political context, Cuba was administered by a series of military governments with brief periods of civil control, until the Cuban revolution in 1959 when Fidel Castro assumed power and established a socialist government. Following Castro’s takeover, the distribution of income improved markedly, although GDP fell −0.4% in the decade of the 1970s (Pérez, 2006). It was after the revolution that Cuban psychology developed under the guidance of the USSR. In fact, several professors traveled to Russia for specialization training and returned with doctorate degrees, supporting the further development of psychology. The Revista Cubana de Psicología (Cuban Journal of Psychology) was reissued since 1984 under the direction of Eduardo Cairo Valcárcel (1941–2018), a neuropsychologist who worked with Luria (Arias, 2004). Fernando González Rey

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(1949–2019) was also trained in Russia and upon his return assumed the presidency of the Society of Psychologists of Cuba. He also became the Dean of the Faculty of Psychology and Vice-rector of the University of Havana. He was noted for developing an important line of research on personality and human subjectivity (González, 1997). Regarding social and community psychology, Roca (2018) described all Cuban psychology as essentially communitarian because it is oriented towards the needs of the people. This is particularly the case in the field of health, in which it has been a pioneer, beginning with the Cuban Society of Health Psychologists, created in 1974. The work of Noemí Pérez Valdés (1926–2008) was also very important in the consolidation of this field (Arias, 2011), which could be considered as a contribution to community psychology (Montero, 2018). In a more critical, less optimistic tone, González and Mitjáns (2018) noted that very little had been done to consolidate social psychology as a privileged field of research. The advances that had happened in other countries had not necessarily oriented their praxis under the canons of social determinism, a characteristic of Marxist psychology.

The Case of Guatemala Guatemala is an eminently rural Central American country, with 70% of the population having Mayan cultural ancestry. In 1931 Jorge Ubico became the president directing a US-backed dictatorship. In 1944, Ubico had to leave the country, and was succeeded by President Juan José Arévalo (Pérez, 2006). In this context, Guatemalan psychology emerged: In 1946 the first courses in psychology were taught at the University of San Carlos in Guatemala, and later the Institute of Psychology and Psychological Research was created, giving rise to professional psychology in 1950 (Aguilar & Recinos, 1996). That same year President Jacobo Arbenz was elected and made important structural reforms but, from 1954 through 1957, the military took power again under President Carlos Castillo. In 1958 Miguel Ydigoras was elected president and then, in 1963, Colonel Enrique Peralta led a coup d’état, suspending the Constitution, closing the National Assembly, and prohibiting political parties (Pérez, 2006). In this context, a psychology degree was created in 1961 at the Rafael Landívar University and the journal Anuario de Psicología was published in 1962 (Aguilar & Recinos, 1996). In 1966 democracy returned when Julio César Méndez was elected president, but in 1970, Carlos Arana assumed power. In the following decade there were three presidents who were rotated, one after the other (Pérez, 2006). During these tumultuous years, the Guatemalan Association of Psychology was created in 1967, and a psychology program was established at the University of Valle de Guatemala in 1976. In 1975 a program was initiated at the Superior School of Medical Clinical Psychology at the Francisco Marroquín University, where an Institute of Behavioral

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Sciences was also in operation, and where, in 1978, a psychology degree was offered (Aguilar & Recinos, 1996). In the decade of the 1980s, guerrilla fighters began an armed conflict that motivated the intervention of the military, further undermining security and prompting the social bewilderment of the population. Approximately 50,000 civilians were killed as of 1980 and it has been estimated that 400,000 people were affected by the repressive measures adopted during this period. In addition, nearly 900,000 Mayans were recruited into civil self-defense patrols and forced to move far from their homes (Beristain et al., 1999). Collective massacres took place in the Guatemalan highlands between 1981 and 1986, followed by the restoration of democratic order (Beristain et al., 2000). In 1986 the Department of Psychology was created at the Mariano Gálvez University, and in 1983 the Association of Psychology Students was created at the Rafael Landívar University. The Association of Psychologists gave way to the College of Psychologists of Guatemala in 2007, which began publishing, virtually, the journal Psicólogos in 2010 (Recinas, 2018). Included in the branches of psychology that developed in Guatemala were clinical, educational, forensic, industrial, and social psychology. In this last field, dialectical materialism has left its influence (Aguilar & Recinos, 1996). In addition, there were foreign psychologists interested in the investigation of various emotional manifestations and mourning experienced by victims affected by armed confrontations.

The Case of Mexico Mexico is a country with a long tradition in the development of psychology in Latin America. Since independence, a recurring theme has been a focus on Mexican identity. Over the years it later became one of the most outstanding aspects of Mexican psychology through the work of Rogelio Díaz Guerrero (Díaz-Guerrero, 1994, 2007). Mexican independence from Spain occurred in 1821. This was followed by war with the United States between 1846 and 1848, resulting in a significant loss of territory (Chevalier, 2000). Through the end of the nineteenth century, the dictatorship of President Porfirio Díaz was established and was in place from 1876 to 1911. During that period the country was modernized by the disciplinary regime which encouraged the use of Mexican psychology to promote national unity (Pavón-Cuellar, 2015). An important referent in this period is Ezequiel Chávez (1868–1946) who repeatedly returned to the psychological characteristics of the Mexican as a product of his/her culture. During the Porfirio Díaz government there were other advances such as the publication of the book titled The Psychology of Enrique Aragón (1880–1942) in 1902 (Escobar, 2016). In fact, it was Aragón who founded the first laboratory of experimental psychology in Mexico in 1916 at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (Arias, 2011; Galindo, 1989). Also, between 1905 and 1910, James Mark

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Baldwin made three visits to Mexico, arriving to settle briefly in this country. From 1920 different figures of world psychology visited Mexico such as Pierre Janet in 1923 and Henry Bergson in 1946. In 1950 Erich Fromm settled in this country for 23  years promoting psychoanalysis and psychosocial research (Galindo & Vorwerg, 1985). Although there have been no dictatorships in Mexico since the “Porfiarato,” from 1920 to 2000 the Government of Mexico was in the hands of a single party. While Mexico is a country with evident social and economic inequalities among its inhabitants, it has maintained global favorable rates of economic growth, with some recessions and contractions that are not associated with the type of regime, be it civil or military, dictatorial or democratic (Pérez, 2006). The development of psychology has been promoted by the development of behavioral psychology, transcultural psychology, and social psychology. In the first case, Mexico has been one of the Latin American countries where behaviorism quickly became institutionalized in the 1970s thanks to the efforts of Emilio Ribes (1990) and his working group, initially established at the University of Jalapa and then at the UNAM with the founding, in 1972, of a laboratory for the experimental analysis of behavior. This laboratory was followed by the First Mexican Congress of Behavior Analysis in 1974, publication of the Mexican Journal of Behavior Analysis in 1975, and founding of the Mexican Society for the Analysis of Behavior in 1976 (Arias, 2011). Transcultural psychology was supported by the creation of the Interamerican Society of Psychology in 1951 and the ethnopsychological studies of Rogelio Díaz-Guerrero. His work focused on the psychology of the Mexican using his theory of sociocultural historical premises (Díaz-Guerrero, 1994, 2007). Social psychology has deep roots in the psychology of the Mexican as well as the national identity of Mexican men (Pavón-Cuellar, 2015). The work of Fromm, in particular, not only supported the institutionalization of psychoanalysis in Mexico, but also advocated for the development of socio-psychoanalytic research examining the relationship between the Mexican peasants and the socio-productive system in which they lived with the perspective of Freudo-Marxism (Fromm & Maccoby, 2015). In fact, social psychology in Mexico has generated a wide range of research since the early 1960s that, while initially focused on mental health problems of the inhabitants (Rodríguez et al., 2018), has been deployed in topics such as violence (Ramos & Caballero, 2001), social representations (Flores, 2001), psychosociology of the couple (Díaz-Loving & Rivera, 2010), social welfare and democracy (Uribe & Acosta, 2011), and sociocultural aspects of personality (Palacios & Martínez, 2017), among others. In Mexico, these studies have been fostered by the activities of the Mexican Association of Social Psychology (AMEPSO) since 1984. Two years later the Journal of Social Psychology and Personality was published followed in 1995 by the journal Psicología Social Comunitaria (Montero, 2018).

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The Case of Paraguay Paraguay became independent from Spain in 1811. Following independence three figures led the country’s destiny in a decisive way: José Gaspar Rodríguez, Carlos Antonio López, and Francisco Solano. They provided academic contributions in the field of Paraguayan politics and philosophy, and each of these men assumed the presidency in the order listed above. Between 1864 and 1870 the War of the Triple Alliance took place, in which Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil fought against Paraguay with disastrous consequences for this country. Paraguay not only lost part of its territory, but the conflict also resulted in the death of up to an estimated 90% of its adult male population (García, 2014b). The beginning of the institutionalization of Paraguayan psychology began with the creation of the first psychology course in 1880 at the National College of Asunción. Diógenes Decoud (1857–1920) published the first psychology text, defending the discipline’s autonomy as a science independent of philosophy (García, 2014b). In 1895, the Paraguayan Institute opened its doors and in 1933 the Institute launched the Paraguayan Athenaeum, an institution that published a journal in which various aspects of Paraguayan identity, mental hygiene, intelligence, etc. were discussed (García, 2014a). Influences from education and sociology are also provided through the work of Ramón I. Cardozo (1876–1943) and Ignacio A. Pane (1880–1920), respectively, who spoke on various topics of psychology. The first of these men introduced the ideas of the New School and, the second, aligned with the positivist thinking that prompted the establishment of experimental psychology in Latin America (Arias, 2011). Between 1932 and 1935 the Chaco War between Paraguay and Bolivia was succeeded by a military coup in 1936, but democracy was quickly re-established the following year. In 1954 Alfredo Stroessner led a coup d’état. He maintained power until 1989, which resulted in the gradual deterioration of the economic situation in the country (Pérez, 2006). The ongoing violation of human rights during the 35 years of the Stroessner dictatorship included 18,772 complaints of torture, 58 extrajudicial executions, 3470 exiles, and 107,987 indirect victims of the abuses committed (Arnoso et al., 2014). In the middle of the dictatorship of Stroessner, in 1959, Emilio Uzcátegui (1899–1986) founded the first laboratory of experimental psychology in Paraguay, and 3 years later the first career in psychology was created at the Catholic University of Asunción and in 1966 the Paraguayan Society of Psychology was founded (Arias, 2011). Since 1989, at the end of the dictatorship, a period of professional expansion began to be characterized by the creation of psychology careers in various universities in the country. But research activity is very low, as there are only two research journals and few psychologists are systematically assigned to scientific work. Regarding social psychology, despite having a long tradition anchored to the sociological work of Cecilio Báez, Ignacio Pane, Justo Prieto, and Guillermo Enciso (García, 2003), the first approaches to social psychology had an orientation eminently clinical focused on the field of mental health promotion (García, 2011).

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Later, however, they were influenced by the ideas of Pichón-Rivière and Ignacio Martín-Baró, approaches that opted for the development of community psychology in Paraguay (García, 2018b). In summary, we can say that the events of war have slowed the pace of the development of Paraguayan psychology (García, 2012). However, the same cannot be said of the dictatorship during the Stroessner government, since it is in the decade of the 1960s that psychology began to professionalize and become institutionalized in the Guaraní country.

The Case of Peru Peru is a country with a history of inequalities and contradictions usually attributed to the Spanish conquest. In fact, it was with the arrival of the Spaniards that various forms of corruption that have been implanted in daily life began, furthering multiple social, economic, and cultural problems that afflict the country (Quiroz, 2013). Towards the end of the colonial period, the first Chair of Psychology was created at the National University of San Marcos in 1808 and was occupied by José Joaquín de Larriva (1780–1832) (Alarcón, 2000). With the independence of Peru in 1821, one after the other, military governments during political ups and downs led to a political crisis that became evident during the Pacific War. After the war, Peru was submerged in a fiscal, economic, and moral crisis. This predicament facilitated the entrance of positivism, within the search for solutions that were different from the philosophically more classic positions that had already been tested (Orbegoso, 2016). The beginning of the twentieth century was, then, characterized by the introduction of positivism aimed at solving various social problems that were becoming more evident in the fields of education and health. The New School approaches led to the development of research on the intelligence of children and the creation of the Normal School for Men, where an experimental psychology laboratory was created in 1916, although it never produced any research (Orbegoso, 2015). In the area of health, positivism was applied in the forensic field and was then implemented in psychiatry. As a result, reforms in mental health were initiated that gave rise to the clinical, systematic treatment of patients residing in the Asylum of Alienados at Magdalena. Here an experimental psychology laboratory was also founded in 1919 by Hermilio Valdizán (1885–1929) (Orbegoso, 2018). In the face of the advances of positivism, a spiritualist response arose that, based on the ideas of Dilthey, Husserl, Bergson, and Spranger, embodied a phenomenological perspective as seen in the work of Honorio Delgado (1892–1969), who maintained a certain closeness with Freudian theory, promoting the dissemination of psychoanalysis in Peru and Latin America, and introducing pharmacological treatment to patients with mental disorders (Arias, 2015). The decade of the 1930s would be convulsive. After having experienced various democratic governments for relatively stable periods and having achieved the

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modernization of several public institutions, the coup d’état of Sanchez Cerro reignited the advent of military dictatorship, which implied interventions into the universities. It was in this context that Walter Blumenfeld (1882–1967), a psychologist trained in Berlin with the Gestaltists, was forced to migrate from Germany due to Nazi persecution of the Jews (Arias, 2014). The arrival of Blumenfeld in Peru initiated systematic, scientific psychology, with the subsequent founding of the laboratory of experimental psychology at the National University of San Marcos (UNMSM) in 1935 and the execution of various experimental, descriptive, and psychometric investigations. Democracy was restored with Manuel Prado Ugarteche in 1939, who was succeeded by José Luis Bustamante y Rivero in 1945, but his government was interrupted by the military dictatorship of Manuel Odría. During the Odría government, the Peruvian Society of Psychology was founded in 1954 and a year later the first career in psychology in Peru was created in the UNMSM. It would be at the beginning of the 1960s that, as a consequence of the migratory waves from the countryside to the capital city, the social structure of the country underwent important changes. These challenges became the subjects of studies that gave rise to social psychiatry as a means to respond to findings of high levels of anxiety among migrants (Caravedo et al., 1963), a condition termed “psychosomatic maladaptation syndrome,” as reported by Carlos Alberto Seguín (1907–1995), a pioneer in this field (Seguín, 1962). In 1963, Fernando Belaunde Terry was elected president, but in 1968 General Juan Velasco Alvarado staged a new coup d’état, which was, in turn, overthrown by Francisco Morales Bermúdez in 1975. During the military government of Morales Bermúdez, the Psychologists Association of Peru was created, providing the legal foundation for the psychologist’s profession in 1980. That year Belaunde Terry returned to the presidency, although his government declared a state of emergency due to the activities of subversive groups that aggravated the political and economic situation of the country. During the 1970s, the first generation of graduate Peruvian psychologists began a period of study based on social psychiatry, called the psychology of poverty (Alarcón, 1988). The resulting research investigated a range of psychological variables experienced by settlers who lived in contexts of poverty. The studies of Ernesto Pollitt (1938–2016) on the consequences of malnutrition on the psychological development and academic performance of Peruvian schoolchildren (Pollitt, 2002) are exemplary within this field. The studies conducted by Alegría Majluf (¿? -2010) on the relations between marginality, intelligence, and academic performance (Majluf, 1993), and those of Raúl González Moreyra (1934–2002) on the psycholinguistic development of Quechua-speaking children (González-­ Moreyra, 2008), are also notable contributions. During the government of Alan García (1985–1990) there was an economic and social setback that translated into hyperinflation and a deficit in the fiscal reserves of 105.1 million dollars for 1990. In addition, the “Shining Path” and the “Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement” sowed terror in the high Andean areas of the central highlands and the capital, with various attacks, exterminations, and looting that led to a frontal response by the Armed Forces. A total of 69,000 victims were

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registered throughout Peruvian territory due to the abuses committed, both by the subversive groups and by the Armed Forces. During the government of Alberto Fujimori, a web of corruption developed and was supported by the powers of the state: the press was silenced, political alliances were bought, and paramilitary groups were created that applied physical and psychological torture procedures to political opponents. According to Quiroz (2013) the most corrupt governments in Peru have been the military governments of Velasco and Odría and the civil governments of García and Fujimori. Now, faced with these social problems, Peruvian psychologists have investigated very little of the consequences of terrorist violence on the settlers, with few exceptions (Ramírez & Valerio, 2008). This lack of psychosocial research in Peru is partly explained by the lack of specialization in this field, as well as by a focus on psychological research that is not aimed at solving social problems, but rather at understanding the manifestations of traumatic experience. In this sense, research in the field of social psychology has been oriented to topics such as racial discrimination, national identity, and political psychology (León, 2018). Ramón León has addressed, for example, racial discrimination in Peru (León et  al., 1998); Cecilia Salgado, national identity (Salgado, 1999); Walter Cornejo, indigenous social beliefs (Cornejo, 1980); Agustín Espinosa, political psychology (Espinosa, 2008; Espinosa et al., 2012); and Federico León, the domestic power of women (León, 2012). It is also important to mention the works of Cecilia Thorne (2005) and Reynaldo Alarcón (1988, 2017), who have been interested in the socioeconomic differences of the Peruvian settlers, and how such differences are expressed during their development. It can be said, then, that social psychology in Peru has produced important studies, but has not managed to position itself as a fully institutionalized, or socially relevant, discipline. In this sense, the School of Psychologists recognizes the division of Community Psychology, although less development has occurred in this area (Velásquez et al., 2017). It is also important to note that issues such as corruption and consequences of terrorism have been ignored, although it is imperative that psychologists incorporate these topics into the research agenda of this country.

The Case of Venezuela Venezuela has developed an identity strongly linked to the independence work of Simón Bolívar. A representative figure during the nineteenth century is provided by Andrés Bello (1781–1865) who maintained close contact with James Mill (1773–1836). From this relationship Bello adopted certain of his philosophical ideas, which were then translated into theoretical directions in psychology and education on his return to Latin America (Salas, 2012). The twentieth century began with Venezuela under the authority of several military governments from 1898 to 1945. Also, while these military governments maintained authority, Diego Carbonell taught psychology in 1928, in 1935 Pablo Izaguirre published the national results of the use of mental tests in Venezuela, and

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a year later the National Pedagogical Institute was created under the direction of Mariano Picón (Salazar, 2001). Entering the decade of the 1940s a Section of Psychometrics was created in 1943 in the School Hygiene Service of the Ministry of Health by José Ortega. Then, in 1950, the Institute of Psychology was created in the Central University of Venezuela under the direction of Raúl Ramos. It was during this period of military government that the Institute of Psychosynthesis and Human Relations was created at the University of Los Andes, thanks to the intervention of the Hungarian psychologist, Oliver Brachfeld (1908–1967), who had trained with Alfred Adler in Vienna (León, 1997). In 1955, Guillermo Pérez Enciso published Elements of Psychology and a year later the first psychology degree was created at the Central University of Venezuela (Arias, 2011). In 1958 the Venezuelan Society of Psychology was founded and in 1958 the Universidad Andrés Bello began offering a career in psychology under the direction of Pérez Enciso and published the first psychological journal in this country: Cuadernos de Psicología (Salazar, 2001). A year later, Betancourt became president and in 1969 Raúl Leoni succeeded him, giving rise to a prolonged cycle of democratic governments until 1999 when the government of Hugo Chávez began. During this democratic period, psychology recorded some important advances, especially in the field of social psychology. Notably, the organization of the First Latin American Seminar on Social Psychology in 1975 led to the Venezuelan Association of Social Psychology (AVEPSO) and the participation of important figures such as José Miguel Salazar (1931–2001) and Julio Villegas (1944–2016). The Latin American Association of Social Psychology (ALAPSO) was also created around this group and several other stakeholders in Latin America (Urra, 2001). The decade of the 1970s closed with the creation of the first psychology laboratory at the Universidad de Los Andes in 1978, which was directed by Oswaldo Romero (Arias, 2011). The decade of the 1980s produced new surprises for psychology. Social psychology was consolidated thanks to the ideas of Ignacio Martín-Baró, a Spaniard Jesuit priest. He developed the “psychology of liberation,” which advocated for the emergence of a Latin American psychology with its own identity (Martín-Baró, 1986). The influence of Martin-Baró was felt in various countries in Latin America. Tragically, he was killed and the stimulation that had enervated Venezuelan and Latin American social psychology decayed. However, a disciple of José Miguel Salazar, Maritza Montero, would lead the development of community psychology in Venezuela developing as a leader of this specialty in Latin America. Maritza Montero’s work linked social psychology, community psychology, and political psychology, promoting self-management of socioeconomic development based on the knowledge of the social reality, the union between theory and practice, and the empowerment of communities (Montero, 1984, 2004, 2018). It should also be noted that, in the case of Venezuela, democratic governments have been accompanied by economic growth, unlike military governments (Pérez, 2006), as demonstrated through the administration of Hugo Chávez and the continuing economic troubles under Nicolás Maduro. As a result, the population has been

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plunged into a very serious inflationary economic crisis, motivating the closure of more than 7000 companies, increasing the poverty rates among the population.

Conclusion Latin American psychology has been characterized by uneven development in the various countries that comprise this region (Klappenbach & Pavesi, 1994). Despite this, several common characteristics have been identified in an analysis of its history and in its development as a science and profession. In particular its dependence on European and American theoretical models, its lack of originality, its interest in human affairs, and its predominant interest in the applied branches of psychology have all been highlighted (Alarcón, 1996). Also, some of the most well-developed directions have been in psychoanalysis, behaviorism, transcultural psychology, and social psychology (Ardila, 2004). In that sense, it is indeed true that the historical panorama and the socioeconomic context of the Latin American countries present a situation that is very encouraging for psychosocial research, and that, in fact, has had important representatives and achievements, worthy of dissemination and recognition. A factor that has been noted in this chapter is the early influence of French and American currents of thought in the earliest developments of Latin American social psychology, based on the work of Durkheim, Tarde, Le Bon, McDougall, etc. (García, 2018a). This foundation gave way to the Marxist proposals that had managed to spread in several Latin American countries, generating new interdisciplinary intersections and novel proposals, as was seen in Argentina. Transcultural psychology developed in response to the cultural differences between the peoples of Latin America supported by the importation of various theories, methods, and instruments of psychological measurement. This direction was motivated by the need to develop a psychology with its own traits that was anchored to the cultural identity of the peoples of Latin America. Psychologists have played a significant role in examining these processes of high psychosocial complexity (Díaz-Loving & Cruz, 2018). Throughout this chapter we have been able to verify that, on repeated occasions, the form of government, across these diverse Latin American countries during the twentieth century, has not been clearly associated with the level of economic growth. According to some specialists, corruption and political inefficiency better explain the lack of sustained economic development, regardless of whether it is a military or civil, democratic or dictatorial, government. Thus, the structural deficiencies of both public institutions and regulatory legal systems conditioned the establishment of client-like relationships with business sectors and populist measures (Pérez, 2006). With few exceptions, such as during the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, the political and economic context has had little or nothing to do with the development of psychology as a science and profession. While military governments and dictatorships were in power, psychology in Latin American countries continued with the

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processes of institutionalization and professionalization. This tendency provides an indication of how weak the democracies in Latin America are, but also demonstrates the disconnection of psychology as a discipline, from the psychosocial problems. On the other hand, this historical analysis also reveals that psychology has seen little consideration from the governments as a potential source for solutions to the socioeconomic problems of the inhabitants. While there are important studies in social psychology conducted in this region, they have not been carried out systematically in some of the countries. In Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico, however, where social psychology has been institutionalized, there is a line of differentiated research. In other countries in the region, the development of social psychology has been circumstantial or almost nonexistent, with a few psychologists, working individually, following their interests and specializations. In a number of countries, social psychology has been strongly promoted by psychologists, such as Bernardo Jiménez in Mexico, Silvia Lane and Aroldo Rodrígues in Brazil, Elizabeth Lira and Juana Kovalskys in Chile, Fernando González Rey from Cuba, Erik Roth in Bolivia, and Ramón León in Peru. In addition, Ignacio Martín-Baró, José Miguel Salazar, and Maritza Montero, a nucleus of psychologists, are interested in the psychosocial problems of the people and the development of their own Latin American identity. Despite the achievements outlined, the scarce research in social psychology and the limited originality in the development of theoretical approaches to social problems have led to a lack of methodologically rigor and social relevance. Although it is possible to distinguish some topics of common interest across Latin American social psychology, such as national identity, racial segregation and discrimination, violence, and armed conflicts, among others, there is still much that is lacking in the theoretical strength to further develop this field (Montero, 2018). In a region, such as this, one would have abundant “raw material” for studies of the most diverse nature, from those who explore the scarce inclination for democratic regimes and the fascination (and even the reclamation) of governments of “strong man rule” to the psychosocial consequences that dictatorships have had on the political culture of the population, their predisposition to caudillismo, and the seduction that populism exerts on the masses. It would be a mistake to think that having democratic governments guarantees the development of psychology by itself (Brock, 2006). Rather, a coordinated activity of psychologists is necessary to strengthen the psychological institutions that animate the scientific and professional development of our discipline. At the Latin American level, it is necessary to undertake the task of developing a joint project that articulates the efforts of psychologists from each country in the region, in order to promote, despite our ethnic and social diversity, a psychology with common traits and a defined identity (Arias, 2011). Without fear of exaggeration, this is a terrain that still awaits the presence of the psychologist. It is of interest that, despite the long, recurrent, and bloody dictatorships in Latin America, from Mexico to Chile, the field of political psychology has not developed further, or generated its own theoretical models. The same can be said of social psychology, which, except for the work of Díaz-Guerrero (1994, 2007), has not

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developed original theories. And although the psychology of liberation makes a true claim for the construction of a Latin American psychology with its own identity, in most countries this has not gone from being a discourse, repeatedly heard but seldom concretized, with serious and systematic research (see Montero, 2018). As a result, it must be considered that various social, economic, political, and historical factors interact with each other to configure the psychosocial reality of Latin America. For this reason, it may be relevant and more profitable to carry out interdisciplinary studies with economists, sociologists, and social workers, to have a better understanding of the social problems that affect the population, and that also lead to concrete actions to improve the living conditions of the most vulnerable communities. Likewise, in the political context, it is necessary for the governments of the day to value the need for the intervention of the psychologist in social settings, which means providing supports to carry these activities to fruition. Research in the geographical areas where vulnerable populations live requires adequate funding to cover these research activities. A greater professionalization and specialization in social, political, and community psychology are also required so that psychologists can approach psychosocial phenomena by studying the lifestyles, values, and social perception of the reality experienced by indigenous settlers and marginalized populations (Moghaddam, 1990); it will be possible to have a more complete understanding of our inhabitants who, despite being the majority, have been ignored in Latin American psychological research. Only in this way can a psychology with original features be built, which responds to the needs of our peoples and truly contributes to the construction of global psychological science (Moghaddam & Lee, 2006). Acknowledgment This chapter is dedicated to the memory of Fernando González Rey (1949–2019).

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Part II

Narratives for a Social, Political and Cultural History of Psychology

Chapter 5

Culture, Politics, and Society in the History of Psychology in Argentina Hugo Klappenbach and Catriel Fierro

Introduction In his analysis on the concept of the ‘history of mentalities’, historian Peter Burke has pointed out to the coexistence of several different perspectives. According to Burke, other nearby approaches such as the history of representations or the social imaginary began to replace the concept of the history of mentalities. Similarly, Burke criticized the traditional concept of cultural history, not only because of its focus on elites or its emphasis on tradition, but also because it remains alien to our age, which is centered on multiculturalism and disagreement with the canons and established values of the centers of power (Burke, 1997). In any case, it would be necessary to define what could be understood by a cultural history of psychology in Argentina. Such a definition would probably be closer to the extended use made of psychology by the large social populations and the different spaces of our vast geography. But with the exception of some isolated studies, such a cultural history still remains unwritten. Conversely, a social history of psychology in Argentina is more akin to what the different groups interested in historiography have carried out in the last decades (Klappenbach & Jacó-Vilela, 2016). Of course, I could point out that a comprehensive and general history of psychology in Argentina requires addressing different and complex objects of study. We have stated that a history of psychology includes at least five different objects of study: (a) a history of scientific theories considered to be psychological; (b) a history of personalities that have contributed to the development of psychology; (c) a history of psychological techniques, from the history

H. Klappenbach (*) Universidad Nacional de San Luis—CONICET, San Luis, Argentina C. Fierro Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata—CONICET, Mar del Plata, Argentina

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. C. Ossa et al. (eds.), History of Psychology in Latin America, Latin American Voices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73682-8_5

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of mental tests, the history of techniques in experimental psychology laboratories, and the history of listening and interpretation, to the more vast history of devices such as the so-called analytical device; (d) a history of psychological practices, from the history of applied psychology to the various interventions in the most varied fields of the discipline; and (e) a history of psychological institutions, meaning not only the history of scientific or professional societies, but also the history of university programs and the history of journals or publishing houses, among others (Klappenbach, 2006). Of course, these different types of history of psychology require different perspectives of analysis and even the analysis of different documentary or testimonial sources. While a history of psychological theories may be limited to the collection of texts and papers, a history of personalities or institutions requires the collection of correspondence, archival documents, institutional resolutions, catalogues, etc. On the other hand, a history of practices requires the collection and analysis of clinical histories or other types of records of psychological interventions, as well as coverage and advertising in the mass media. Even when a study of this scope is out of our hands, we cannot ignore the intention of covering at least some of these dimensions in the different historiographic studies produced in Argentina. In other works, a general periodization of psychology in Argentina has been established (Klappenbach, 2006). The merit of the historical periodization is that it provides a conceptual framework for analyzing the most substantive changes in the different moments of the development of psychology in Argentina. But an important limit is that the main characteristics of each period do not usually disappear in the following period nor do they appear suddenly. On the contrary, topics and trends  tend to endure, although sometimes in a very limited way, or as a marginal current or in tension with the salient characteristics of the following period, in the same way that the most characteristic traits  of each period have also been developed during previous periods. Thus, the picture that we would have to draw for each period is extremely complex, at times contradictory and strongly dynamic, something that seems difficult to convey through the very notion of period (Klappenbach, 2006). In any case, in this chapter we will try to reconstruct the history of Argentinian psychology from its early developments during the latter part of the nineteenth century up to the present day.

 he Early Development of Psychology in Argentina T (1895–1916) In 1895 the lawyer Ernesto Weigel Muñoz taught a course in philosophy at the Department of Law and Social Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires, half of which was devoted to psychology (Klappenbach, 1987). The following year, another lawyer, Rodolfo Rivarola, began to teach a course of psychology at the recently created Department of Philosophy and Humanities of the University of Buenos Aires.

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It is interesting to note that in the first historiographic studies carried out in the country, psychology that began to flourish in the country in those early years was labeled as experimental psychology (Cortada de Kohan, 1978; Foradori, 1935; Papini, 1976; Tavella, 1957). Such characterization was based on the fact that experimental psychology laboratories had been organized in the country early on. Already in 1891, Victor Mercante had established in San Juan a Laboratory of Psychophysiology, in which he had made psychophysical measurements in about 500 students. In 1899 Horacio G.  Piñero established a Laboratory of Experimental Psychology in the Central National School, and a couple of years later in the Department of Philosophy and Humanities, where he was in charge of teaching psychology (Klappenbach, 1996). A few years later, in 1905, at the National University of La Plata, Víctor Mercante also organized a Laboratory of Experimental Psychology. However, it is necessary to examine in detail not only what was the meaning of the experimental term that qualified those laboratories but also their objectives in the intellectual context of Argentina at that time. In February 1903, Horacio Piñero, Professor of Physiology at the Department of Medicine and Professor of Psychology at the Department of Philosophy and Humanities, both at the University of Buenos Aires, gave an address at the Institut Général Psychologique de la Sorbonne, in Paris, his well-known lecture “La psychologie expérimentale dans la République Argentine,” which would later be published in French in the Bulletin of the Institut Général Psychologique itself, and, always in French, in the Revista de la Sociedad Médica de Buenos Aires (Piñero, 1903), in the same year and in several subsequent editions (Klappenbach, 1996). The publication in French, even for the Argentinean editions, showed the Frenchization of the Argentinean cultural elite at the beginning of the twentieth century. Although between 1880 and 1913 60% of all foreign capital was of British origin (Díaz-Alejandro, 1980), nevertheless, in the field of culture France had become a true model, already from the times of the romantic thinkers (Korn, 1936/1983). Precisely in that conference Horacio Piñero had stated that “intellectually, we are in fact French” (Piñero, 1903, p. 404). In the field of literature, both David Viñas and Noé Jitrik analyzed the consecrating value of the trip to Paris (Jitrik, 1982; Viñas, 1964). And since the history of science, the extraordinary similarity between the curriculum of medicine promoted in 1880 at the University of Buenos Aires by Herrera Vegas, who graduated in Paris, and the curriculum of the Department of Medicine of Paris (de Asúa, 1987) has been analyzed: In general, all the outstanding Argentine [medical] professionals would sooner or later travel to France to improve their skills. In particular, those most responsible for developing the curriculum for FMBA [University of Buenos Aires Medical School], had academic training at FMP [Paris Medical School] … Almost all the teachers of FMBA between the end and the beginning of the century had been trained in France … (de Asúa, 1987, p. 97).

In this context, dominated by what Oscar Terán named a scientific culture (Terán, 2000), the early reception of the new European psychology mainly was through five channels (Klappenbach, 2006):

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1. The original works of French authors, from Joseph Grasset to Theodule Ribot and Pierre Janet 2. The periodicals originating in France, particularly the Revue Philosophique edited by Ribot 3. The texts of divulgation by French authors, especially the two famous books by Ribot, Psychologie anglaise contemporaine (Ribot, 1870) and Psychologie allemande contemporaine (Ribot, 1879) 4. The French translations of authors from other languages, basically German 5. The translations into Spanish of books from other languages, especially those which were published by publisher houses such as Daniel Jorro, la España Moderna, Librería de Fernando Ré, and Sempere y Cía, among others, a question that has been documented and analyzed by Quintana et al. (1998) The importance of the French bias in the reception of early psychology in Argentina can be seen in all its dimensions, if we consider that four of these ways of constitution are directly related to France. A clear testimony of this tendency is the reception of Wundtian psychology. In 1894, Binet had recognized the important role of Wundt in the emergence of the so-called new psychology. However, he considered that personalities like Charcot and Ribot had contributed on the same hierarchical level to the development of that psychology: From fifteen years to this point psychology has entered a new phase. This phase dates approximately from 1878, a doubly important period for psychology, since it is when Wundt, in Germany, opens the first laboratory of experimental psychology, and Charcot, in France, inaugurates his investigations on hypnotism in hysterical women. Around the same time, M. Ribot founded the Revue Philosophique 1906, p. 1; translation is ours).

Two of the most important personalities in early Argentinean psychology, Horacio Piñero (1869–1918) and José Ingenieros (1877–1925), would reiterate, almost without variation, those words of Binet. In fact, in 1902 Piñero started his psychology course at the Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities with similar expressions: Two facts of primary importance definitively point to his directions in 1878: Charcot and his studies on hysteria and hypnotism, and Wundt founding in Leipzig the first Laboratory of Experimental Psychology. If we add to these facts that Ribot founded the Revue Philosophique in that same period, we can say that from this triad emerges: clinical observation, experimental research and scientific popularization. (Piñero, 1902a, p. 117; translation is ours).

For his turn, in 1919, José Ingenieros directly quoted Piñero’s words to explain the origins of the new psychology (Ingenieros, 1919b). In short, in Argentina, both Piñero and Ingenieros pointed out that three factors were at the base of the new psychology: clinical observation, experimental research, and scientific divulgation. Within this framework, Wundt represented only an important reference but on the same level as Charcot and Ribot. Such statement, then, showed that, from that triad as Piñero named it, only the figures of Charcot and Ribot, and more generally the psychology of personality disaggregations originated in France, became the model of the early Argentinean

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psychology. Concerning Thèodule Ribot (1839–1916), he was possibly the figure with the greatest impact on early Argentinean psychology as Rodolfo Rivarola recognized. Rodolfo Rivarola (1857–1942) was the first professor in 1896 of the course of psychology at the Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities, later replaced by Horacio Piñero. He also translated into Spanish the Psicologia per la scuola from Giuseppe Sergi, one of “the pioneers of Italian psychological science” (Bartolucci & Lombardo, 2012). In 1910 Rivarola pointed out, when he inaugurated the Section of Psychological Sciences of the American International Scientific Congress: The most decisive document, one could claim, the most famous of this theory [the new Psychology], is the admirable and already classic Introduction that Ribot put in his Psychologie anglaise contemporaine. One could say that this work has influenced for more than thirty-five years and still influences all spirits. (Rivarola, 1911, p. 167).

In summary, the psychology that was early constituted in Argentina carried, on the one hand, the clinical bias characteristic of French psychology. In fact, in Argentina the Wundtian works were known through French books. For example, Binet’s Introduction à la Psychologie Expérimentale [Introduction to Experimental Psychology] included transcriptions of research carried out in the Leipzig Laboratory (Binet, 1894). Similarly, La psychologie allemande contemporaine [The Contemporary German Psychology] by Ribot included a long chapter on Wundt (Ribot, 1879). Also the Revue Philosophique, which was widely circulated in the country, had included original works by Wundt and many comments on his work. In short, the French cultural bias permeated the reception of Wundt in this early Argentinean psychology. For this reason, the knowledge of Wundt’s work in Argentina was quite limited. In this sense, it does not seem exaggerated to say that Wundt could also be a very good example of what the historian of ideas Jorge Dotti rightly named, in principle referring to Kant, a conceptual figure, in the sense of an eminent name in which the following generations were authorized (Dotti, 1992). Considering this climate of ideas, it is necessary to clarify two questions. The first is that the objectives of the experimental psychology laboratories installed in Argentina, for example those that Piñero organized early in the country, at the Colegio Nacional Central in 1899 and at the Department of Philosophy and Humanities in 1901, were far from the objectives of the laboratories founded in Germany. Indeed, it has been pointed out that experimental psychology laboratories in Germany had research and knowledge production purposes, consistent with the purpose of German universities since the von Humboldt reform (Araujo, 2009; Dobson & Bruce, 1972; Klappenbach, 1994). A relevant testimony of this characteristic of the laboratories of experimental psychology was given by the American McKeen Cattell shortly after returning from studying with Wundt in Leipzig, who maintained that the “university laboratories [of experimental psychology] have the same ends as the University itself, the education of students and the advancement of knowledge” (Cattell, 1888, p. 37). More broadly, psychological research in Germany involved epistemological questions as Geuter (1992) has pointed out and was carried out in philosophy chairs (Araujo, 2009; Ash, 1980).

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In Argentina, on the other hand, Horacio Piñero had made it clear that both the laboratories he founded and the experimental method met the purpose of diffusion and teaching, tending to “complement the teaching of the chair” (Piñero, 1902b, p.  318). In one of his publications, Piñero, based on the Prologue of School Psychological Experiences of Professors Höfler and Vitaseck of Vienna, translated especially from German by Pablo Cárdenas: Today it is admitted that, when it is possible to experiment with a science, it must be done, especially in the research part, and also in teaching, if it does not want to be left behind (…). Also the teaching of psychology, whatever its extension, in schools, gymnasiums, universities, can make use of experimentation, and in time it will not be able to stop using it. (Höfler, quoted by Piñero, 1902b, p. 319).

Piñero himself pointed out the value of experimentation in teaching in the famous conference he addressed at the Institut Général Psychologique in Paris in February 1903, highlighting that there could only be original research, with “seriousness and experimental rigor … later on (…) when the environment and the prepared public allow it” (Piñero, 1903, p. 416). The second issue that needs to be clarified is that, in the framework of ideas outlined, the denomination experimental psychology in such early Argentinean psychology had little to do with the concept of experimental psychology produced in Germany in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. On the contrary, the term experimental psychology was directly related to Claude Bernard’s Introduction à l’étude de la médicine expérimentale [Introduction to the study of Experimental Medicine] (Bernard, 1865), a work widely disseminated in the country, and similarly with the medical-psychological studies as they were called by Toulouse et al. (1904) in their work precisely entitled Technique de Psychologie Expérimentele [Experimental Psychology Technique]. Concerning Claude Bernard, he maintained that experimentation was the culmination of scientific medicine, but he warned that “experimental medicine does not exclude clinical medicine; on the contrary, it only comes after it” (Bernard, 1865, p. 257; translation is ours). In the same line of argument he affirmed that there was “no radical difference in the nature of physiological, pathological and therapeutic phenomena” (Bernard, 1865, p. 338). In this sense, in France, pathological psychology had acquired an experimental status that went beyond the strict framework of the laboratory (Klappenbach, 1996). Toulouse, Vaschide, and Piéron, on the other hand, considered that there were three major domains and three major methods of psychology: physiological psychology, pathological or morbid psychology, and experimental psychology. Notwithstanding this differentiation and the fact that they recognized that the experimental method was “the true scientific method of psychology” (Toulouse et  al., 1904, p. 12; translation is ours), they also affirmed that experimental psychology had its origin in the work of “little-known French doctors or astronomers” (Toulouse et al., 1904, p. 12), although it was impossible for it to develop in France and it emigrated to Germany. And in a coincident direction they maintained that the new psychology had originated “by a reaction against the dominant conception, and

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what has been born is a medical psychology” (Toulouse et al., 1904, p. 7, the emphasis is ours). Considering, then, the strong impact of French medical and clinical thought in Argentina at the beginning of the century, in previous works I have characterized early psychology with the denomination of clinical, experimental, and social psychology (Klappenbach, 1996, 2006). Thus, in Argentina, next to the institutions focused on clinical bias that have been studied, the first hospitals of the colonial period, the orphanage, and the public hospitals (Rossi & Jardon, 2014), it is necessary to underline a clinical bias coming also from the objectives and methodology of that early experimental psychology. In fact, in 1916, Horacio Piñero highlighted this clinical or pathological domain when he published a collection of articles produced in the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology that he directed, under the title of Trabajos de Psicología Normal y Patológica [Papers on normal and pathological psychology] (Piñero, 1916). On his part, José Ingenieros also underlined the clinical domain of that early psychology when he subtitled his book Histeria y Sugestión [Hysteria and Suggestion], under the name of “Estudios de Psicología clínica” [Studies in Clinical Psychology]. And precisely in that work, José Ingenieros considered that the research on disaggregations of the psychism carried out by Janet and Grasset and the conception of the higher psychism and the automatism of the lower psychism of the Montpellier School “is being incorporated into experimental and clinical psychology” (Ingenieros, 1904/1919a, p. 311, the emphasis is ours). In short, early Argentinean psychology showed its proximity to the psychology developed in France, which we can call, following Grasset, the psychology of personality disaggregations. Likewise, attending to the concerns of Carlos Octavio Bunge, Juan Agustín García, or Ramos Mejía, it is warned that the characterization of clinical and experimental psychology does not cover all the features of the period. So, it would be more correct to refer to a clinical, experimental, and social psychology. Indeed, the support that this early psychology received from the Federal Administration was based on its concern for the issue of crowds, national identity, and penal responsibility of criminals. In a country where, by the turn of the century, approximately one-­ third of the inhabitants were immigrants, psychology could occupy a central place in a public reform project (Vezzetti, 1996; Vilanova, 2001).

Psychology in the Interwar Years (1916–1941) In this period, four central features could characterize the main developments in psychology. Firstly, academic psychology experienced a pronounced retreat towards properly philosophical positions, in a double sense: first, in the sense of worrying about establishing the limits of the sensitive forms of experience, and second, if at the beginning of the century the characteristic of psychological phenomena was that they constituted the most heterogeneous and complex processes of the vital functions of the organism from a Spencerian perspective (Ingenieros, 1916), in the

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period that we are dealing with, the most important psychological phenomena could not be reduced to their evolutionary origin. Psychological phenomena involved values and reasoning that questioned evolutionary assumptions and placed the human mentality on a differentiated and singular plane (Alberini, 1921). Alejandro Korn stated, “the identification of the psychological fact with the organic is a vulgar superstition” (Korn, 1925/1949, p. 608; translation is ours). In this direction, psychology approached to a reflection on human personality and became almost a philosophical anthropology. Secondly, in spite of the best known characterizations of this period, the intense movement of psychological authors, institutions, and ideas became noticeable. Thirdly, the relationship with the tradition of the first decades of the century was, at least, ambiguous. That is, on the one hand, the limits of physiological psychology were not left out, but, at the same time, the clinical and pathological tradition, based on physiology, kept a pronounced interest in these years, at least in some authors or publications. And fourthly, it is possible to identify the first attempts to apply psychology to the field of work, developments that will be characteristic of the following two decades (Carpintero, 2005). Psychology after the Centennial of the May Revolution (1910) has generally been characterized in negative terms: either the years of the regression or the decadence of the experimental models (Cortada de Kohan, 1978; Papini, 1976, 1978) or the time of the emptiness of psychology as it would have been called by García de Onrubia (Bortnik, 1992; Mangiola, 1988). In such characterizations, considerations of a political-institutional nature seem to play a strong role. In effect, from the 1930 coup d’état onwards, Argentina’s political institutions oscillated between the so-­ called patriotic fraud and military interventionism; federal interventions in the provinces were recurrent and degrading practices such as torture or political assassination were initiated (Ciria, 1972; Puiggrós, 1974). The extreme political right, for its part, which had been directly protected by the Uriburu government, and quite tolerated during the Concordance governments, did not hide its international sympathies with Mussolini or the enemies of the Spanish Republic. On the cultural level, the historian of science José Babini noticed a dogmatism originating in the readings of German philosophy, which was translated into Spanish in the Revista de Occidente, of enormous repercussion in the country (Babini, 1967). However, it should be noted that the reorientation in Argentinean thought had originated long before 1930, and various factors had an impact on the new climate of ideas. For the time being, from the institutional point of view, in addition to the installation of the first government that emerged by universal suffrage in 1916, it is opportune to consider the movement of the University Reform, which canalized the new ideas through the academic space: The period that we have called the first years of the Department [of Philosophy and Humanities of the University of Buenos Aires], extends, in fact, until 1918, when the university reform begins. From the philosophical point of view, positivism had begun to be discussed in all areas of Argentine culture, starting in 1910. The new generation, that of the

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Centennial, brought other preferences than that of 1890 and the one that had continued maintaining its same criteria. The new generation was to be characterized by its idealistic and spiritualistic orientation, its revaluation of philosophy and its essential problems: metaphysical, axiological, gnoseological and epistemological. But its men only began to work in cultural management around 1918. The preceding years were years of preparation and struggle for his ideals (Pró, 1960, p. 77).

Indeed, from the Centennial of the May Revolution, there would be a reorientation of ideas, from a movement in which Bergson and Scheler would be some of the outstanding personalities, and in which the presence of Ortega y Gasset, who visited the country for the first time in 1916 remaining here for 6 months, played a decisive role. We have addressed Ortega’s impact on the country in specific works (Klappenbach, 1999a). According to José Babini, one of his most outstanding contributions is to be sought on the side of his facet as editor or promoter of editions of thinkers of German thought. Ortega’s publishing and editorial bias was in solidarity with his philosophical and intellectual conceptions, which, originating in neo-Kantianism and phenomenology, led him to deepen his knowledge of Brentano, Dilthey, Husserl, and Scheler (Klappenbach, 1999a). From these authors, he elaborated his vitalist conception strongly committed to individual freedom, to life, and to reason (Marías, 1948). In the field of psychology, although he proposed the coexistence of physiology, psychology, and psychophysiology laboratories (Ortega & Gasset, 1915/1983), he stressed the importance of a psychology of a historical or cultural type. Ortega recognized that Wilhelm Wundt established a domain of psychology that was not physiological and in that direction, the journal that Ortega directed, the Revista de Occidente, published several articles of a historical or cultural psychology (Klappenbach, 1999a). In Argentina, from Korn and Alberini to Francisco Romero, Diego Pró, Hugo Biagini, José Luis Romero, Jorge Dotti, or Mario Bunge, all authors have pointed out the strong impact that Ortega’s presence had in the country. Alejandro Korn stressed that he had promoted autonomous intellectual exercise, contributing to the decline of positivist ideas: The presence of Ortega y Gasset in 1916 was an event for our philosophical culture. Self-­ taught and dilettantes had the opportunity to hear the word of a master; some woke up from their dogmatic lethargy and many warned for the first time of the existence of a less pedestrian philosophy. From then on, the love of study grew and the empire of positivist doctrines loosened. Ortega y Gasset did not bring us a closed system. He taught us to put the problems on a higher plane, he initiated us into the incipient tendencies, he let us glimpse the possibility of future definitions, he incited us to make an extreme effort. I owe him a lot personally, but I think I can use the plural and say: we all owe him a lot (Korn, 1936/1983, p. 280).

Coriolano Alberini, for his part, agreed with Korn on the debt to Ortega: In 1916, Don José Ortega y Gasset came to Buenos Aires for the first time. His singular philosophical, artistic and oratorical talent, the novelty of philosophical themes aroused great interest in the small group of philosophers and in the general public. A movement of lively curiosity towards contemporary German philosophy emerged from Ortega’s great

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resonance. The young Spanish philosopher revealed to us Husserl, Max Scheler and many other German philosophers. He also conducted a seminar on Kant … All of us who deal with philosophy in Argentina and in Latin America owe him a great deal (Alberini, 1950, p. 73).

Francisco Romero pointed out that Ortega had not only contributed philosophically or intellectually to the generation of new ideas, but also, at the same time as he had founded a Spanish tradition in philosophy, achieved a spiritual leadership (Romero, 1957). Jose Luis Romero, on the other hand, stressed that in the face of evolutionism, Ortega emphasized the creative activity of life, from a new perspective based on Husserl and Meinong (Romero, 1965/1998). More distant, in time and in intellectual appreciation, Hugo Biagini (1989) analyzed Ortega’s three trips to the country, and their impact on the development of a thought in situation. Jorge Dotti (1992), for his part, underlined the role played by some foreign teachers, from Keiper and Krueger to Chiabra and Ortega y Gasset, in the design of the new studies that consolidated the professionalization of philosophy, within the framework of the consolidation of an intellectual field of relative autonomy. Mario Bunge (2001) also highlighted this professionalization of the Argentinean philosophy between the wars, although he was more doubtful that this would have meant an advance. In any case, Ortega y Gasset’s statement, “positivism has died” (Terán, 2000, p.  301), precipitated the constitution of the Colegio Novecentista in 1918 (Pró, 1960). In general, this movement is usually considered one of the foundations of the so-called anti-positivist reaction. In the College’s own manifesto, reference is made to a “reaction against the outmoded forms of positivism” (Colegio Novecentista, 1918, cited by Pró, 1960, p. 84; the emphasis is ours). But it should also be noted that the College pronounced itself in favor of every form of thought that affirms “the substance and hegemonic value of the human personality” (Colegio Novecentista, 1918, cited by Pró, 1960, p. 84). In other words, the new movement proposed more of an overcoming of positivism than a reaction: “Such is the character of our positivism: spacious, open and expectant. That is why in those who overcome it there is not a total reaction, but understanding and even utilization” (Farré & Lértora Mendoza, 1981, p. 75). Jose Gaos, for his part, in analyzing the generation of historians of Hispanic American thought contemporary to Leopoldo Zea, one of whose books he commented, had pointed out that this characteristic of remaking history from the past rather than from a strange present, this tendency to overcome in almost Hegelian terms, could have been a common feature of Hispanic American thinkers, who, “instead of getting rid of the past, practice an Aufhebung with it” (Gaos, 1950, p. 160). In that direction, one of the most outstanding personalities of the so-called anti-­ positivist reaction, Alejandro Korn, felt a high esteem for José Ingenieros, whom he considered the most original philosopher in the country (Romero, 1950). From this perspective, he pointed out that Ingenieros himself, not the Ingenieros of Principles of Psychology, but the Ingenieros of Propositions related to the future of philosophy, underlined the importance of metaphysics, and thus “dissociate themselves from all positivist contamination” (Korn, 1919/s/f, p.  11). For this reason, Korn reflected that this text of Ingenieros published in 1918 “contributed to dislodge” the

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“positivism with routine persistence,” since it constituted “an exponent of the metaphysical reaction that has long been initiated and is now in the process of spreading to the antipodes” (Korn, 1919/s/f, p. 11). And as a conclusion of his most famous work, Korn reaffirmed this movement of overcoming: We cannot continue with Positivism, exhausted and insufficient, nor can we abandon it. It is necessary, therefore, to incorporate it as a subordinate element to a superior conception … (Korn, 1936/1983, p. 305).

In that sense, then, that reaction consisted of a true overcoming, which could not ignore some conquests of positivism. In this regard, the mentors of the Novecentista movement expressed their sympathy with “any philosophy or cultural form that implies placing limits—without denying, of course, the value of scientific determinism in its legitimate sphere—on the absolutely mechanical interpretation of the universe, with preference for the human psyche and the historical world, and tends, therefore, to define the person in terms of freedom” (Pró, 1960, p. 84; the underlining belongs to us). Psychological approaches had been characteristic of the early and positivistic psychology. Alejandro Korn had pointed out that “the men of 1890’ followed closely the psychological phase of positivism” (Korn, 1936/1983, p. 244; the underlining is mine). For his part, Ricaurte Soler, who discussed the Spencerian affiliation of Argentinean positivism, pointed out that in “Argentina … positivism has been a true scientific philosophy, especially a biological philosophy and a psychological philosophy” (Soler, 1968, p. 55; emphasis added). Soler pointed out the originality of Argentinean positivism, precisely because of its “anti-mechanistic” and “anti-­ intellectual” character. The subject is debatable and Soler himself referred to the concept of experience in José Ingenieros, which would be far from an “absolute” or “internal” mechanism, even though he could recognize an “external” mechanism. In any case, just as Alejandro Korn himself had maintained that the “teaching of psychology calls for a basic reform” (Korn, 1925/1949, p. 612), the first seminar organized by the Colegio Novecentista was that of psychology, “one of the abused courses” (Pró, 1960, p. 87). The seminar was in charge of Coriolano Alberini, who in 1923 became Professor of the Second Course of Psychology in the Department of Philosophy and Humanities at the University of Buenos Aires, replacing Carlos Rodríguez Etchart. The course that Alberini would start teaching at the Department of Philosophy and Humanities was entirely dedicated to “Bergson’s psychological theories” (Alberini, 1923). Alberini did not maintain an uncritical adherence to Bergson’s ideas; on the contrary, he received a special criticism of the irrational passages of Bergson’s work, such as the theory of intuition. In this sense, he suggested distinguishing between reason and formal reason of intellectualism, since, evoking Ortega and Scheler, thinking is a way of life (Alberini, 1921). His teaching changed over the years. From 1928 to 1932, he would introduce in a systematic and extensive way the problem of axiogeny, which concluded with the problem of psychology and the pathology of values (Alberini, 1928). Finally, after some courses in which he emphasized the problem of personality, from 1938 onwards he focused on a

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teaching centered on great systems or authors, from Spencer James and Wundt to Dilthey, Gentile, Krueger, and Spranger. The bibliography to which Alberini referred included some classics such as Wundt, Höffding, and Dumas, and some more recent treatises by Dwelshauers, Luquet, Müller, Messer, or Segond (Alberini, 1942). Besides his teaching, in his Introduction to Axiogenia Alberini exposed his psychology in a more complete way, since axiogenia was considered a part of the higher psychology, the psychology of values (Alberini, 1921). Alberini began by making a striking distinction between the world of nature and the human world. If the natural world was characterized by mechanical constancy and determinism, the human world—and the world of life in general—on the contrary always responds to an end, which is teletic, and therefore the ends that guide that search can be modified. In this sense, values have their origin in the human psyche, and axiogeny, at the same time, is psychogeny. In this sense, he rejected the genetic conception of the psychological facts, according to which organic life was an epiphenomenon of matter and mental life an epiphenomenon, in turn, of the organism. In statements that evoked Aristotelian positions, he emphasized that life and psyche were synonymous, “the psyche is the essence of life itself” (Alberini, 1921, p. 116). And human life, initially biological individuality, was able to transform itself into “self-consciousness, that is, personality.” And if the identity between life and psychism could be admitted, it was also necessary to extend the identification to the evaluation, the tendency to end, that is, the unfolding of the axiological or vis-estimative vital impulse. In short, Alberini proposed a psychology that had two differential features. The first one did not arise from a laboratory research, even if it was supported by many contemporary investigations. The second was that it merged the themes of psychology and philosophy into a single field. Alberini, then, taught psychology and introduction to philosophy at the University of Buenos Aires and metaphysics and gnoseology at the University of La Plata. In short, from the Centenary, and especially from the 1920s, psychology was again visualized as a discipline of philosophical character, since it was considered that every question of psychology was, at the same time, a question of philosophy. What erased the differences between philosophy and psychology was that both were focused on founding the limits of the sensitive experience. Within this framework, and starting from Bergson, Scheler, and above all Ortega, Argentinean psychology from the third decade of the century would be oriented towards increasingly structuralist positions and strongly critical of all forms of naturalism. It should be noted that the renewal of ideas in the field of psychology was taking place within a context of more comprehensive transformations. In 1918, the University Reform took place, which democratized university life and allowed access to higher education for the middle classes. Within the new climate of ideas, international political events such as the Russian Revolution favored an era of vanguards and utopias, characteristic of what Beatriz Sarlo called a culture of mixture (Sarlo, 1988). In that context, then, and from the theoretical point of view, one of the major works was Instinct, Perception and Reason by Enrique Mouchet, subtitled Contributions to a Vital Psychology. Mouchet emphasized that his psychology “has

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nothing to do with Bergson, nor with Husserl, nor with Heidegger” (Mouchet, 1941, p. 14). On the contrary, Mouchet, reminiscent of José Ingenieros, emphasized the biological status of life psychology: “The life psychologist is the biologist of introspection. This means that his psychology is a biological psychology.” However, he immediately clarified: our vital psychology is not equal -nor by far- to what is commonly understood as biological psychology. It turns mental life into a thing, which seems to have concrete and palpable existence and, therefore, measurable. Vital psychology, on the other hand, considers the soul as something living, nothing objective, but purely subjective, although it is exteriorized in somatic and therefore objective manifestations within certain limits, never totally (Mouchet, 1941, p. 14).

Mouchet considered that his vital psychology did not have an ontological status, but a methodological one, since his system was based on the feeling of life, which constituted the “irreducible principle of objective and subjective knowledge” (Mouchet, 1941, p. 15) and “the central nucleus of the other modes of sensibility,” including “of all mental life” (Mouchet, 1941, p. 25). In short, in the feeling of life rested the foundation of external perception and concepts such as time, space, unity, and causality. Mouchet’s book was considered one of the 100 most important works in the history of psychology, according to the research carried out by the renowned psychologist Rubén Ardila. Ardila considered that the text integrated “perceptive, instinctive and cognitive factors” in a “highly original” way (Ardila, 1974, p. 201). Mouchet, who at the same time had a doctorate in philosophy and medicine as recommended by Ribot, was the follower of the clinical and pathological tradition of the early Argentinean psychology (Sanz-Ferramola & Klappenbach, 2000). He recognized his debt to Piñero and above all to Ingenieros, of whom he considered himself a disciple (Mouchet & Palcos, 1925). In this direction, his references to authors like Ribot and Dumas were constant, although also to Marx, Bergson, Scheler, von Uexküll, and Köhler. Such amplitude, on the one hand, was due to an encyclopedic conception that could not be ignored, but, on the other hand, due to an effort of specialization in the different domains of psychology that was not at all negligible, especially when Mouchet addressed his privileged themes: the phenomena of emotion, the perception of obstacles in the blind, and certain psychopathological phenomena such as depersonalization, de-realization, and language disorders. Alongside Mouchet and Alberini, other personalities from the field of philosophy such as Pucciarelli, Francisco Romero, and Carlos Astrada contributed to the introduction of totalist or gestalt psychologies, both those of the Berlin School and the Second Leipzig School, especially the work of Felix Krüger. In this complex context, then, far from what might be expected from those dark years in the institutional and political sphere, Argentinean psychology experienced a really striking growth, judging by various indicators. In fact, in 1930, on Enrique Mouchet’s initiative, the Psychology Society of Buenos Aires was recreated, trying to continue the primitive Psychology Society organized in 1908 by Ingenieros, Piñero, de Veyga, and Mercante, among others

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(Kohn Loncarica, 1973). This Society would edit two volumes destined to publish the conferences given in the scientific sessions of the society. In 1933, this publication was called Boletín de la Sociedad de Psicología de Buenos Aires. In 1935 it changed its title into Anales de la Sociedad de Psicología de Buenos Aires [Annals of the Buenos Aires Society of Psychology]. Such change was justified by the director of the publication: “the value and extension of the conferences that were held later, during the years 1933–1934, have required the replacement of the first Bulletin with a publication of greater volume and substance, and that publication is the present Annals” (Loudet, 1935, p.  7). Later, in 1945, the Sociedad de Psicología de Buenos Aires published a collective volume, Trabajos actuales de Psicología Normal y Patológica [Current Papers on Normal and Pathological Psychology], which, from the title, tried to inscribe the work in the same clinical and pathological field of psychology of the beginning of the century (Sociedad de Psicología de Buenos Aires, 1945). In fact, it should be remembered that in 1916, under the title of Trabajos de Psicología Normal y Patológica Horacio Piñero gathered a set of articles produced in the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology he directed. At the end of 1931, the Institute of Psychology was also organized within the Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities at the University of Buenos Aires, on the basis of the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology. Enrique Mouchet was appointed as head of the Laboratory, at that time Professor of the First Course of Psychology at the same university. This Institute comprised nine sections: general psychology, physiological psychology, psychometry, pathological psychology, psychotechnics, psychopedagogy, paranormal psychology, collective and ethnological psychology, and character and criminology. In fact, judging by the designation of the associates in charge of each section, only five of them really worked: general psychology (also called philosophy and psychology or the general psychological doctrines), under Coriolano Alberini; pathological psychology, under Juan Ramón Beltrán; characterology and criminology, under Osvaldo Loudet; psychometry, under José L.  Alberti; and physiological psychology, under León Jachesky. The university resolution that created the Institute established that the Institute would have, among other publications, some annals. In fact, the first volume of the Anales del Instituto de Psicología [Annals of the Institute of Psychology] was published in 1935, the second in 1938, and the third and last in 1941. Mouchet was forced to leave the University after the 1943 coup d’état and the Annals disappeared from the psychological map (Sanz-Ferramola & Klappenbach, 2000). Nevertheless, in the three volumes that came out, they published, besides local personalities, some of the most prominent leaders of Latin American psychology, among them Plinio Olinto, Walter Blumenfeld, and Mariano Ibérico. But at the same time, some personalities exiled from Europe and those who were beginning to arrive in the region, such as Emilio Mira y López, Bela Székely, or Heriberto Brugger, also published in the annals. Among the topics addressed by the publication, the persistence of that clinical and pathological orientation, which had characterized Argentinean psychology since the beginning of the century, has been pointed out, as well as the strong weight of works on general psychology, also called philosophy and psychology (Sanz-Ferramola & Klappenbach, 2000).

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In addition to the Anales del Instituto de Psicología, and the two publications of the Society of Psychology already mentioned, other publications were published in those years, which demonstrate an important movement around the problems and issues of psychology. Among them, we should mention the Archivos del Laboratorio de Psicología Experimental [Archives of the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology], of the Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities at the University of Buenos Aires, published in 1931. Also the well-known publication was started in Córdoba by Gregorio Bermann, Psicoterapia, which published four issues between 1936 and 1937, and the less known one, Archivos Argentinos de Psicología Normal y Patológica, Terapia Neuro-Mental y Ciencias Afines, directed by Leopoldo Mata and René Arditi Rocha, which was published in no less than seven issues between 1933 and 1935. Among the related sciences, the publication pointed out paidotechnics, psychotechnics, professional orientation, sexology, penology, and legal and social medicine. One of its directors, Leopoldo Mata, was a psychotechnician and professional orientation graduate and Head of the Laboratory of Psychotechnics applied to Pedagogy at the J.  E. Rodó Institute. René Arditi Rocha was Head of Practical Works of the Psychiatric Clinic Chair at the Hospital Nacional de Alienadas, whose holder was Professor Luis Esteves Balado. Journals from very close fields were also published in those years. In the field of neurology and psychiatry, the first issue of Revista de Sociedad Argentina de Neurología y Psiquiatría appeared in 1925. Also Index de Neurología y Psiquiatría was edited from 1938 to 1946 (Klappenbach, 2016) and the Boletín del Instituto Psiquiátrico de la Facultad de Ciencias Médicas de Rosario in 1929 began to be published under the direction of Lanfranco Ciampi (Elcovich, 2015; Juárez & Rossi, 2016; Molinari, 2014, 2015). In a field also devoted to psychiatry but from a social perspective it is possible to consider the Revista de la Liga Argentina de Higiene Mental, which Gonzalo Bosch began to edit in 1930 (Klappenbach, 1999b), and Anales de Biotipología, Eugenesia y Medicina Social, which in 1933 began to be directed by Arturo Rossi (Coppa, 2019). There were also very important journals in the field devoted to child, not only scientific journals as the Anales de la Sociedad de Puericultura de Buenos Aires (Briolotti, 2016), but also the divulgation journal Hijo Mío, which began to be published in 1936, under the direction of Arturo León López, Gofreso Grasso, Mariano Barilari, and Leonardo Grasso, and which included as a heading “the journal of parents to guide and educate their children” (Borinsky, 2006; Rustoyburu, 2016). It should already be stressed that this is a heterogeneous set of publications. While some recognized a clearly scientific or professional status, others were of a divulging nature and were intended for the general public. In any case, this vigorous editorial development corresponded with other indicators that showed the interest of local psychology in the international developments of psychology at the time, similar to what had happened at the beginning of the century. Among these indicators, it should be noted, in the first place, that during those years internationally renowned personalities such as George Dumas, Wolfang Kohler, Adolfo Ferrière, and Santín Carlos Rossi visited the country. Secondly, in the Psychological Society of Buenos Aires, George Dumas, Henri Pieron, Pierre

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Janet, Paul Sollier, Sante de Sanctis, John Dewey, Edouar Claparède, Hans Driesch, Felix Krueger, and even Sigmund Freud were honorary members. And thirdly, among the corresponding partners abroad of the same company, there were personalities such as Charles Blondel, Levy Brühl, Gregorio Marañón, Augusto Pi y Suñer, Luis Jiménez de Asúa, and Gonzalo Rodríguez Lafora (Klappenbach, 2006). In short, this wide circulation of publications, authors, and ideas shows that the empty characterization of psychology does not seem to be sufficiently justified. One line of development of psychology, still incipient in this period, but which would become central in the following years, was given by the attempts to apply psychology to the field of work. In Argentina, these attempts would arise within the context of three different traditions. One of them would be marked by the tradition of socialist inspiration, in which Alfredo Palacios’ studies on fatigue constituted an unavoidable reference (Vezzetti, 1988). The second one, more concerned with the rationalization of the state and the sources of work, could be synthesized in the work of Carlos Jesinghaus. And the third, close to humanist and Catholic developments, could be synthesized in the work of Benjamin Aybar. The interesting thing is that the three traditions would resort to psychology early on, and, in spite of their important ideological differences, would coincide on some issues. Thus, for example, Alfredo Palacios would support the proposal presented by Jesinghaus at the Congress of Labor meeting in Rosario in 1923, to organize an Institute of Professional Orientation (Palacios, 1925).

Psychotechnics and Professional Guidance (1941–1962) What we have called philosophical psychology or more precisely psychology as philosophical anthropology reached a wide development in the university institutions until the mid-1950s. In 1937, the Department of Philosophy was organized at the National University of Tucumán, where Manuel García Morente taught his famous philosophy course (García-Morente, 1938). The book is possibly one of the most prestigious introductions to philosophy written in the Spanish language, partly because the main themes and authors of philosophy are developed and partly, as Pucciarelli and Frondizi (1938) and Julían Marías (1964/2000) emphasized, because of the personal reflection that accompanies each theme, the product of a crucial moment in the life of García Morente (Marías, 1964/2000). García Morente had arrived to Tucumán in Argentina, after a stay in Paris that lasted until March 1937. In Paris and in Argentina García Morente requested the departure from Spain of his daughters, who were still in Madrid, and from whom he had separated in September 1936. At the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, in July 1936, García Morente’s son-in-law, who was married to one of his daughters, was murdered in Toledo. Likewise, García Morente himself was dismissed from his position as professor and Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy (Marías, 1964/2000). In a letter to Coriolano Alberini, the Spanish thinker related the dramatic circumstances in which he left

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Madrid, without a passport and in a “difficult, rapid and almost clandestine way” (Alberini, 1980, p. 32). Other outstanding personalities such as Eugenio Pucciarelli, Risieri Frondizi, Sánchez Reulet, Rodolfo Mondolfo, Juan Adolfo Vázquez, Diego Pró, Luis Farré, and Manuel Gonzalo Casas, among others, were also professors in the Department of Philosophy at the National University of Tucumán (Pró, 1981). Precisely, Pucciarelli and Risieri Frondizi were in charge of editing the lessons of García-­ Morente (1938). In 1939, Eugenio Pucciarelli, a graduate in medicine and philosophy, replaced García Morente in the psychology course. Pucciarelli’s teaching, centered on the main systems of psychology of the time, began with a question about the essence of psychology: whether it was metaphysics or a science, and whether it consisted of speculative knowledge or empirical knowledge. There he developed the paralogisms of reason according to Kant, in which rational psychology was denied to be a scientific entity, and he pointed out the foundations of empirical psychology (Pucciarelli, 1941). Pucciarelli, then, placed psychology in the Wolffian-Kantian tradition, which recognized two differentiated aspects of psychology: a rational psychology and an empirical psychology. Kantian criticism of psychology was also developed by Pucciarelli in his course on gnoseology and metaphysics, which was attended by the same students. There he dealt with the question of the “soul and the paralogisms of rational psychology,” in the context of the impossibility of metaphysics as a science (Pucciarelli, 1941, p. 6). The rest of the psychology course, Pucciarelli assigned to empirical psychology, to the “directions of scientific psychology” (p. 10), where he highlighted three orientations: explanatory, descriptive, and comprehensive direction. The course, then, dealt with the different theories, especially Bergson, Dilthey, and Spranger, the psychology of form, phenomenology, and psychoanalysis in the three directions that were cut out at the time: Freudian, Adlerian, and Jungian. Pucciarelli’s debts to Dilthey would be a constant; in his opinion, Dilthey was “a backward romantic condemned to live in a positivist era hostile to philosophy” (Pucciarelli, 1937, p. 19). For its part, the National University of Cuyo, created in 1939 (Fontana, 1989), organized 2 years later the Pedagogical Institute in the small city of San Luis. A disciple of Calcagno in La Plata, Juan José Arévalo, who later became internationally renowned as President of Guatemala, was called upon to organize it (Arévalo, 1974). After his departure, the University appointed Plácido Horas, who had graduated as Professor of High School, Normal and Special Education in Philosophy at the University of Buenos Aires. He arrived in San Luis in April 1943 to teach an introduction to philosophy course at the Pedagogical Institute of the National University of Cuyo. In 1944 he began teaching the course “Child and Adolescent Psychology” (Universidad Nacional de Cuyo—Universidad Nacional de San Luis, 1943–1983) and from then on he was unanimously recognized as one of the promoters of undergraduate psychology programs in the whole country. In the same way, also in the most established universities, in Buenos Aires and in La Plata, after the coup d’état of 1943, the psychological courses were occupied by personalities coming from the field of philosophy.

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However, in contradiction with this cultural climate, the economic and social context did not promote a psychological discipline that was markedly speculative and philosophical. Thus, in parallel, a model of psychological intervention centered on psychotechnics and professional guidance was developed in the whole country (Klappenbach, 2006). The development of psychotechnics and professional orientation in Argentina was based on two complementary processes: on the one hand, the advances produced in the field of applied psychology and psychotechnics in relation to the knowledge of the aptitudes and personality characteristics that made possible the reciprocal adaptation of work to man, as well as in relation to the techniques or personality inventories necessary to successfully establish the diagnosis, leveling, and reorientation of those problems involved. Münsterberg’s early work had matured into the organization of the International Psychotechnical Conferences, the first of which was organized by Claparède in Geneva (Trombetta, 1998). In Argentina, two works by Münsterberg translated into Spanish had been circulating since 1911, La psicología y la vida and La psicología y el maestro, both translated by Domingo Barnés, promoter of psychology applied to the field of education and introducer of Claparède’s ideas in Spain (Quintana et al., 1998). Likewise, Alfredo Palacios, in his study on fatigue, showed a broad knowledge of Münsterberg’s work on psychology applied to industry, which had been translated by Santos Rubiano, whom he criticized for having remained within the Taylorist tradition (Palacios, 1922/1944). On the other hand, there are the economic and social conditions that had transformed the political panorama in the country since the end of the 1930s. It has been pointed out that the Second World War had favored an incipient industrial process originally aimed at import substitution (Kosacoff & Azpiazu, 1989) and that it was consolidated towards the industry of consumer goods and intermediate capital goods (Belini, 2009). Such process was accentuated after the military coup of 1943, due to the impulse of the Post-War National Council. In this context, the National Commission for Learning and Professional Orientation was organized in 1945 (Pronko, 2003), within the framework of the transformation of technical education at different levels (Wiñar, 1970). Peronist party, which governed from 1946 to 1955, consolidated this trend. The two Five-Year Plans, in 1947 and 1953, sought at the same time to generate greater production and overcome the distribution crisis (Halperin Donghi, 1983; Waldmann, 1981). According to data collected by Lewis, out of 59,765 industries in existence in 1943, the figure increased to 148,371  in 1954. Similarly, the number of workers increased from 820,470  in 1943 to 1,217,844  in 1954 (Lewis, 1990). In short, between 1930–1935 and 1945–1949, Argentina’s industrial production doubled, due to the promotion of credit, control over the exchange rate, and protection (James, 1990). Peronism promoted an “alliance with the small and medium-sized industrial enterprises linked to the market internal and unionized workers emerging from the process of industrial modernization in a virtuous circle of consumption and production” (Fair, 2009, p. 519; translation is ours). The transformations produced during Peronism consolidated a new urban working class, which required a rapid retraining. In this context, professional guidance

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came to constitutional status after the 1949 reform, when it was incorporated in Article 37 which guaranteed the rights of the worker, the family, old age people, and education and culture: Professional guidance for young people, conceived as a complementary to the action of instructing and educating, it is a function social services that the State protects and promotes through to guide young people to the activities for which have natural aptitudes and capacity, so that the professional choice is in your best interest and in the best interest of society (República Argentina, 1950, p. 23).

In the same direction, the Second Peronist Five-Year Plan set the goal of “directing training and professional guidance,” in the field of education and work. In labor settings, it was established that the social and economic policy of the State should be developed on various bases, including: “The establishment of rational correlations between the worker’s aptitude and his occupation in order to obtain the highest rates of productivity and salary” (República Argentina, 1953, p.  83; emphasis added). The aspirations evidenced by such considerations were related to collective professional guidance, which was conceived from a public interest. At the same time, it created conditions for the development of individual professional guidance, which would find better conditions for its consolidation along the 1960s under the denomination of vocational guidance. These conditions, in any case, allowed a set of new institutions. Among them was the creation of new university programs: the Licenciatura en Psicotecnia y Orientación Profesional (Degree in Psychotechnics and Professional Guidance), which Universidad Nacional de Tucumán organized in 1950, under the direction of Benjamin Aybar (Rossi, 1997). The Assistant’s Program in Psychotechnics in 1953 was organized in Rosario, the University of Litoral, under the direction of Arminda Benitez de Lambruschini (Gentile, 2003). And the Specialization in Psychology was organized at the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo in the same year, under the direction of Plácido Horas (Klappenbach, 1995). Such programs were organized at national and public universities, since 1949 totally free. In this respect, they differed from previous experiences, such as the program that since the mid-1920s trained counsellors in psychotechnics and professional guidance at the Instituto de Psicotecnia y Orientación Profesional (Institute of Psychotechnics and Professional Guidance), which had been organized by Carlos Jesinghaus (Edelmuth, 1997; Rossi, 1997). The first of these programs originated at another Institute of Psychotechnics and Professional Guidance, this one at the National University of Tucumán, which was organized and directed by Benjamín Aybar. Aybar’s philosophical, ontological, and anthropological positions were closely related to his interest in psychotechnics and professional guidance. In fact, Aybar stated that education should start from a pre-­ intellectual tendency that he called esseidad, from which it was necessary to respect the “diversity of aptitudes” (Aybar, 1954, p. 26). Although Aybar was referring to the educational process, it is clear that, at the same time, she was referring to the

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purpose of the process of professional guidance: to find the best occupation for personal fulfillment. Thus, in Tucumán, professional orientation was supported by two pillars. One of them was of an economic nature, centered on the rationality of the science of work. The other was of an anthropological-philosophical nature, based on the search for personal fulfillment. So, the potential development of aptitudes could correspond, on a psychophysical level, to the development of the freedom of one’s own esseidad. The Degree in Psychotechnics and Professional Guidance functioned until 1958 and no less than 20 persons obtained their degree in psychotechnics and professional guidance. The curriculum of that program was not organized by years, but by groups of courses. The “psychological” courses were experimental psychology, developmental psychology, social psychology, and psychotechnics and professional guidance. A second group of courses were studied in the Department of Law: political economy, sociography, and labor legislation in connection to social psychology. A third group of courses were studied in the Department of Biochemistry: anatomy and physiology and mental and industrial hygiene (Rossi, 1997). The transformation of this program into the psychology program came after the First Argentine Congress of Psychology, held in 1954, precisely in Tucumán (Diez, 1999). There, the creation of a psychologist program was recommended in national universities. In the case of Tucumán, “the creation of the psychologist program at the Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities of the National University of Tucumán, based on the studies carried out in the program and the teaching staff of psychotechnics, and taking into account the guidelines of the psychologist program previously approved” (Anónimo, 1954b, pp. 508–509). In San Luis, on the other hand, the National University of Cuyo organized in 1952 the Direction of Educational Psychology and Professional Guidance that depended jointly on the University and the provincial government and was directed by Plácido Alberto Horas. The aims of this Directorate included “advice on the teaching of under-abled children”; “diagnosis and psychopedagogical assistance for wards of the Directorate for Minors”; “examinations and advice on professional guidance and training, both in the study of skills and in the adjustment of personality to work”; “psychotechnical examination of applicants for scholarships offered by the Province”; and “training of technical staff specialized in the above-­mentioned tasks” (Universidad Nacional de Cuyo—Provincia de San Luis. Dirección de Psicología Educacional y Orientación Profesional, 1952). Plácido Horas conceived professional guidance as a meeting point between individual aspirations and conditions—personality and aptitude—on the one hand, and social needs, on the other. In fact, professional guidance “aspires to the choice of trades and professions in a way that is consistent with one’s personality, aptitudes and social environment” (Horas, 1951). In this sense, Horas stated that professional choice depended directly on the type of social structure and the technical means available in a society. For that reason he emphasized the lack of a technical economic-­social structuring in the city of San Luis, and, in that sense, “if we compare with an American city similar to ours, we will see the numerical and qualitative differences in the professional preferences” (Horas, 1951, p. 132).

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At the same time, Horas based his approach to professional guidance on the work of Spranger, and, to a lesser extent, Charlotte Bühler and Landis. In The Psychology of Youth, Spranger had explicitly stated that not only economic factors but also moral ones influenced the adolescent’s vocational choice, since that choice constituted a worldview for the young person, a view which Horas would take up again. Likewise, Horas emphasized the need to penetrate children’s fantasies about professions, in the “professional dreams,” as formulated by Spranger (Horas, 1951). In short, for Plácido Horas, professional guidance was a core problem, which had already been pointed out early on. In fact, one of the aims of the Institute of Pedagogical Research, organized by Horas himself in the Faculty of Educational Sciences of the University of Cuyo, was precisely “to consider the problems of professional guidance through its different aspects and according to the needs of the environment” (Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación, 1948, p.  23). In other words, in San Luis, professional guidance appeared less related to the field of work and more to that of education, even though the fields may have been closely related. The professional guidance activities described above, plus all those foreseen by the Educational Psychology and Professional Orientation Directorate, presented the problem of the specialized personnel training. For this purpose, Plácido Horas himself promoted the creation of a “Specialization in Psychology” for which he took into account, among other elements, the background of similar programs in Spain, France, and the United States, the development of psychology in our country, and “the relationships between training in psychology and the objectives of the 2nd Five-Year Plan” (Klappenbach, 1995). The implementation of the undergraduate psychology program after the First Argentine Congress of Psychology eclipsed the specialization in psychology that had been envisioned by Horas. However, the continuities between both curricular designs are notorious, as well as with the degree in psychotechnics and professional guidance from the Universidad Nacional de Tucumán. In other words, the curricular developments in psychotechnics and professional guidance would be subsumed in the future psychology programs, which would be organized between 1955 and 1959, although the political and cultural context of the future programs totally changed. In any case, what characterized these projects was the verification that a new type of professional graduate was needed, capable of intervening in the new demands that the field of education and work has placed on it. Thus, for example, at the turn of the century, Horacio Rimoldi, one of the first personalities to obtain a Ph.D. in psychology at an American university, framed the training of psychologists in that country on the basis of the new needs for practical intervention: The new orientations in education, the problems created by the big industries, the study of minority groups, the mass suggestions created by hundreds of political systems, the sense of guilt or the exaggerated aggressiveness of individuals - alone or in groups -, racial tensions, religious discriminations, the hygiene and therapeutics of mental disorders, the bad adaptations to the environment, the problems connected with the intelligent distribution of civil and military personnel in times of war, the re-adaptation of displaced persons and so

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Although some of the fields imagined by Rimoldi for the practical intervention of the psychologist revealed the imprint of North American psychology, since 1942 Rimoldi had been directing an Institute of Experimental Psychology at the University of Cuyo. At such an institute, for the first time in the country, attempts were made to standardize locally the Raven intelligence test, at the same time as studies on fatigue were carried out (Rimoldi, 1995). In other words, in the sociopolitical context of those years, the search for individual differences was oriented towards improving school performance and the need to provide equal opportunities for all students and to obtain more adequate jobs for workers. In any case, it should be noted that notwithstanding the strong impetus from the State, the processes involved in psychotechnology and professional orientation allowed readings of different ideological constellations. Like this, confronted with the Taylorist conception, both Claparède in an international level and Alfredo Palacios in Argentina adhered to leftist ideas. For its part, the Manual de Orientación Profesional, published in 1947 by another left-wing personality, Emilio Mira y López, reached a wide circulation in the country and in a little less than a year its first edition was sold out. The book constituted a true treatise of psychotechnics and orientation professional, in which Mira y Lopez discussed at the same time theoretical, technical, and institutional issues, from the data that should be considered in formulating the “guidance counsel,” up to the theory of the tests or jobs’ classification according to the skills involved (Mira & López, 1948). A fundamental issue in this period is that in 1954 the First Argentine Congress of Psychology was organized in Tucumán, with strong support from the State (Dagfal, 2009; Gentile, 1998). There, a Commission in which Plácido Horas, Oscar Oñativia, and Ricardo Moreno, among others, participated recommended the creation of psychology or psychologist programs at national universities, according to the following guidelines: The First Argentine Congress of Psychology declares the need to create the university program of professional psychologist according to the following conditions I. It shall be established as an autonomous section in the Faculties of a humanistic nature, taking advantage of the already existing institutes and the teaching given in those and other Faculties that may offer their collaboration (Medicine, Law, Economics, etc.); II.  The program will include a complete plan of theoretical courses and the appropriate practical intensification in the different specialties of the psychological profession, granting the degrees of Licentiatura in Psychology (previous thesis for the Licentiatura) and Doctor of Psychology (previous thesis for the Doctorate); III. It will also establish minor programs of assistant psychologists in the various fields of medical therapy, pedagogy, social assistance, industrial organization, and other fields of application to the needs of national and regional order served by the various Argentine universities (Anónimo, 1954a, p. 122).

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Under the invocation of that congress, between 1954 and 1964, were organized the first 14 undergraduate psychology programs in the country: 6 in national universities, 6  in private universities, and 2  in provincial university institutions (Klappenbach, 2015) (Table 5.1). However, as noted above, the social and political context had changed in a substantial way. It is not easy to synthesize in a few lines all changes that followed the fall of Peronism in September 1955. But at least it is possible to point out those modifications that directly or indirectly impacted the programs of psychology that was beginning to be organized.

Table 5.1  First undergraduate Psychology Programs at Argentine universities (1954–1964) Foundation date City University 1955 (April) Rosario National University of Littoral. After 1955 coup d’état it was reorganized in 1956 1956 (March) Buenos Aires University del Salvador (originally a Jesuit university) 1956 (April) Córdoba National University of Córdoba. Although the initial degree was intended to be Professor and Doctor on Psychology and Pedagogy, the resolution of April 1957 enabled the degree of Graduate (Licenciado) in Psychology and Pedagogy. In December 1958 the two programs were separated 1957 (March) Buenos Aires University of Buenos Aires 1958 (February) San Luis National University of Cuyo 1958 (November) La Plata National University of La Plata 1959 (August) Tucumán National University of Tucumán 1956 (August) Córdoba Catholic University of Córdoba (Jesuit university). It was closed in 1976 during the military dictatorship and reopened in 2005 1960 (May) Mar del Plata National University of Mar del Plata. In 1960 it began as a program of the Institute of Educational Sciences. In 1966 it was incorporated to the Provincial University of Mar del Plata. It was closed in 1976 during the military dictatorship and reopened in 1985 within the National University 1961 (March) Buenos Aires Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina. From 1961 to 1969 it was part of the Free Faculty of Psychology, institution annexed to the University 1962 (March) Buenos Aires University from the Argentine Social Museum 1963 (March) Tucumán Saint Thomas Aquinas University of the North 1963 (August) Mendoza School Anthropology Faculty. General Administration of Schools at the Province of Mendoza. It was definitively closed in 1977 1964 (March) Buenos Aires John F. Kennedy University of Argentina Source: Based on Klappenbach (2015) with further modifications by the authors

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 he Debate on the Psychologists’ Role: Between Political T Developmentalism, Mental Health, and Dictatorship (1965–1983) The fall of psychotechnics and professional guidance was parallel to the fall of Peronism by a coup d’état in September 1955. For this reason, some comments are necessary on the process of desperonization that was experienced in those years. There was no single way of understanding the desperonization of politics, society, and culture (Spinelli, 2006). The one that predominated from Aramburu’s government proscribed the Peronist party, which began with the Decree 3855 of November 24, 1955 (República Argentina, 1955b), but concluded with the well-known Decree 4161 of March 5, 1956, that came to prohibit the different elements and symbols related to the “deposed regime.” Article 1 of the abovementioned decree prohibited throughout the country the use “for the purpose of Peronist ideological affirmation … of images, symbols, signs, significant expressions, doctrines, articles and artistic works, which claim such character” (República Argentina, 1956b, p.  1). Other expressions of the desperonization can be seen in the prohibition of union activity, the revocation of the 1949 constitution, and the creation of multiple investigative commissions at the national, provincial, and even municipal levels. The investigative commissions had the objective of investigating the alleged irregularities of the deposed regime and had broad powers (Ferreyra, 2016a). It is estimated that there were no less than 413 commissions throughout the country (Ferreyra, 2016b). In the university setting, the objective of desperonization was immediate. On September 30, the Universidad del Litoral (Decree 131/55), the Universidad de Buenos Aires (Decree 133/55), the Universidad Nacional de La Plata (Decree 163/55), and the Universidad Nacional de Tucumán (Decree 164/55) intervened; on October 4 the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo (Decree 275/55); and on November 3 the Instituto Tecnológico del Sur, future Universidad Nacional del Sur (Decree 2432/55). The considerations of the decrees have similarities, with the exception of the one related to the Instituto Tecnológico del Sur. In general, intervention was justified in arguments such as university disorganization, lack of academic freedom, and suppression of university autonomy (República Argentina, 1955c, d, e, f, g). In the case of the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, it was also argued the “decline of the faculty by means of appointments in which the capacity and integrity of the teachers gave way, in most cases, to obsession with a denying tyranny of the academic hierarchies” (República Argentina, 1955f, p. 1). In the same direction, Decree 478 of October 14, 1955, declared in commission all university personnel, that is removed all tenure positions, with the objective of “choosing professors in the most responsible and just manner” and considering that “it is an indispensable requirement that there be a faculty that by their knowledge, intellectual probity, and moral and civic integrity is worthy of their high investiture” (República Argentina, 1955a, p. 1).

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The decree meant an open questioning of the faculty and teaching assistants and was based on the widespread belief in the low academic level of the professors who had won their positions during Peronism, those who were pejoratively called “flor de ceibo” (which is the national flower of Argentina). Detailed studies in recent years have shown the injustice of that belief. The analysis of the trajectory of professors, both in the Department of Philosophy and Humanities at the University of Buenos Aires (Martínez del Sel & Riccono, 2013) and in the Department of Law and Social Sciences of the same university (Cuello, 2014; Martínez del Sel, 2016), reveals that many professors during the years of Peronism exhibited prestigious trajectories and were part of recognized international circuits, as much as the resigned professors who remained outside the university from 1943 to 1955. The university transformations following the fall of Peronism were completed between November and December 1955. First, Decree 2538 of November 4, 1955, established that the intervenors in the various universities “will proceed to reintegrate into their respective professorships all full, associate, substitute or special professors, and teaching assistants who have resigned or been separated from them for political reasons” (República Argentina, 1955h, p. 1). And secondly, on 23 December 1956 the decree law 6403 established a new legal, academic, and administrative regime for the national universities. This decree has been widely studied because, for the first time since the sanction of the Avellaneda Law in the nineteenth century, in its famous article 28 it established that “private initiative can create free universities that will be able to issue diplomas and qualifying degrees” (República Argentina, 1956a, p. 2). For our topic, it is interesting that this decree made a call for open public competitions but with clear proscriptions, specified in two special requirements in Article 32: (a) Those who have carried out positive and ostensible acts that objectively prove the promotion of totalitarian doctrines adverse to the dignity of free man and the validity of republican institutions shall not be admitted to the contest; (b) Nor shall those be admitted to the competition who, in the performance of a university position, public functions or any other activity, have carried out positive and ostensible acts of solidarity with the dictatorship, which compromise the concept of independence and dignity of the chair (República Argentina, 1956a, p. 2).

What is interesting is the fact that in the university environment the desperonization was drastic and somehow managed to involve not only the professors but also the university organization and the curricula. In fact, the programs generated in the years of Peronism were also modified or even eliminated. We have analyzed that the institutionalization of psychology in Argentina since the creation of the first psychology program (1955) took place in a context of desperonization. There was evidence of renewal, expansion, and modernization of higher education, but in a context of a notable absence of democracy or restricted democracy. This process began in 1955 with the coup d’état that overthrew the democratic Peronist government and ended in 1966 with the self-described “Argentine Revolution” (Feld, 2015; Suasnábar, 2004). Education reform, especially in higher education, was part of the development policy agenda. At the academic level, this agenda had an impact mainly on two issues: firstly, on the

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conceptualization of the university as an institution that should generate knowledge, and therefore should be the axis of the network of organizations, institutions, and groups of science and technology, which was then revitalized by the recent creation of the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET) in 1958. In effect, since the 1960s the public university began to be the place of execution of the greatest percentage of the national budget dedicated to science and technology, in research projects, scholarships, and full-time teaching positions that allowed to complement teaching with the production of knowledge (Prego & Estébanez, 2002; Vacarezza, 1998). However, a negative aspect of this development was related to what Diego Hurtado has called the ideology of systemic integration: “the university-­ CONICET system would consolidate an orientation towards basic science sustained by universalist values, which in practice meant the adoption of the research agendas of advanced countries” (Hurtado, 2010, p. 108). Secondly, developmentalist policies took up the notion that the university was a channel for social mobility and promotion and for the formation of resources for the solution of more general social problems. In Argentina, many academic and scientific groups have advocated scientific policies aimed at solving specific and real problems in the region, particularly poverty, inequality, and unemployment (Vessuri, 2007). Several of the characteristics of what would progressively be shaped as the Argentinean psychological culture are linked to these processes, especially regarding the composition of the student body, their preferences and objectives, and the academic debates developed within the psychology programs as we will analyze later. On the other hand, it is also necessary to consider a significant set of economic changes following the fall of Peronism. As we have analyzed, psychotechnics and professional guidance received a strong impulse from the economic reforms introduced by Peronism. The fall of Peronism was followed by new economic reorientations. First, since 1956, there has been a decrease in the number of small and medium-sized enterprises in the country and an increase in the average size of the industrial companies. Companies with more than 200 employees, which represented 29% in 1954, reached 40% in 1964 (Lewis, 1990). The greatest growth was also in which became known as “dynamic industries,” that is, industries with a lot of technological development in the field of iron, steel, petrochemical, rubber, mechanical, and automotive instead of “traditional industries” like food, textiles, and tobacco. Both modifications were the result of the increase of foreign investment and increased participation in economy of multinational corporations. It has been analyzed for example that new investment by companies of foreign capital was $3 million in 1958, which increased to 36 million in 1959, 106 million in 1960, and 188 million in 1961 (Lewis, 1990). A consequence of this process was on the one hand decrease in the number of industrial establishments. Social theory Social theorists have posed that the greater dependence of foreign investment in peripheral or dependent countries implies a greater dependence on the international economy and this necessarily weakens the power of the federal administration, even if the state continues to intervene in the economy (Faletto, 2014). At

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the particular case of the government that overthrew Peronism and its continuation and transformation into the developmental political model, there was a “change within the accumulation model that would change the basis of social support that characterized the internal market model” (Fair, 2009, p. 525). But the most striking thing was the changes produced by the so-called economic modernization. In a classic paper, Celso Furtado has analyzed the changes in cultural patterns and consumption in peripheral or underdeveloped societies produced by modernization: Unlike developed economies, in which the driving factor is a combined process of new forms of consumption (private and public) and innovation technology, in the underdeveloped economy the two primary factors interacting in depending on the overall conditions of the system, is the imposition of forms of consumption from the outside to the inside which constitutes the main driving factor … In the conditions of underdevelopment, that process is only fully realized with respect to to the group of the population that is integrated in the ‘modern’ … It is possible, therefore, to prove that the introduction of new consumption patterns among rich groups is the real primary factor (alongside state action) in the “development” of the so-called underdeveloped economies (Furtado, 1971, p. 345).

In the case of Argentina, a number of changes took place promoted by a “modern industry strongly integrated with foreign capital at the center not only of economic life but also of new cultural values” (Portantiero, 1989, p. 20). In this context, Juan Carlos Portantiero pointed out the role of young people from the middle classes, who became a social category. In his analysis, by 1960 it had installed in Argentina an “industrial culture,” the basis of the mass communication similar to that in Europe or the United States, along with the expansion of art and culture in which “psychoanalysis burst on the scene like an avalanche” (Portantiero, 1989, p. 21). The economic transformations and the new culture of modernity not only promoted the irruption of psychoanalysis like an avalanche. The same movement generated transformations deep in the culture and in everyday life: a discreet revolution (Cosse, 2010) which relied on the expansion of psychotherapy that involved a reorientation of subjectivity and intimacy, circulation of the “psychoanalytic vulgate” as Pujol calls it (Pujol, 2007, p. 298), family planning, and separation of sexuality and reproduction favored by the wide spread of the pill (Felitti, 2012; Pujol, 2007): … the Buenos Aires case was shocking. On the one hand, counted with the lowest average number of live births per women (1.49% versus 2.25% in Rio de Janeiro, 2.97% in Caracas and 3.16% of Bogota) and, in addition, it had the highest percentage of contraceptive users among women married and living together (77.6% vs. 65% in San José, 59.4% in Caracas, 58.1% in Rio de Janeiro and the lowest average in Mexico: 37.4%). Likewise, Buenos Aires was the city where the highest average number of women who had begun their contraceptive practices before first pregnancy (40.2%). These data showed that there was a significant social demand in this respect, in correspondence with the transformations of the gender roles and relationships, sexual morality patterns and family models. Although it was still a ‘discreet revolution’ (Cosse, 2010), the modernization that policy supported and that the spread of psychoanalysis led to the everyday life (Plotkin, 2002) made the case of Buenos Aires special (Felitti, 2012, p. 170).

In a context such as the one described above, psychotechnics and professional were on the side of tradition that it was necessary to replace. The rhetoric of modernity demanded a reorientation also of psychology, something that the new

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psychology programs were going to carry out, sustained by that burst of psychoanalysis that Portantiero mentioned. The development of psychology from 1960 onwards has been analyzed. Here we would simply like to emphasize some characteristics that delegitimized psychotechnics and professional guidance. Firstly, there is the shift from professional guidance, especially collective, to the model of vocational orientation, from an individual and a clinical approach. The vocational orientation approach that began to be cemented in the 1960s and 1970s in Argentina was based on a differentiation between two possible models of vocational guidance: the actuarial modality and the clinical modality. This distinction implied an explicit questioning of psychotechnics, which, in the classic book of Rodolfo Bohoslavsky, was close to the Examen de los Ingenios que Huarte de San Juan wrote in 1575: “This [actuarial] modality is linked to American psychtechnics and differential psychology from the beginning of the twentieth century” (Bohoslavsky, 1971/1979, p. 15; italics belong to me). The abovementioned displacement generated, in the second place, the disappearance of psychotechnics, considered as a whole as a Taylorist expression, and its replacement by the psychodiagnostic process, individually and psychoanalytically oriented. The well-known book edited by Siquier de Ocampo, García Arzeno, and collaborators began, once again, with a veiled questioning of psychotechnics: The conception of the psychodiagnostic process, such as we postulated in this book, it’s relatively new. Traditionally it has been considered ‘from the outside’ as a situation where the psychologist administers a test to someone and in those terms formulate the derivation … In this way the psychologist has functioned as someone who learned to best administer a test (de Ocampo & García-Arzeno, 1974/1976, p. 13).

And a third and less analyzed characteristic has been the abandonment of the French psychological matrix, focusing on the study of observable and operable behaviour, which Dagfal (2002) called conduite à la française. This matrix, which should not be confused with behaviorism, was replaced  by a psychoanalytic approach, focused on making conscious the unconscious, which ultimately can only be contrasted in the individual psychoanalytic experience. In short, the decisive change between psychotechnics and professional guidance, or even among the recommendations of that congress of psychology held in Tucumán and the new undergraduate programs that began to be implemented, was supported in a new graduate profile which had the clinic as its core objective and psychoanalysis as the basis of all the practices in psychology. So, by clinic, one did not understand a branch of psychology; on the contrary, the clinic was the foundation of all psychology. Psychology, then, abandoned its place in the world of administration’s planning and found its best development as a liberal profession, at the service of the individuality of the subjects. The modification of the profile took place in a few years and still when it was the result of a collective process involving actively the then students of psychology of the University of Buenos Aires; this can be attributed to José Bleger, the most precise justification of the same:

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Clinical psychology is always the most direct and appropriate access to the behavior of humans beings and their personalities. So far, Experimental Psychology is tributary to it. When Experimental Psychology is ‘libereted’ from the clinical attitude and from the clinical method, what happens is that the psychologist stops studying human beings for study the technique he employs. This is very especially with psycho-technicians who end up studying the test through humans instead of studying humans through the test (Bleger, 1964, p. 179; italics belong to me).

Once again it can be seen that the new graduate profile came to displace psychotechnics and professional guidance. In some opportunities it has been characterized as Argentinean psychology prior to the organization of psychology programs in terms of a vacuum of psychology that was finally filled by psychoanalysis. In fact, and based on what we have analyzed thus far, it does not seem exaggerated to say that, contrary to that image of the emptiness or vacuum of psychology that psychoanalysis allegedly came to fill, that what really took place was an emptying out of psychology developed before the avalanche of psychoanalysis. This emptying out required the denial of the scientific foundations of psychology, a task Bleger had already undertaken, very explicitly in the first class of the psychoanalysis course at the Universidad del Litoral in 1959: Applied psychoanalysis has a vast field, as well as psychology in general. The psychologist is the one working in the specific field of interpersonal relations in any activity or task of man. Psychology is a trade, a task that can be enriched by the applied psychoanalysis. There are no phenomena to which should be applied or that are exclusive to psychoanalysis or of a psychoanalytic approaching, as opposed to other phenomena that would be unique to other systems of schools in psychology (Bleger, 1959/1962, pp. 56–57; translation and emphasis are ours).

Such an emptying transformed psychology in a trade. In other words, psychology was no longer a science; it has become a trade, a task: “The training of the psychologist requires the handling of psychology not as a humanistic knowledge but as a trade” (Bleger, 1962, p. 57; emphasis added). It is clear then that this trade required a knowledge on which to base the practitioner or trader. Of course, that knowledge was psychoanalysis. It must also be  noted that, in addition, the scope of psychoanalysis was enlarged as to encompass general psychology. That is, psychoanalysis could be applied to all human phenomena. That characteristic of psychoanalysis justified that in the new undergraduate psychology programs it was not necessary to teach other theories or schools. From the moment the psychoanalysis becomes the only referential scheme in psychology, the overlap between psychology and psychoanalysis becomes complete. In Argentina, in those years psychology and psychoanalysis were the same. All of these changes, political, economic, cultural, academic, and theoretical, had an impact on psychology programs in various ways. At the sociocultural level, two phenomena should be highlighted: on the one hand, the increase in enrolment in universities. In fact, since the time of the Peronist project, the emphasis on democratizing the university and making it accessible to the middle and lower classes had made university education a core element of social promotion and mobility (Mangone & Warley, 1984). By the mid-1960s, developmentalist policy had led to a sustained and progressive increase in student enrolment. Consider what was said at the end of the previous section; between 1955 and 1964, 14 new undergraduate

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psychology programs were created (Klappenbach, 2015). A report at the end of the 1960s estimated that almost 2800 psychology students already existed in the psychology degree program at the University of Buenos Aires, almost 1200 were added to the undergraduate program at the National University of Córdoba, 700 at the University of Litoral, 700 at the National University of La Plata, 360 at the National University of Tucumán, and 245 at the National University of Cuyo (Chaparro, 1969). Therefore, by the end of the decade almost 6000 students were aspiring to obtain their degree in psychology: 650% more than the number registered only 10 years earlier, in 1958 (García, 1983). The democratization of university studies in a climate of clear social dynamism and accelerated transformation of more general institutions impacted the sociodemographic characteristics of psychology programs. A typical Argentinean phenomenon was the feminization of both  undergraduate psychology programs and the early professional field. During the first years of psychology as an university career in Argentina, more than two-thirds of the students and graduates were women. This phenomenon intensified towards the mid-1960s, to the point where, in conjunction with other “service-oriented” or assistance-based university programs such as nursing or social work, “psychology has been perceived as an essentially female profession” (Plotkin, 2002, p.  146). In this sense, almost all the graduates of the first cohorts of psychologists between 1961 and 1969 had been women (Litvinoff & Gomel, 1975). Rubén Ardila described the average psychologist (the statistical ‘modal figure’) in the Argentina of the mid-1970s: [The average psychologist] was a woman, under the age of 31, married and with two children. Her husband is a psychologist or a physician. She studied at the University of Buenos Aires from 5 to 6 and a half years […] She works in clinical psychology and more specifically conducting  psychoanalytic psychotherapy with neurotic patients. […] This person started working at an institution without receiving any remuneration; she did it to acquire practice that she does not acquire in the university […] This person reads only Spanish-­ written journal, especially the Argentinian publications. At the present time she is under psychoanalytic treatment in order to satisfy the requirements of didactic analysis for training psychoanalysts (Ardila, 1979, p. 83).

The core of this profile remained untouched in the following decades. Between the early and mid-1980s, 74% of the students in the psychology undergraduate program at the University of Buenos Aires, the most populated university in the country, were women (Plotkin, 2002). Similar percentages were observed in the programs of universities such as the National University of San Luis (Horas et al., 1977) and the National University of Mar del Plata (Vilanova, 1987). However, a new shift occurred as a consequence of the 1966 coup d’état led by the self-proclaimed Argentine Revolution. Culturally as well as politically, the Revolution drastically turned towards anti-communist, economically liberal, and conservative, if not outright reactionary ideologies. In this context, the university was seen as a left-wing ideological focus which ran counter to the de facto government. As a result, the goverment adopted a strong interventionist policy towards the universities, thus violating the principle of autonomy which regulated the institutions and guaranteed academic autonomy. The de facto government advanced by

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dismissing professors, removing and replacing university authorities, and physically invading classroom spaces. On July 29, 1966, the infamous episode known as the Night of the Long Sticks  took place, even attaining  international visibility (Langer, 1966). It consisted of the forced removal and consequent physical repression of students and professors from various departments of the University of Buenos Aires by the Federal Police (Bianculli & Taroncher, 2018). In addition to the professors who were dismissed or expelled, other instructors and university authorities resigned or were forcibly exiled. This had a decisive impact on university psychology programs. For example, among the professors who were dismissed or replaced by assistants in the programs at universities in Buenos Aires, La Plata, and Rosario were José Itzinghson, Juan Azcoaga, Telma Reca, Nicolas Tabella, Jaime Bernstein, Luisa de Ocampo, José Bleger, León Ostrov, David Liberman, and Fernando Ulloa, among many others (Moyano, 2010). The progressive limitation of the highly  dynamic and critical  activities of the university institution affected the  Argentinian psychological culture in very concrete ways. For example, at the end of the 1960s one of the first reports on the teaching of the discipline noted, among other things, the scarcity of scholarships granted to students and the scarce research activity in psychology programs (Chaparro, 1969). In addition, very few scholarship holders or psychologists could choose to undertake training or research stays abroad. According to a survey carried out by one psychology professor at the University of Buenos Aires who had also been a founding member of the program the funds for psychological research in Argentina came  mainly from CONICET, and to a lesser extent from  either the Ministry of Education or specific American foundations (Cortada de Kohan, 1978). Indeed, it has been noted that due to the limited subsidies and grants for scientific research in psychology, at  academic psychology departments and formal institutes “those who researched would do so for their own interest and as a ‘collaboration’” (Piñeda, 2010). Another milestone immediately following the Night of the Long Sticks was the sanction, in 1967, of the Law 17132, on the legal practice of medicine, which had an important effect on psychology’s professional field (República Argntina, 1967). In a chronological sense, the law itself was the product of numerous collective debates within medical circles regarding the professions that could legitimately intervene in the clinical field. And these debates included, of course, psychologists as an emerging professional group. As it has been previously documented (Borinsky, 2002; Klappenbach, 2000) and as it was analyzed above, the core debate that shaped the first graduates of psychology programs from the 1960s onwards was a debate not about psychology as a science but about the psychologist  as a practitioner: in other words, about the graduate’s  professional role, the limits of his  or  her competence, and his or her involvement in the discipline’s several areas of professional work. Early on both the psychoanalytic predominance in the programs from 1958 onwards and the strongly clinical orientation of the programs oriented students towards the field of mental health (Cortada de Kohan, 1978; Dagfal, 2009, 2018; Plotkin, 2002). However, this orientation took place in a field that was not yet defined, around a new professional figure without clear profiles or boundaries, and in a context which was being constantly reshaped by graduates themselves. In the terms of Klappenbach (2006), “the

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novelty of the profession, the ambiguities in the university training of young psychologists, as well as the amplitude of applications of the new discipline, made its field of action imprecise” (p. 140). In fact, as late as 1975, it was noted that when speaking of the role of the psychologist “we are referring to a concept about which there is no consensus but which, on the contrary, can be the object of very divergent definitions” (Litvinoff & Gomel, 1975, p. 36). Between 1960 and approximately 1975, on the one hand psychologists perceived themselves as psychoanalysts, and conceived psychoanalysis as the only psychological approach that both guaranteed the scientificity of the discipline and grounded psychology’s diverse professional fields – these fields being defined as applied psychoanalysis (Estudiantes Delegados & Docentes, 1973; Grego & Kaumann, 1973; Harari, 1975; Malfé, 1983). On the other hand, and in the context of Argentina’s accelerated process of sociocultural mutation,  psychologists tended to perceive themselves and be perceived by other professions  as assisting agents of change (García, 1983),  driven by psychoanalytic tenets and assumptions (Bleger, 1966; Danis, 1969; Danis et al., 1970). In all these debates about the role of the psychologist, both psychoanalysis as a clinical theory and the psychologists’ incidence in the mental health field were strongly defining elements. In such a context, there was a notable reluctance by some physicians, especially psychiatrists, to admit psychologists as professional peers. During those years there were numerous symposia, thematic panels, and congresses that discussed this precise  issue (Klappenbach, 2006). Of course, this  was not an original  Argentinian problem. From the 1920s to the 1960s, similar quarrels between psychologists and psychiatrists over psychotherapeutic practice had taken place in the United States (Buchanan, 2003). In Argentina, the Law 17132 put an end to the complaint, at least on a legal level. In its 9th chapter, the psychologist was defined as an assistant to the psychiatrist (Rpública Argentina, 1967). The law established that the psychologist could not practice psychotherapy or psychoanalysis or prescribe psychotropic drugs, and that he/she could only work in the medical field under strict subordination or supervision by a physician specialized in psychiatry. As a result, psychologists continued to be integrated in public mental health institutions (hospitals, hospices, psychiatric services, etc.), although under the direction of psychiatrists, most of them psychoanalysts (Borinsky, 2002). At the same time, the Law could not impede psychologists from practicing psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in the private clinic (Avelluto, 1983; Litvinoff & Gomel, 1975). From the 1970s onwards, the region witnessed a gradual exhaustion and failure of the developmentalist political project. With it, the perceived place of the university as a central agent in the production of the scientific-technical infrastructure for local technological development changed radically. What at the social and political level had been the basis of Argentina’s institutional modernization was practically dismantled during the self-proclaimed National Reorganization Process initiated by a new military coup d’état, this time in March 1976. The general scientific and technological policy adopted by the region from the 1970s onwards abandoned the developmentalist ideals, be them economic, political or social. On the contrary, the idea of the development of local, original, autonomous and relevant productive forces was “defeated,” in terms of Vessuri (2007), by the local representatives of

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external interests, by an economic model based on growth without social equity, and by the authoritarian regimes whose scientific policies, except for specific cases, mostly accentuated the peripheral, dependent, and replicative place of Argentina in the international system of science and technology. As far as the university institution is concerned, by the mid-1970s, the economic and social policies implemented by the last dictatorship in Argentina led, among other things, to a drastic decrease in student enrolment in public universities and an increase in enrolment in private universities and nonuniversity institutions. It also led to the closure of programs and even universities and the virtual interruption of scarce research activity, which strengthened the professional bias of the Argentinean university programs (Bekerman, 2009; Buchbinder & Marquina, 2008). To this was added a shortage of postgraduate training, and a general lack of both a minimum base for research activities and science and technology policy instruments that would sustain an environment favorable for scientific and technological development (Hurtado, 2010; Vessuri, 2007). In this context, psychology degrees were part of the program of “de-­ ideologization” and political persecution by the military regime. The kidnapping, torture, and disappearance of psychologists were accompanied by a withdrawal to private activities that excluded public forums, such as academic ones. University professors were dismissed and expelled, enrollment of new students in various psychology programs was cancelled, and some programs such as those in Mar del Plata and La Plata were eventually “closed”. According to several primary accounts, the government coordinated an “emptying out” of the programs which proved to be successful (García, 1983).

 emocratic Transition and Institutional Normalization D of Psychology in the Context of the Crises and Changes in Argentinian Higher Education (1984–2009) As we have analyzed, the last dictatorship intervened and strongly affected the institutional order of public space, especially that of higher education institutions. With the progressive decline of the dictatorship, especially after the Falklands War in 1982, the various university sectors (especially the students) began to regain public spaces and organize demonstrations, gaining visibility and resuming a process that had been restrained in 1976. Thus, once the dictatorship ended and democracy was recovered in 1983, a gradual process of normalization of public life in its various forms was undertaken. After the recovery of democracy, enrolment in higher university education expanded significantly. In the advanced stages of democracy, a new higher education law was passed that established accreditation and certification processes for university programs and established incentives for scientific productivity for university professors (Rodríguez-Gómez, 2003).

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However, this occurred in a context of structural national economic changes in response to regional crises. During the 1980s, Latin America witnessed a period of low development economies, framed by international crises such as the world oil crisis (Martínez-Boom, 2004), which led, among other things, to a scarcity of budgetary resources in almost all areas of government. This led to the original model of modernization being replaced by another one that, under the same concept, prioritized  the market, competitiveness, financial capital, and economic  deregulation. Argentina was paradigmatic of this process during the 1990s. These changes spilled over both the country’s social structure and dynamics and the public system of education, science, and technology. At the educational level, for example, the regional crises were interpreted by various university and government agents as indicating the need for structural reforms, such as the reduction of public investment, the lowering of wages, the liberalization of the economy, and the privatization of public enterprises (García-Teske, 2008). This resulted in adjustment policies, where education was redefined as a service or a merchandise, favoring the emergence of private higher education institutions (García-Teske, 2008). As a result, the education system was seen as a mechanism for personal and collective investment, in the context of the macrocultural changes introduced by the process of globalization. Hence, issues related to the educational system were perceived as problems in the context of economic debates, and in the terms of profitability, supply and demand. The approval of the Higher Education Law 24521 in 1995 was a milestone in the advance of the regulatory centralization of the state. Internally, the Law was a reaction to some of the arguments that circulated during the 1980s and 1990s, most of which lacked contrastable empirical data, regarding the supposed deterioration in the quality and level of training of graduates, the low performance in terms of the percentage of graduates and the real length of academic  programs, the scarce development of self-sustainable institutions, and the poor articulation between universities  and  the demands of the productive sector, among others. Both the new law itself and the National Commission for University Evaluation and Accreditation (CONEAU by its Spanish acronym), which the same law created caused conflicts and resistance among university actors, particularly in students (represented mainly by the student centers of public universities) and  to a lesser extent in professors. The new law introduced mandatory accreditation processes for those undergraduate programs which trained professionals “whose practice could compromise the public interest by directly endangering the health, safety, rights, property or education of the inhabitants” (República Argentina, 1995, p. 3). These undergraduate programs were to be accredited by CONEAU and had to meet three requirements established by the Ministry of Education: (a) a minimum number of class hours; (b) a basic curricular set of contents; and (c) a basic track of practical training (República Argentina, 1995). A very large number of students and professors rejected the new law because they considered that the evaluation and accreditation processes answered to standards that came from outside the own university and thus violated university autonomy. Such a criticism was countered by official statements which argued that the universities still had broad powers such as dictating

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their own legal frameworks, defining their governing bodies, creating careers, establishing new programs and formulating and developing curricula (Sanchez-Martinez, 2002). Within this framework, new mechanisms were introduced for evaluation and accreditation purposes. Once again these mechanisms, which involved institutional evaluations, the accreditation of undergraduate and graduate programs, the formulation of new title regimes, and a general attempt to establish a ‘culture of evaluation’ in the Argentinian university, were heavily derided by students and professors alike. Since the early 1990s Argentinian and Latin American psychologists have established regional forums to discuss university-related issues, including undergraduate training and eventual accreditation of programs. A clear example were the Integrative Meetings of Mercosur Psychologists, held between 1994 and 2001 in several countries of the Southern Cone (Di Doménico, 1999). Among other things, these forums declared the need to collectively review psychology undergraduate programs and eventually submit them to some kind of “quality control” process, especially in the context of the poor conditions of Argentinian university psychology education by the late 1980s. At the same time, the evaluation and accreditation of programs by the State was seen as a way of confronting a phenomenon typical of the neoliberal policies of Argentina in the 1990s: the proliferation of programs in private universities, with the ensuing “diaspora of academic degrees” (Molina, 2004). Thus, the evaluation of programs within the framework of the Law of 1995 was seen as a viable strategy to address these issues. Between 2001 and 2003, three national bodies requested psychology to be included in the list of careers to be evaluated and accredited by the State under the legal system described above (Di Doménico & Piacente, 2003; Klappenbach, 2003). These bodies  were the Federación de Psicólogos de la República Argentina (the Federation of Psychologists of the Argentinian Republic, FePRA), the Asociación de Unidades Académicas de Psicología (the Association of Psychology Academic Departments, AUAPsi) which brought together representatives of the psychology programs at  public universities, and the Unidad de Vinculación Académica de Psicología de Universidades de Gestión Privada (the Vinculation Unit for Psychology at Private Universities,  UVAPsi). In accordance with the law, the Council of Universities recommended the inclusion of psychology programs among those regulated by the State, and in 2004 the Ministry of Education emitted the respective resolution (Ministerio de Educación and Ciencia y Tecnología, 2004). This opened a new process in which FePRA, AUAPsi, and UVAPsi worked out the standards and criteria for the evaluation of programs through the mechanisms stipulated by the Higher Education Law; standards which were finally approved by the Ministry of Education in 2009 (Ministerio de Educación, 2009).

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 hallenges During the New Millennium: Accreditation C of Psychology Programs and the Mental Health Field Issue (2009-2020) In making a critical assessment of more than three decades of science policy in the region, by the turn of the millennium it was admitted that these policies had led to a disconnection between scientific and technological institutions on the one hand and the rest of the social sectors on the other. It was also argued that such policy had led to the disarticulation between science and technology policies and other public policies, and to “a higher education system that provides a training which is not linked to the professional profiles emerging from the accelerated scientific and technological change” (Albornoz, 2002, p. 15). Such disconnection was further reflected by a change in the ethos of the university as an institution, which slowly abandoned its  focus on controversy, communication, and scholarly  criticism of knowledge (Mollis, 2006). The new millennium finds Argentinian psychology facing numerous challenges. The high dynamism of these challenges, as well as our temporal proximity to this period and the scarce literature on the topic, forces us to be cautious. We will then focus on two questions that we believe are central to recent and contemporary Argentinian psychology. Firstly, the accreditation processes were launched around 2009, after 6 years of joint work between public and private psychology associations in designing  the evaluation processes’ standards and criteria. On the one hand, these processes have continued to arouse deep resistance among students and professors, which criticize the external imposition of an evaluation that would violate university autonomy. Students and professors often identify evaluation processes with foreign interventions in the national territory (Fierro, 2018). In some cases, this resistance has led to systematic student mobilizations and even to the peaceful takeover of university buildings in the context of protests against the law of higher education and the CONEAU as a whole. On the other hand, by August 2014, only 28 of the 70 psychology courses had been accredited, and of these 28, only 6 universities had been accredited for 6 years (Klappenbach, 2015). Two years later, by March 2017, 52 psychology degrees had been accredited by CONEAU (Piñeda & Klappenbach, 2018). This implies that numerous careers have been accredited with the minimum requirements stipulated by law, and  through evaluations that  have clearly  recognized numerous deficiencies and weaknesses amidst the current status of local psychology education. Finally, this ties in with the fact that the curricular revisions prompted by these negative assessments and which had been undertaken at the beginning of the 2010s, do not seem to have greatly modified the chronic characteristics of psychology education in the country. This is especially true in regards to the scarce updating of the programs, their professional emphasis, and the monotheoretical predominance of psychoanalysis (Di Doménico & Piacente, 2011; Vázquez-­ Ferrero, 2016).

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Secondly, there has been a revitalization of the debate on the role of the psychologist in the field of mental health. Although the clinical field has historically attracted most vocations among graduates, the last two decades have seen a shift in the issue, in part due to the significant legal and human rights changes that have taken place at the national level. In fact, if in the 1960s and 1970s psychologists tried to practice their profession in the field of mental health, understood as a subfield of medicine, since the turn of the millennium psychologists have begun to claim a place in mental health system understood as a basic and fundamental right of citizenship. This has also found its foundation in the new National Mental Health Law passed in 2012, which situates the issue of human rights as one of the fundamental pillars in the field of mental health. A detailed analysis of the Law exceeds this space. Suffice it to say that, among other things, the Law defines mental health as a basic right of citizens, which extends the scope of action and the relevance of areas and disciplines such as  psychology, which affect the psychological and behavioral well-being of individuals. At the same time, the Law promotes alternative forms of treatment to psychiatric hospitalization, thus favoring the tasks that psychologists perform in comparison to their psychiatric colleagues. Finally, the Law favors interdisciplinary work and allows psychologists to hold positions of leadership and management of mental health services and institutions. This has implied an important material and symbolic “advance” in psychologists’ claims for professional autonomy and expert intervention. However, the impact of the Law and the disciplinary debates it favored once again place the clinical field at the center of the scene. Thus, in line with Argentina’s historical overdependence on clinical psychology, the contemporary focus on the National Mental Health Law further relegates other equally relevant and pressing issues, such as the structural weakness of scientific research in psychology in Argentina and the fragile scientific status of undergraduate and graduate psychology education in general.

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República Argentina. (1955c). Decreto 131. Boletín Oficial de la República Argentina, año 63, número 18.004, Primera Sección, pág. 1. República Argentina. (1955d). Decreto 133. Boletín Oficial de la República Argentina, año 63, número 18.004, Primera Sección, pág. 1. República Argentina. (1955e). Decreto 163. Boletín Oficial de la República Argentina, año 63, número 17.999, Primera Sección, pág. 1. República Argentina. (1955f). Decreto 275. Boletín Oficial de la República Argentina, año 63, número 17.999, Primera Sección, pág. 1. República Argentina. (1955g). Decreto 2432. Boletín Oficial de la República Argentina, año 63, número 18.029, Primera Sección, pág. 1. República Argentina. (1955h). Decreto 2538. Boletín Oficial de la República Argentina, año 63, número 18.029, Primera Sección, pág. 1. República Argentina. (1956a). Decreto-Ley N° 6403. Boletín Oficial de la República Argentina, año 64, número 18.059, Primera Sección, pp. 1–2. República Argentina. (1956b). Decreto-Ley N° 4161. Boletín Oficial de la República Argentina, año 64, número 18.107, Primera Sección, pág. 1. República Argentina. (1967). Ley N° 17.132. Reglas para el ejercicio de la medicina, odontología y actividades de colaboración de las mismas. Boletín Oficial de la República Argentina, año 75, número 21119, Primera Sección, 1–10. República Argentina. (1995). Ley de Educación Superior. Ley 24521. Boletín Oficial de la República Argentina, año 103, número 28204, Primera Sección, 1–5. Ribot, T. (1870). La psychologie anglaise contemporaine. Librairie Philosophique de Ladrange. Ribot, T. (1879). La psychologie allemande contemporaine. Alcan. Rimoldi, H. (1950). La enseñanza de la psicología en los Estados Unidos de Norte América. Revista de Psiquiatría y Criminología, 15, 87100. Rimoldi, H. (1995). Testimonio autobiográfico. Cuadernos Argentinos de Historia de la Psicología, 1(1/2), 275–300. Rivarola, R. (1911). Unidad y organización de la ciencia. Anales de Psicología, 2, 165–176. Rodríguez-Gómez, R. (2003). La educación superior en el mercado. Configuraciones emergentes y nuevos proveedores. In M. Mollis (Ed.), Las universidades en América Latina: ¿Reformadas o alteradas? La cosmética del poder financiero (pp. 87–107). CLACSO. Romero, F. (1950). Indicaciones sobre la marcha del pensamiento filosófico en la Argentina [2ª parte]. Cuadernos Americanos, 50(2), 117–129. Romero, F. (1957). Ortega Gasset y el problema de la jefatura espiritual. Cursos y Conferencias, 26, 50(276), 1–19. Romero, J. L. (1998). Desarrollo de las ideas en la sociedad argentina del siglo XX. A-Z Editora. (Trabajo original publicado en 1965). Rossi, L. (Ed.). (1997). La psicología antes de la profesión. Eudeba. Rossi, L., & Jardon, M. (2014). Historia de la Psicología en Argentina: Un recorrido através de las instituciones (1900-1957). In G. Salas (Ed.), Historia de la psicología en América del Sur. Diálogos y perspectivas (pp. 28–40). Nueva Mirada Ediciones. Rustoyburu, C.  A. (2016). Maternidad e infancia. Los consejos médicos y psicológicos en la revista Hijo Mío…! Buenos Aires, en la década de 1930. Arenal, 23(1), 117–142. Sanchez-Martinez, E. (2002). La legislación sobre educación superior en Argentina. Entre rupturas, continuidades y transformaciones. IESALC-Ministerio de Educación. Sanz-Ferramola, R., & Klappenbach, H. (2000). La psicología argentina en los años treinta. Estudio bibliométrico de los Anales del Instituto de Psicología (1935-1941). In J.  C. Ríos, R.  Ruiz, J.  C. Stagnaro, & P.  Weissmann (Eds.), Psiquiatría, psicología y psicoanálisis. Historia y memoria (pp. 269–284). Polemos. Sarlo, B. (1988). Una modernidad periférica: Buenos Aires 1920 y 1930. Nueva Visión. Sociedad de Psicología de Buenos Aires (Ed.). (1945). Trabajos actuales de psicología normal y patológica. Editorial Médico-Quirúrgica. Soler, R. (1968). El positivismo argentino. Paidós.

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Chapter 6

Psychology in Brazil: The Trajectory of a Science and a Profession Ana Maria Jacó-Vilela

Introduction Broadly speaking, the history of psychology in Brazil does not greatly differ from the history of psychology in the other peripheral countries of Latin America, Asia, and Africa, as doubtlessly a comparison with the other texts in this book will show. A few ideas are implied in this assertion. The first is that (a) the emergence of “science,” originating from the processes that Europe went through starting in the fifteenth century, occurs in countries where there has been strong investment in the creation of universities and in the creation of the necessary conditions for research. This is clearly true, for example, in the case of psychology and other human and social sciences, which emerged throughout the nineteenth century mainly in countries such as Germany and France. This chapter does not propose to reiterate Basalla’s model (1967), but notes that “science” is clearly subordinated to the political and social processes that took place in Western Europe, notably the dismantling of the feudal regime, the centralization of monarchical power, the consolidation of capitalism, the loss of the Catholic Church’s hegemony due to the emergence of the Protestant Reformation, and the consolidation of colonial empires—all in few centuries that also witnessed the emergence of modern science and the world’s disillusionment. The second is that (b) psychology, specifically, emerges as a result of profound changes in cities, especially those related to the exponential increase of their populations, to the detriment of the rural population, and of technological advances, mainly in communications. Based on these two aspects, the purpose of this chapter is to offer an overview of the emergence and development of psychology as a science and profession in Brazil, and to show that it was due to the country’s sociocultural, economic, and political situation. To do so, a few points will be discussed that may explain under what A. M. Jacó-Vilela (*) Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. C. Ossa et al. (eds.), History of Psychology in Latin America, Latin American Voices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73682-8_6

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conditions these processes have been historicized from the nineteenth to the beginning of the twenty-first century. This data used in this chapter is based on different surveys carried out over the years, whose results have been widely published (see, for example, Sant’anna et al., 2018; Jacó-Vilela et al., 2017; Jacó-Vilela et al., 2016; Jacó-Vilela & Rocha, 2014; Jacó-Vilela & Rodrigues, 2014; Jacó-Vilela, 2014; Jacó-Vilela, 2012; Jacó-Vilela & Degani-Carneiro, 2012). For the history of Brazil, this chapter is guided by the existing historiography, especially Fausto (1999) and Schwarcz and Starling (2015).

Brazil in the Nineteenth Century The country that is now called Brazil was a large territory, covered by forests and rivers, with a great mountain barrier located on its shore bathed by the Atlantic Ocean, inhabited by something like eight million indigenous people of different ethnicities, the main ones among them being Tupi and Guarani.1 Like any other people, the indigenous population had an understanding of what human beings are, their function in nature, and their relationships with other beings. However, as this chapter deals exclusively with the so-called scientific psychology, their knowledge is not dwelt on, but relevant information on this topic can be found in the work of Marina Massimi, an important investigator of the Jesuit treatises on indigenous peoples (Massimi, 2003, 2005, 2009, 2020). Going back to the so-called discovery of Brazil in 1500, it is found that, unlike what happened in other Latin American countries, colonized by Spain, Brazil’s Portuguese colonizers played an exclusively extractive role regarding the new land’s riches (initially brazilwood, later sugar cane and its products, finally gold and precious stones), while not being interested in offering culture or education in return. Slave labor was crucial for the extractive project. Brought over from the other side of the Atlantic, enslaved Africans were a key factor in the colonization of the new territory, as they arrived during the first half of the sixteenth century to work on sugar cane plantations. Nonetheless, there are no psychological studies dedicated to slaves in this first phase, as has occurred with the indigenous population. Thus, early in the nineteenth century, there were few cities in Brazil, almost all located on the Atlantic coast, because of the mountain range that made it difficult to penetrate further inland. These cities had narrow, dirty, and foul-smelling streets. The poor population was squeezed into tenements and other unhealthy places. Rio de Janeiro, which was then the capital, had 50,000 inhabitants.

 In order to understand the harm caused by colonization, not only by exterminating the indigenous population, but also by attempting to “whiten” the population, one should take into account the fact that, according to the official Census of Brazil, carried out by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) in 2010, at the time less than one million Brazilians considered themselves to be Indians. 1

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Everything changed with the arrival of the Portuguese Court in 1808.2 Fleeing from the threat of invasion by Napoléon Bonaparte, due to his alliance with England, the Portuguese Court was moved to the Colony of Brazil by Prince Regent John (1767–1826, Prince Regent from 1792 to 1816; King of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and Algarve from 1816 to 1822; King of the United Kingdom of Portugal and Algarve from 1822 to 1826). It is interesting to note that his first act, when he arrived in Salvador, the old capital, and into Rio de Janeiro, where he settled down, was to create Schools of Surgery and Obstetrics in both cities. Until then, all that existed in the Colony in terms of education were seminaries, a few religious schools, and engineering was taught at the Royal Academy of Artillery, Fortification and Design that Prince John transformed into the Royal Military Academy in 1810 (Macedo & Sapunaru, 2016). It was in the Schools of Surgery and Obstetrics that the psychological theories emerging in Europe began to circulate.

Reception and Appropriation of Psychological Theories The arrival of the Portuguese Court in Brazil brought the country into the Modern Age. Despite causing an initial negative reaction in the population, as the occupants of the city’s houses were evicted from their homes to shelter the members of the Court, the population supported the measures taken. Prince John not only created the schools mentioned above, but also allowed printing activities—which were forbidden throughout the colonial period—and opened the Colony’s ports “to the friendly nations,” that is, to England, which caused the need for another novelty to be allowed, the creation of non-Catholic temples (Degani-Carneiro, 2017). Other important public works, such as the Botanical Garden, a powder factory (the embryo for the industrialization that would take place in 1840), the Royal Theater, and the creation of Postal Services and of the Bank of Brazil (the first Brazilian bank), were the result of his administration of Brazil from 1808 to 1821, not to mention paving of the streets and renovating of the ports, and creating of the National Library, whose collection is made up in part by the Royal Library, which also came from Lisbon with the Portuguese Court. The city of Rio de Janeiro grew exponentially during his administration; it is possible to say that its population increased twofold. Doubtlessly an important part of this new population consisted of the Portuguese who came over along with the Court and stayed on. A shared life with the Portuguese Court and the opening of the ports acquainted the local population with foreign products and caused some of them to be imported. Many of these did not previously exist in the Colony, and some were entirely inadequate for the climate and conditions of the city, such as English cashmere for men’s suits. Sewing machines were also among imported items, both  The royal fleet comprised 15 ships, accompanied by at least twice as many “private merchant ships [that] set sail on the wake of the royal fleet” (Schwarcz & Starling, 2015, p. 165), escorted by four British ships. 2

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for domestic use and for the incipient industrialization. A “civilizational process” was put under way, the first great outbreak of modernization of Brazil, necessary if only for the adaptation of the Portuguese Court to its far-off, overlooked Colony where it was now forced to live. For this process, in addition to the initiatives of Prince John (and later, his son, Peter I),3 the doctors trained by those schools played an especially important role. Their way of thinking is accessible to us through books and articles—the latter being more common in the twentieth century—but, mainly, through the theses that they presented at the end of their courses in order to receive the title of Doctor in Medicine. The presentation of theses became mandatory in the 1830s, after the Schools were converted into the Faculties of Medicine of Bahia and Rio de Janeiro in 1832. Only two decades had passed after printing presses and the production of books had been allowed in Brazil. Thus, such theses can be considered the first authentically Brazilian books, not only in the sense of the nationality of its authors, but mainly in the sense of having been printed in Brazil and of representing the way of thinking of the Brazilian elite on several controversial topics under debate at the time. This way of thinking sought to emulate the fashionable ideas of European capitals, notably Paris. The theses dealt with different psychological themes, like studies on childhood, women, educational processes and environment, psychotherapy, hypnosis, and environment of cities. Great European authors were cited, especially Wundt, but also Ribot and Janet. Medical doctors felt that they were supposed to reflect on the various issues that involved the population and to propose solutions for each of them. Consequently, a process of reception of these ideas and theories occurs, giving them meanings, and appropriating them according to the formations and needs of our authors (Gavroglu et al., 2008; Dagfal, 2004). On the other hand, some of the theories developed here were later received in the central countries, characterizing a broad circulation of knowledge. Thus, the new perspectives of life sciences, which were then taking hold, are present in these theses. Gall, with the phrenology he proposed in 1825; Galton, lecturing on the heredity of intelligence in 1869; and especially Darwin, who, in 1859, removed living beings from the universe of Creation, were authors who gradually allowed the consolidation of a given biology. The free individual, equal to others (Dumont, 1992) of the French Revolution, could therefore also be perceived as different from others—a difference no longer centered in the communitarian and religious ties of tradition—but an individual who was part of nature. This primacy of biological knowledge in the nineteenth century allowed a concept to emerge, that

 Prince Peter (1798–1834) was left behind in Brazil to ensure Portuguese sovereignty over what was now the United Kingdom. He was urged by political forces to proclaim the independence of Brazil from Portugal, even though he maintained the monarch’s central power. He proclaimed himself Emperor of Brazil, as Peter I, on September 7, 1822, a data that has been enshrined as that of the “Independence of Brazil.” Peter abdicated from the throne in 1832, in favor of his son, later Emperor Peter II, and returned to Portugal to wage war on his brother who had taken over the Portuguese throne. 3

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of “race.” Added to the Darwinian theory of natural selection, this concept allowed a breeding ground to form that affirmed not only difference—as biologically determined—but also a hierarchy of the different races, a justification for the Western white man’s domination over “primitive peoples.” The biological explanation appears in Brazil only because, during the nineteenth century, exchanges with other countries (which were prohibited during the Colonial period) became easier. If evolutionism, materialism, and the notion of progress formed the basis for the need to build a civilized nation, there were the theories of the field of psychiatry that helped to think about the racial issue. Thus, race becomes a matter. The strong presence of Afro-descendants in the population is the principal explanation for the delay of the country, the biggest obstacle for the country to reach the standard of civilized European nations. The transformation of biological difference in justification to social inequality led to the conclusion that with the kind of population that inhabited Brazil, the goal of building a civilized nation in the European manner was virtually impossible. This was a position advocated by several authors toward the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as demonstrated by the analyses carried out by Leite (1976). One exception was Manoel Bomfim, who gave the differences between Latin American and European countries with regard to the form of colonization performed (Bomfim, 1993).4 One of the great Brazilian authors to study Afro-descendants, their rites and customs in loco, would be Raimundo Nina Rodrigues,5 whose main work is “Fetishism and animism among black people from Bahia,” from 1896, which discusses the hysterical character present in possession rituals. This perspective is conventionally named “scientific racism” to be contrasted with previous and subsequent forms of establishing relations with the Afro-descendants in Brazil. Among other influential physicians with strong racialist view, there is Henrique Roxo (1877–1969). He is responsible for the first work of experimental psychology produced in Brazil (in the sense that it was published and arrived at us), with many references to Wundt. Roxo had proved in his doctoral thesis that the reaction time (RT)—measured by Buccola’s psychrometer—of the interned in the National Hospital of Alienated was longer for the alienated Afro-descendants than that for Whites (Roxo, 1900). This result was interpreted as one more confirmation of the Brazilian elite thesis about the inferiority of the Afro-descendants. There was no doubt about it in his work. As he confirmed in a 1904 article, a delay in evolution made Afro-descendants susceptible to several mental illnesses. According to him,

 Manoel Bomfim (1868–1932) graduated in medicine and focused on education. He attributed to scientific knowledge the role of a privileged tool to intervene and obtain the progress. He was the director of Pedagogium. He was professor of psychology at the Teachers’ School of Rio de Janeiro (the so-called Normal School). He was one of the founders of the Brazilian League of Mental Hygiene, the Brazilian Association of Educators, and the People’s University, which acted for a short period of the decade of the 1920s. 5  Raimundo de Nina Rodrigues (1862–1906) was disciplinary restricted to the field of anthropology for almost all twentieth century. In the last few decades, he has been appropriated by social psychology, owing to the changes that have occurred in this area. 4

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experimental psychology (in which he included psychological tests) should be used to support diagnostic hypotheses, indicating, in an objective manner, the difference between the healthy and the morbid and, later, distinguishing among several psychopathological manifestations (Roxo, 1904). One of the strategies to solve the problem is the “whitening” of the population, by inviting White workers from other countries to immigrate to Brazil. For this reason, on the south of Brazil, a strong presence of European descendants can be found, mostly Germans and Italians. But “whitening” alone is not enough. The reduction and/or elimination of illiteracy was considered the principal way to counteract the effects of biological difference, especially after the abolition of slavery in 1888. Accompanied by the proclamation of the Republic in the following year, the issue of the “civilization of the country” acquires new nuances. The educational system was perceived as deficient, which meant it was archaic, artificial, and exaggeratedly based on memorization and physical punishment (Gondra, 2004). The political and intellectual elite tried to improve education. This happened after the proclamation of the Republic in 1889 and continued in the new century.

 he Applicability of Knowledge: Psychological Tests T in the Early Twentieth Century In the first 40 years of the Republic, there was an initial period of adaptation of the legislation and of political and social functioning to the new government model—it was at that time that the Pedagogium was created, a pedagogical museum where Brazil’s first Laboratory of Experimental Psychology was created, in 1906, directed by Manoel Bomfim. It is the period in which the urban population and cities grew as the rural population decreased—both because the immigrants that were brought in for the local population’s “whitening” did not meet the expected conditions in rural areas, or because former slaves of African descent, newly freed, moved into cities in the hope of finding better living conditions. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s showcase city, underwent a major urban intervention— the first of many—aimed at adapting it to modern living, giving it wide avenues and exquisite buildings, such as the Municipal Theater. São Paulo, the other big city, also experienced a beautification process through urban reform. In both cases, the exercise led to the removal of the poor to remote places. In the final stage of this first republican phase, the 1920s, countless popular revolts showed that the Republic was not moving in the right direction, toward solving the central problem, the inequality of Brazilian society. There were popular uprisings against government acts, sailors’ revolts, and strikes. Young army officers, who staged the lieutenants’ revolts (1922–1924), preached moralization of politics, decentralization of power

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from the hands of the agrarian elite, and political freedoms. This movement had direct links with the Prestes Column (1925–1927).6 However, this period was also marked by a search for transformation in art, with the Modern Art Week, which created the Brazilian modernist movement.7 What all these movements have in common is an interest in the Brazilian reality and a desire of changing it in some way (Carvalho, 1991). Up until then, medical doctors used European psychological theories as a basis for their own outlook on the subjects that interested them. However, they quickly became aware of psychological tests, and began to use them in their clinical practice, as a support for their diagnoses. Roxo quotes them frequently in his Manual of Psychiatry (1925), in particular Binet-Stanford test, for the evaluation of altered states of consciousness. The 1920s witnessed an intensive use of tests at the National Hospital for the Alienated, where the clinical practice of the Chair of Psychiatry of the Faculty of Medicine took place. There is even an account of the application of several tests on Brazilian Army soldiers hospitalized there (Saturnino, 1930). The use of tests quickly spread into other spaces. Their presence was remarkable in the Brazilian League of Mental Hygiene, created in 1923. Its Laboratory of Psychology was dedicated to the validation and standardization of several tests in public schools (Leme Lopes, 1930, 1932). Other educational institutions in Rio de Janeiro also began to use tests, such as the Institute of Education. The same occurred in São Paulo, with Lourenço Filho,8 in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais State, with the arrival of Helena Antipoff9 in 1929, and in Recife, Pernambuco State, with Ulisses Pernambucano.10 In this way, psychology entered a new field, education. Future basic education teachers—which was the work space of middle and upper middle class women outside the domestic environment—were provided with a great deal of knowledge in  This social rebellion was named after its leader, Luís Carlos Prestes (1898–1990), who was an army captain and after the main figure in the Brazilian Communist Party. It mobilized over 2000 men, military personnel, and civilians, to cross the Brazilian hinterland, encouraging the population to revolt against the agrarian elites, to fight for compulsory primary education and the secret ballot, and, mainly, to end poverty in the country. 7  One of the main products of this movement, the painting Abaporu by Tarsila do Amaral, is on show at the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA). Abaporu is an Indian word that means “the man who eats people,” and symbolizes one of the movement’s currents, Cannibalism. 8  Manuel B. Lourenço Filho (1897–1970) was one of the main figures of the New School movement. Among his activities, he held the Psychology Chair in the National Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Brazil. He was the creator of the National Institute of Pedagogical Studies (INEP). He played a relevant role in the recognition of psychologists as professionals. 9  Helena Antipoff (1892–1974), Russian by birth, studied with Binet and Simon in Paris and with Claparède in Geneva. She came to Brazil in the great movement of educational reform in Minas Gerais in the 1920s, to head the Psychology Laboratory of the School Improvement Teacher. Settling in Brazil, she was devoted to educational psychology and the exceptional child. 10  Ulisses Pernambucano (1892–1943) was a physician who worked with the alienated and with children’s education. He was one of the first to seek a democratic treatment of the ill and of children, and to standardize psychological tests to be used in Northeastern Brazil. 6

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psychology, especially that related to learning, motivation, and development, as well as training in the use of psychological tests. Testing would reach its peak in the next phase. However, it is necessary to point out at once that the connections with medicine and education, present in this first reception of psychology, will subsequently imply disputes of power and space.

The Administrative Centralization of the Vargas Administration In a politically tense environment, failure to comply with the agreement on the election of the next president of Brazil (a president would be from São Paulo State, the next from Minas Gerais State—producing states of what were the country’s main riches, coffee and milk, respectively, the reason for this stage being known as the “coffee-with-milk policy”) led to an uprising of the Southern states, allowing Getúlio Vargas (1882–1954) to take power in 1930. His rule was long, comprising different phases (President of the Provisional Government, President-elect, finally dictator after coup d’état in 1937), ending in 1945, at the end of World War II.11 This represented another stage in the modernization of Brazil, either because of a search for a rational organization of the state apparatus or because specific measures were taken, such as granting the right to vote to women in 1932, in response to the strong suffragist movement of the time. It was not by chance that the initial phase of Vargas’ long administration was dedicated to elementary  education—hitherto an exclusively female activity—providing support to advocates of the New School. For them, who proposed secular, free, public education, “as far as their natural skills will permit” (Azevedo et al., 1932), tests were an effective tool to evaluate the student’s capacity and thus to arrange homogeneous classes, seen as leading to teaching and learning. One of the main promoters of testing was Isaías Alves (1888–1968). He worked in Bahia State, where he owned a private school, and in Rio de Janeiro, at the invitation of one of the most important figures of Brazilian education, Anísio Teixeira (1900–1971), that appointed him as director of the Testing Services and School Measurements of the Federal District (1932–1935). Alves was the greatest name of the tests. He translated many of them and authored books about tests. In one of them, he commented about the results he had previously achieved in his testing in Bahia. In 1928, he was responsible for the testing service in public schools in Salvador (Bahia) and also tested the students of his own school, the Ipiranga High School. He explained that he had divided the students into three categories (Black, Mestizo, and White). The results had shown a low performance in the tests of

 Brazil was the only Latin American country that fought alongside allied democratic forces in WWII.  Thus, the end of the war configured a contradiction between fascism in the Brazilian Government and struggle against fascism in Europe. 11

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students considered to be Afro-descendants (66.1), while the tests with best performance were the ones by the White students (86.6). Mestizos displayed an average performance (73.6). Alves (1933a) verified that the average IQ of the white students increased when the scores of students from private schools were added to those of the public schools (this was the case for the Ipiranga High School). But in his analyses, Alves did not make clear that the public schools received children from the poorest families, and, therefore, the students were more often Afro-descendants and Mestizos. The socio-economic situation  cannot be neglected in the  results and comparisons. Alves also conducted a large-scale research on intelligence and instruction level, measured at Rio de Janeiro’s public schools. The results were tragic. They indicated mental retardation in 50% of the students (Alves, 1932). After this, he recognized that the teachers had not been sufficiently trained to use the tests correctly (Pintner-­ Cunningham and ABC tests, both tests aimed at illiterates or children that are not yet literate), and the Binet-Simon test applied to literate children had not yet been adapted. Despite these facts, he considered the results valid, including the superiority of Whites toward the Afro-descendants regarding the level of intelligence and also the children in private schools compared with the ones of public schools. Thus, he concluded that these data induce “thoughts which lead sociologists, educators and eugenicists to direct more firmly our policy and economy” (Alves, 1933b, p. 70). So, we see that the racism present in the Brazilian society was scientifically proven. We continued, therefore, in a process of naturalization of difference, which was totally against the project of the New School, which sought an increasing number of children in the school system. The racial issue, nevertheless, was still present. However, it was during this period that a culturalist approach would impose itself over the scientific and biological racism then in force. This occurred through the publication of Gilberto Freyre’s classic book entitled Casa Grande & Senzala in 1936 (published in English translation as The Masters and the Slaves), in which the author pointed out how the close coexistence of Whites and enslaved blacks produced effects in Brazilian culture. His book is the basis on which the myth of Brazil as a paradise of “racial democracy,” where differences are accepted and shared, was built (Freyre, 1964). The Vargas administration stood out because of its centralized administration, achieved by creating different ministries and a specific agency to manage public administration, the Department of Public Service Administration (DASP). Another of its initiatives was to establish university charters. Until then, there was only one university in Brazil, the University of Rio de Janeiro, created in 1920 by joining different isolated faculties (among them, the Faculty of Medicine of Rio de Janeiro). In 1937, this university was made into the University of Brazil (UB). By 1934, the University of São Paulo (USP) had already been created. Vargas also stimulated industrialization and, at the same time, some degree of worker protection through specific laws, such as the one creating the minimum wage. In this context of labor protection, testing found a new space. In this way,

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Emilio Mira y López,12 one of the most important psychologists at the time, who was in exile in Uruguay, was invited by a group of institutions (USP, Institute of Rational Organization of Labor—IDORT, National Industrial Apprenticeship Service—SENAI, and Sorocabana Railroad) to lecture and teach a course on Psychology Applied to Work in São Paulo, in May 1945. At the end of this year, he was invited by DASP to give courses for one year in Rio de Janeiro. Finally, in 1947, he was invited to organize and direct the Institute of Selection and Professional Guidance of the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (ISOP/FGV), which led him to move to Rio de Janeiro with his family. Testing prevailed in all spaces interested in modernization, in transforming Brazil by using the most relevant scientific tools of the time. Consequently, another type of institution also demands testing: the judicial lunatic asylum, a mixture of prison and psychiatric hospital. Testing became a fundamental tool in ascertaining the inmates’ legal incapacity as well as determining whether they were dangerous to society (Vasconcellos, 2017). Psychology, once again, revealed its social usefulness (Rose, 2008).

The Great Modernization of the 1950s Getúlio Vargas resigned the presidency in 1945. In 1950, he was reelected. His new administration was democratic in character, carrying on the strong investment in what was called “basic industries”—steel, oil, etc. However, its national developmentalism displeased conservatives who, along with the press, explored news of corruption, of disorder. Threatened with deposition, Vargas committed suicide in 1954, leaving a Testament Letter stating that the agenda of “international groups has aligned itself with that of national groups to block labor legislation and developmentalism” (Schwarcz & Starling, 2015, p. 413). His death changed the distribution of forces: “Stunned, people would leave their houses, look at each other and cry. Gradually, however, the population changed, and in several cities (...) a bitter, angry and outraged crowd began to walk the streets armed with sticks, stones and fury” (Schwarcz & Starling, 2015, p. 412). The people thus secured democracy and prevented a coup, which would only take place ten years later. Be that as it may, industrialization continued at a fast rate during the Juscelino Kubitschek administration (1902–1976, in office 1956–1961), which allowed the creation of a working-class elite via the transformation of cities in the area

 Emilio Mira y López (1896–1964), a Spanish born in Cuba, obtained a degree in medicine from the University of Barcelona, in whose medical clinic he worked as full professor. He also was Head of the Institute of Professional Guidance, becoming an important figure in psychotechnic early in the century. As a socialist, he was the head of the Psychiatric Service of the Republican Army during the Spanish Civil War. With Franco’s victory, he went into exile in France, which was followed by journeys around different countries until he settled in Brazil in 1947, where he lived until his death. 12

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surrounding São Paulo into an industrial park. Kubitschek was also responsible for transferring the capital of Brazil to Brasilia, a city built on the country’s arid Central Plateau, aiming to populate and develop the west of Brazil. Although the move took place in 1960, it was many years before this process was finally consolidated. Conversely, Rio de Janeiro gradually lost its political power, remaining, however, as the “cultural capital” of Brazil. The “Goals Plan” of Kubitschek’s administration brought growing urbanization and strong industrial and communicational development—in the same way that Vargas encouraged the radio, the Kubitschek administration brought in television—which sharpened the inequality between the rural and urban worlds. In the 1950s, in the larger cities, mainly state capitals, people—principally women—were to be found that had different training, but mainly backgrounds in education and philosophy, who were interested in furthering their studies in psychology, usually in a self-taught way or through short courses. They complemented their practical training in internships and practiced in public service institutions, largely aimed at schools, where they performed psychodiagnoses. This emphasis has not changed in institutions dedicated to professional selection and guidance, such as ISOP, which had several branches spread throughout Brazil. Nor did it change when a clinical approach first emerged with several Child Guidance Clinics. The profession’s initial trademark was psychodiagnosis based on psychological tests. Vintage photos and biographies show that white, middle, or upper middle class women applied tests. There were few men in the professional context and, when there were any, they usually held the position of administrators. In a country of continental dimensions such as Brazil, it is important to make it clear that psychology, at that time, was a subject in Normal Schools (that trained basic education teachers) and in the Faculties of Philosophy existing in some state capitals. However, strange as it may seem, it had also been taught since the end of the 1940s at the National School of Physical Education (Carvalho, 2012). Nonetheless, as a full professional career—especially when people began to call themselves, and to be called, “psychologists” or “psychotechnics”—it was restricted to Rio de Janeiro and to the states of São Paulo, Pernambuco, Rio Grande do Sul, and Minas Gerais. The first psychology associations were created late in the 1940s, in São Paulo (Psychology Society of São Paulo) and in Rio de Janeiro (Brazilian Association of Psychotechnics). Both issued periodicals, the first ones devoted to psychology in Brazil, which are still published to this day. In 1954, the Brazilian Archives of Psychotechnics published a “Preliminary draft of a minimum curriculum for the Psychology Course,” prepared by the Brazilian Association of Psychotechnics.13 The project was severely criticized by the other associations existing at the time, mainly by the Brazilian Association of Psychologists and the Psychology Society of São Paulo. The criticism was due to the project’s dichotomous nature, which

 The Association and the Archives were indissolubly connected to ISOP, that is to say, to Emilio Mira y López. 13

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separated theory (to be carried out in universities) and practice (to be offered by specialized institutes). In any case, the project no doubt served as a trigger for discussions that led to the drafting of new guidelines until the process was concluded in 1962. Another point to emphasize is that the Catholic Church in Brazil—and elsewhere—had been openly against what it called “materialistic psychology.” In this sense, the Church was partially responsible for closing the Institute of Psychology, created in 1932 with the intention of offering a training course for “professional psychologists” (Centofanti, 1982). However, gradually the Church came to understand that it was better to have that body of new knowledge under its control. It was a long road from the Jesuit discussion on whether or not the natives had souls to the realization that “it would be ridiculous to try to bring the faculties of the soul to the analysis of apparatuses” (Lourenço Filho, 2004, p. 74) to the opposition to the creation of a training course in psychology in 1932. In the 1950s, the Church’s intellectual leadership began to consider, mostly with the help of Italian psychology, with Agostinho Gemelli (1878–1959), the possibility of a psychology that would not move away from their assumptions (Ferraz, 2014). It was in this vein that, in March 1953, the first higher education course devoted to granting degrees in psychology was created in Brazil, at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio). Additionally, three other courses were created before the profession was recognized, in Catholic institutions at, namely, the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUC-RS), the Catholic University of Minas Gerais (now PUC-MG), and the Catholic University of Pernambuco (Unicap). In addition to those, only one course was created in a public institution, the University of São Paulo (USP). It emerged from the Chair of Psychology at the Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences and Letters as proposed by Annita Cabral (1911–1991), and was strongly opposed by Noemy Rudolfer (1902–1988), who held the Chair of Educational Psychology and advocated that psychology should remain under the tutelage of education. Therefore, along with the Catholic opposition, there was also tension with the educators. Moreover, the latter also fought against the private use of psychological tests by psychologists, one of the points in the draft under discussion, which led to granting educational advisors permission to apply tests as well—interest, aptitude, and intelligence tests, while the application of personality tests remained restricted to psychologists. On the other hand, medical doctors disagreed with the possibility of psychologists performing psychotherapy and used their corporate power to bar this proposition. The compromise was to remove this item from the proposed legislation and, instead, to include a mention to “solving adjustment problems.” Thus, to become a legalized profession, and a university career, psychology clashed with the Catholic Church in the 1930s and in the 1950s, with other professional categories, the educators and the medical doctors. It also faced an internal clash between “theoreticians” and “practitioners.” With all these debates, led by the psychology associations of the time and closely followed by the existing professional body—predominantly women—Law 4119/62 was passed on August 27,

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1962,  (Brazil, 1962) by the President of the Republic of Brazil, João Goulart (1919–1976), regulating the profession of psychologist and psychology courses in Brazil.

 he Military Dictatorship, Technological Modernization, T and Its Effects After psychology was regulated as a profession and university course, and following the 1964 coup, a large number of psychology courses were created, especially in private educational institutions. This coup deposed President João Goulart and gave rise to a long 21-year night under a military dictatorship. In the Brazilian case, the dictatorship maintained some aspects of legality, unlike what happened later in other Latin American countries, such as Bolivia (1966), Chile and Uruguay (1973), and Argentina (1976). Thus, after demolishing the judicial system, by forcing the retirement of judges and ministers of the Supreme Federal Court, as well as the political system, by revoking the term of office of representatives and senators, and by closing down political parties,14 the dictatorship promoted the election of the presidents it chose, voted by the expurgated National Congress. After a selection process among the highest ranks of the Armed Forces, the appointed generals had their name endorsed by the Congress and occupied the presidency for the regular presidential term. The political contest, therefore, took place within the Armed Forces. In addition, the dictatorship went through different phases. The first, which should be temporary, “cleaned out” labor unions, political parties (notably the Brazilian Communist Party, which had been driven underground by the end of the 1940s), and universities. In 1968, there was a so-called coup within the coup, after which there was no longer any concern with keeping up appearances, so that censorship and repression became part of the population’s daily life—a time when armed resistance was organized. A period of “détente” and “openness” followed until the indirect election of a civilian president in 1984. Elected, Tancredo Neves (1810–1985) died before his inauguration. His vice president, José Sarney,15 a leader of the Arena Party, took office, beginning a period of democratization in Brazil, with a new Constitution approved by the Constituent Assembly in 1988. The dictatorship invested heavily in pharaonic public works, such as the Rio-­ Niterói Bridge, the Trans-Amazonian Highway, and the nuclear power plants in Angra dos Reis. Nevertheless, it also invested in technological modernization, bringing color television, a new model of postal services, and telephone

 Only two parties were allowed: ARENA (National Renovation Alliance), the ruling party, and MDB (Brazilian Democratic Movement), the consenting opposition party. 15  Sarney’s election shows how the conservative Brazilian elite can keep afloat in every kind of situation. 14

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communication into Brazil. It is also important to emphasize that the number of postgraduate courses increased in Brazil during this period, probably owing to the nationalism of a large portion of the Armed Forces. Already legalized as a profession, psychology’s first 20 years were spent under the rule of the dictatorship, which surely produced its effects. Teachers were forced to retire; students were prevented from continuing their courses for 3 years, as dictated by Decree 477 of 1969. Students and psychology professionals joined the armed resistance, and many were killed (Souza & Jacó-Vilela, 2017), such as Idalísio Aranha Filho (1947–1972), my college buddy, in the Araguaia Guerrilla. Psychology courses, in turn, remained within the limits of the minimal curriculum, centered on the psychological processes investigated by experimental psychology, its social psychology being derived from the studies of North American cognitive experimental psychology, clearly ethnocentric and individualizing (Krüger, 1986), while psychological practice was devoted mainly to “psychological counseling” and “professional selection and guidance.” A partial justification for this situation is the limited Brazilian publishing market of the time. To study psychology, one was restricted almost entirely to imported books, owing to the absence of published material in Brazil, either translated works or domestically produced ones. In the 1930s, Lourenço Filho created a “Library of Education” for a local publishing house, Editora Melhoramentos, that printed translations of relevant psychology texts, even though always focusing on education. For example, Claparède’s “The School and Experimental Psychology” (1928) and “Tests for the Measurement of the Development of Children’s Intelligence” by Binet and Simon (1929) are part of this collection. Many were able to turn to Argentinean publishers, especially Paidós and Kapelusz. The situation began to change only in the late 1960s, when there was already a fair number of publishers focused on the academic public. At around this time, Dante Moreira Leite (1927–1976) and Carolina Bori (1924–2004) began to publish collections of translated works (Leite, psychology in general; Bori, experimental analysis of behavior), which were used as the textbooks for the new psychology courses. Conversely, new psychologists, who were interested in clinical work, did not accept being restricted to counseling, which was usually based on Carl Rogers’ propositions, and began investing in psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis was established in the 1950s, with the creation of societies affiliated  to  the International Association of Psychoanalysis (IPA). In the 1970s, it was fully assimilated by the culture of the urban middle classes who, barred from participating in politics, sought self-knowledge—perhaps the main effect of the dictatorship in the construction of subjectivities. The concepts and explanatory possibilities of psychoanalysis were part of everyday life, to the point that a prominent anthropologist, Gilberto Velho, produced a fundamental text, in which he analyzed how “two categories of accusation” of Brazilian society of that moment, drug addicts and subversives, were seen as the result of the “de-structuring of the family” (Velho, 1985). The fragmented family was seen as responsible for the deviations of each of its members from the prevailing order. A new specialized look—that of the psychologist—was directed

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toward the parent-child relationship. At the time, drug addicts and militants were not connected to the political moment, but to the “crisis of the family.” Accordingly, the constituent elements of a psychological culture were established: technological modernization, individualization/fragmentation, and “psychologization.” Psychological knowledge about the individual builds this same individual as an autonomous subject, interested in his/her interiority, since the public space—that of political action—was forbidden to him/her. The psychologist was thus able to represent himself/herself not as an agent of the norm, for he/she could become one of the caretakers of this mode of subjectivation where intimacy—the space of inner freedom—prevailed. In the 1970s, psychologists were influenced by Argentinean psychoanalysts, such as, initially, Enrique Pichon-Rivière (1907–1977), José Bleger (1922–1972), and Arminda Aberastury (1910–1972) because of the interest of psychoanalytic societies in their technical contributions. When the Argentinean dictatorship began to exile its psychologists, Gregorio Baremblitt, Emilio Rodrigué, Osvaldo Saidon, and others came to Brazil, where they gained disciples, creating a Brazilian version of institutionalism. Thus, psychoanalysis was present in the psychologists’ imagination as a possibility of no longer being the “agents of order,” an accusation that permeated the 1970s.16 There were two major branches. One was institutionalism, a minority movement at that time, but increasingly consolidated, that opened itself up over the years to the contributions of Foucault and Deleuze, making its presence strong in the psychology of the twenty-first century. Another was Lacanianism, which attracted a considerable number of psychologists who, unable to join IPA-affiliated societies, started to create their own institutions, preparing themselves to occupy important spaces in higher education institutions in the twenty-first century. It is interesting to note, in this context, how the profile of the “pioneers” of psychology in the different Brazilian states changed. If, in the states of the south-­eastern and southern regions of Brazil, the first psychologists worked in educational institutions, or in professional selection, or in the Traffic Department (Detran),17 as early as the 1990s many of the earliest psychologists in a given region, before there were psychology courses, were to be found in societies of psychoanalysis, as is the case of the State of Maranhão (Araújo, 2005).

 For this view, the famous text by Cecília Coimbra, “Guardiães da ordem” (Coimbra, 1995), a result of her PhD thesis, is exemplary. 17  With a fully developing car industry after the Kubitschek government, it was necessary to reformulate the National Traffic Code. The second one, of 1966, included the requirement of approval in a “psychotechnic exam” in order to obtain a driver’s license for automotive vehicles. It is thought that this was due to a great impact of the PMK test, created by Emilio Mira y López, used by ISOP for the evaluation of drivers (not only of automotive vehicles, but also of trains). This created a large market for psychologists and allowed the creation of clinics devoted to applying the “psychotechnic exam” to drivers all over Brazil. 16

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The Great Turnaround of the 1980s In the 1970s, an economic crisis and the decline of the military regime led the middle class to fight for the end of the dictatorship, a struggle that continued into the 1980s, providing a moment of hope for the “direct-now” (direct elections now) movement. Psychologists who, as representatives of the social strata to which they belonged, the so-called urban middle classes, had hitherto failed to engage themselves in the movement and had remained uninterested in the dictatorial processes joined the struggle now. An exception in this context is community work, which, on the one hand, emerged in connection with Liberation Theology and Paulo Freire’s Popular Education project. This occurred in São Paulo, with Silvia Lane (1933–2006) and Father Abib Andery (1930–2016), who, together with others, founded the Brazilian Association of Social Psychology (Abrapso)18 in 1980. On the other hand, community work was also the result of different types of training, including in the United States, of researchers who got together to create one of the first postgraduate programs in Brazil, the Master’s Degree Course in Community Psychology, in the Northeast, at João Pessoa, the capital of the State of Paraíba. This is important to note because community work connected itself to poor urban populations. In the Northeast, in the 1950s and until the 1964 coup, the Peasants’ League movement acted strongly in favor of agrarian reform and of rural populations’ rights. They were eliminated because of the coup, although peasant conflicts had not been pacified. It is interesting to observe the creation of this master’s course in the mid-1970s, precisely in a region with this kind of history, suggesting that psychology could contribute to an understanding of the problems of peasant workers. Also in the same period, a third group, from Belo Horizonte, State of Minas Gerais, based on French psychosociology, proposed important changes in the curriculum and in community action. Nevertheless, not only did social psychology change. We have already pointed out that the clinic had already been interested in new techniques and approaches, especially in the general hospital, owing to the Argentinean influence. Education founded on the works of Maria Helena Souza Patto, starting with her “Psychology and ideology: a critical introduction to school psychology” (Patto, 1984), allowed a new look to be directed to the work of psychologists in the school environment. The harmful effects of an excessive use of tests were highlighted and it was shown that homogeneous classes reinforced the exclusion of children belonging to the social segments considered as inferior—namely the poor, who were largely Afro-descendants.

 Within the perspective that “all psychology is social,” Abrapso’s first bylaws refer only to “psychology,” not “social psychology.” The understanding in Brazil, now, is that Abrapso’s position is founded on the concept that psychology cannot be separated from its historic, social, and political context of situation. 18

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Thus, psychology sought, at the end of the dictatorship and in the early stages after its end, to re-establish itself, in a manner adequate to the new times. Understanding that Brazilian society was extremely unequal, it was up to the psychologist to be a professional whose work supported civil rights, aiming at transforming social reality and, consequently, ensuring better mental health for the population. To that end, curricular changes began to be introduced. At this time, the minimum curriculum of 1962 was still in force; changes implied details such as a reduction in the number of required subjects and an increase in optional subjects, an emphasis on practical activities—internships—linked to the theory, and a reformulation of course syllabi. Two different factors enabled such transformations: the more incisive action of the Federal Counsel of Psychology19 and the multiplication of graduate programs. The first master’s degree in psychology was created in 1964 at the University of Brasilia. However, the military dictatorship carried out a major offensive against this university, leading to the dismissal or retirement of a substantial number of professors, which led to this first master’s degree course to end. The second master’s degree course was created in 1967 at PUC-Rio—the same institution where the first undergraduate course was created. A few new MA programs were created in the following decade, mainly in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. There was a boom in the 1980s, but it still centered in the Southeast and South regions of Brazil. In the twenty-first century, different government initiatives allowed the poorer regions of Brazil (North, Northeast, and Center-West) to create their own MA programs. In the case of psychology, a total of 99 postgraduate programs are currently members of the National Research and Postgraduate Association (ANPEPP), of which 40 have only the master’s level, and the others awarding master’s and doctoral degrees. As a background for all these changes, one must undoubtedly mention the promulgation of a new Constitution in 1988 the so-called “Citizen Constitution,” because it emphasizes the rights of Brazilians, resulted from a constituent process with substantial popular participation. One of the achievements of this Constitution was the creation of Professional Councils in which, along with government representatives, different representatives of civil society are present, involved in debating public policies. In this sense, it is important to note that psychology, through the Federal Council of Psychology (CFP), is active in over 30 of these councils, such as Social Assistance;  Drugs and Human Rights; Peoples and Traditional Communities; Prevention of and Combating Torture; Rights to Work, Protection and Social Security; Women’s Rights; Abortion; Rights of Children and Adolescents; Combating Discrimination and Promotion of LGBT Rights; and Health, Human Resources and Labor Relations. The numerous councils in which CFP participates are evidence not only of the entity’s protagonism but also of the scope and diversity of the situations in which psychologists are immersed today. As was the case at the beginning of  The entity, in charge of “guiding and supervising this professional class,” was created by Decree 79,822 of 17 June 1977. At the time, its activities were strictly bureaucratic, but gradually it became an important social actor, congregating psychologists in an organic manner. 19

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professionalization, in the 1940s and 1950s, the largest job market for psychologists is again to be found mostly in public institutions, especially in the Unified Health System.

In the Twenty-First Century: Nature vs. Culture? Or Soul? Thus, psychology entered the twenty-first century as a well-developed area of knowledge and practice, holding its own place in society, where it sought to contribute to fulfilling social needs. It is to such needs that much of the training of psychologists is geared to, with something like 400 undergraduate courses and graduate programs amounting to almost 100 at this time. Furthermore, a substantial number of academic journals is at the disposal of scientific practice and production. There are around 140 Brazilian journals exclusively dedicated to psychology, a considerable number, especially taking into consideration the fact that part of the scientific production is published in foreign journals. These numbers, and the variety of areas presented in the previous section, attest to psychology’s vigor in Brazil. However, problems must also be mentioned. The low quality of many undergraduate courses, especially those offered by isolated institutions of higher education, mainly private ones, is one of them. Another is the fact that most of the best undergraduate and postgraduate courses are in the South and Southeast regions of Brazil. Finally, there is a weak editorial market for academic books—a drawback that is partly offset by the boom in the publication of scientific journals. In addition, it must be recognized that professionals still have a greater interest in working in private clinics, although they work mainly in public institutions. As we said, the 1980s and 1990s were the phase of social psychology, which proposed a new psychology that used qualitative methodologies and encompassed topics as diverse as gender and sexuality, ethnicity, rural populations, work, human rights, etc. In this sense, the work done in the 1950s on the racial issue in the country, known as the “Unesco Project,” began to be recovered. This project, arising from the impact of the Nazi Holocaust, aimed to investigate race relations in different countries, with Brazil having been chosen based on its image as a “racial democracy” (Maio, 2011). Social scientists and psychologists participated in this project, whose results destroyed the idyllic image of the country, demonstrating the existence of structural racism in Brazilian society. The recovery of this project, together with the strengthening of the black movement and the creation of racial quotas in public universities, made psychology more interested in the issue of race and its effects on the constitution of subjectivity, whether black or White. The beginning of the twenty-first century is witnessing an increasingly powerful presence of neuropsychology. This is accompanied by cognitive-behavioral therapy, evolutionary psychology, and a return of psychological tests—in the shape of

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psychological evaluation20—stemming mainly from the United States and adapted to the Brazilian reality. Initially, the impression of psychology in Brazil—and in other places—was going through a new stage of the nineteenth-century question: How to explain man? By nature? By culture? How to envision a symbiosis between these two constituent factors, without one of them becoming hegemonic? The notion of brain plasticity seemed to offer a solution. However, since the late twentieth century, another trend was gaining space in psychology. It was created by fundamentalist evangelicals who admitted a psychology based on the Bible. Their first activity to attract attention was a proposal to reverse homosexual orientation, believing that homosexuals were egodystonic and would return to heterosexual orientation after therapy. In 1999, the Federal Council of Psychology—based on the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) of the World Health Organization, published in 1990, that removed homosexuality from the list of mental disorders—promulgated a resolution prohibiting psychologists from performing treatment for the reversion of homosexuality (Resolution 001/99). Since then, this resolution has been under attack by evangelical, fundamentalist psychologists. They have organized a movement seeking to win the elections for the Federal Council of Psychology with a corporate and highly moralizing proposal. Today, this is one of the main challenges of psychology in Brazil.21

Conclusions This text has aimed at building a narrative about the history of psychology in Brazil, as theory and practice, merged with the main aspects of the country’s history, notably economic development and urbanization. In this sense, some Brazilian cases have been described, from the nineteenth century up to the present day, in an attempt to indicate how they relate to what comprises psychology at each specific moment. However, today’s situation leads to a crucial question: Is the colonial, patrimonialist structure based on slavery still present in the Brazilian reality and in the psychology that is developed in the country? If the answer is yes, then more than ever it is necessary to invent new types of education and professional training that allow for the formation of critical thinking that can inform a socially directed practice.

 One of the highest-ranking postgraduate programs in psychology is devoted exclusively to psychological evaluation, although the area is also present in other programs as a line of research. 21  In November 2018, retired captain Jair Bolsonaro was elected President of Brazil. He is Catholic, but also baptized into one of the evangelical denominations, and often makes homophobic statements, which doubtlessly has strengthened this group. 20

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Maio, M.  C. (2011). Florestan Fernandes, Oracy Nogueira, and the UNESCO project on race relations in São Paulo. Latin American Perspectives, 38(3), 136–149. https://doi.org/10.117 7/0094582X10391070 Massimi, M. (2003). Representações acerca dos índios brasileiros em documentos jesuítas do século XVI [Representations of Brazilian Indians in Jesuit documents of the 16th century]. Memorandum: Memória e História em Psicologia, 5, 70–87. Retrieved from http://www.fafich. ufmg.br/~memorandum/artigos05/massimi03.htm Massimi, M. (2005). Palavras, almas e corpos no Brasil colonial [Words, souls and bodies in colonial Brazil]. Loyola. Massimi, M. (2008). Engenho e temperamentos nos catálogos e no pensamento da Companhia de Jesus nos séculos XVII e XVIII [Creativity and temperament in the catalogues and in the thought of the Society of Jesus in the 17th and 18th centuries]. Revista Latinoamericana de Psicopatologia Fundamental, 11(4), 675–687. https://doi.org/10.1590/ S1415-­47142008000400014 Massimi, M. (2009). Estudos sobre a contribuição da antiga Companhia de Jesus ao desenvolvimento dos saberes sobre o psiquismo humano no Brasil colonial [Studies on the contribution of the former Society of Jesus to the development of knowledge about the human psyche in colonial Brazil]. Clio—Série Revista de Pesquisa Histórica, 2(27), 163–191. Retrived de https:// periodicos.ufpe.br/revistas/revistaclio/article/view/24150/19591 Massimi, M. (2020). Psychological knowledge and practices in Brazilian colonial culture. Springer. Patto, M.  H. S. (1984). Psicologia e ideologia: uma introdução crítica à psicologia escolar [Psychology and ideology: A critical introduction to school psychology]. T. A. Queiroz. Rose, N. (2008). Psicologia como uma ciência social [Psychology as a Social Science]. Psicologia & Sociedade, 20(2), 155–164. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0102-­71822008000200002 Roxo, H. (1900). Duração dos atos psíquicos elementares nos alienados [Duration of basic psychicacts in alienated] (Doctoral Thesis). Rio de Janeiro School of Medicine. Roxo, H. (1904). Perturbações mentais nos negros no Brasil [Mental disorders in blacks in Brazil]. Brazil Médico, 18, 182–190. Rio de Janeiro. Sant’anna, A. L. O., Castro, A. C., & Jacó-Vilela, A. M. (2018). Military dictatorship and disciplinary practices in the control of indigenous people: Psychosocial perspectives on the Figueiredo Report. Psicologia & sociedade, 30, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1590/1807-­0310/2018v30188045 Saturnino, M. (1930). Psychometria de 100 soldados pelos tests de Binet [Psychometry of 100 soldiers for Binet’s tests]. Archivos Brasileiros de Hygiene Mental, 3(1), 12–17. Schwarcz, L.  M., & Starling, H.  M. (2015). Brasil: uma biografia [Brazil: A biography]. Cia. das Letras. Souza, J. A. M., & Jacó-Vilela, A. M. (2017). Luta Armada na Psicologia: Prática de Classe contra o Terrorismo de Estado [Armed Struggle in Psychology: Class Practice against State Terrorism]. Psicologia: ciência e profissão, 37, 44–56. https://doi.org/10.1590/1982-­3703030002017 Vasconcellos, M. A. G. N. T. (2017). A prática da Psicologia Jurídica no Brasil e na Argentina entre os anos de 1940 a 1990: 50 anos de história [The practice of legal psychology in Brazil and Argentina between the years 1940 and 1990: 50 years of history] (Tese de Doutorado). Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Pós-Graduação Em Psicologia Social. Velho, G. (1985). Duas categorias de acusação na cultura brasileira contemporânea [Two categories of accusation in contemporary Brazilian culture]. In S. Figueira (Ed.), Sociedade e Doença Mental. Campus.

Chapter 7

Psychology in Colombia: A Story from Violence Juan Fernando Aguilar, Julio César Ossa, Claudia Burbano, and Jean Nikola Cudina

Introduction Psychology as a profession formally constituted in the country on November 20, 1947, when the Institute of Applied Psychology was founded by means of Agreement 231 of the Directive Council of the National University of Colombia (Ardila, 1988). We can situate this event as an important historical milestone, if we consider that in the National University of Colombia appears the first program of psychology in Latin America (Javier et al., 2012). This foundational milestone of psychology as a profession in Colombia places the discipline in the framework of a quite intricate and socially, politically, and culturally critical context for the country. At the end of the 1940s and beginning of the 1950s, the development of psychology took place in parallel with the harshest events in the history of Colombia. Colombian psychology emerged at the same time as the outbreak of the internal armed conflict for more than five decades. In this chapter we take a historical analysis of the development of Colombian psychology in light of the social, political, and cultural events that have been decisive in each decade since the late 1940s until our time. To this end, we will address four periods, namely: the intellectual colonialism of Colombian psychology facing the outbreak of the extreme wave of violence (1948–1960); the configuration of a psychology facing the reality of the internal armed conflict in Colombia (1961–1980);

J. F. Aguilar () Bibliometrics Research Lab, Cali, Colombia J. C. Ossa · C. Burbano Fundación Universitaria de Popayán, Popayán, Colombia J. N. Cudina Fundación Universitaria Católica Lumen Gentium, Cali, Colombia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. C. Ossa et al. (eds.), History of Psychology in Latin America, Latin American Voices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73682-8_7

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the bet of a political dimension in Colombian psychology (1981–1990); and the evolution of psychology facing a post-conflict Colombia (1991–2020). We want to show how psychology began to take shape in a specialized field to meet the demands of different sectors of society. In spite of this, psychology as a discipline kept behind a political project that allowed a critical approach to the social, cultural, economic, and political reality of the country. With this, a central thesis of this study is discussed: Colombian psychology in its historical development ended up becoming an institutionalized and instrumentalized discipline. Colombian psychology assumes the challenge of thinking about the transition from an instituted discipline to an institutionalized discipline. The latter is heir to the isolated practices of psychologists socially and politically committed to change, in order to think of intervention proposals that we could conceive of to attend to a post-­ conflict Colombia.

 he Intellectual Colonialism of Colombian Psychology T in the Light of the Outbreak of the Extreme Violence (1948–1960) On April 9, 1948, Colombia was once again shaken by the violence that had been stalking it since the end of the Thousand Days’ War.1 Jorge Eliécer Gaitán (1898–1948), the liberal candidate who had been elected leader, was riddled with three shots at point-blank range as he left his office in downtown Bogotá. The crowd, which soon went from surprise to threat, rushed to the alleged perpetrator of the crime, Juan Roa Sierra, and dragged his body between blows and insults to the Plaza de Bolívar. Roa’s death, annihilated by the flood of fists and boots, would be only the beginning of the chaos that the capital would experience during the wave of looting and murders that would later become known as El Bogotazo. Beyond the searing flames that would destroy half of Bogotá, the entire nation was about to suffer the consequences of contained anger, of old grudges that would trigger, once again, the bipartisan war that would now last more than 15 years. Among the memories of the violence that covered the capital in fire, the uncertainty, which nestled between surprise and fear, is recorded in chronicles like this one: In the block where I learned to ride a bicycle, in Ricaurte, I was told that Roa Sierra, the man who murdered Gaitán, used to live there. In time, I came to know that my father was

 The Thousand Days’ War was named after the civil conflict that took place in Colombia in the period of October 17, 1899, and November 21, 1902, due to political discontent that resulted in the economic devastation of the nation, more than one hundred thousand deaths. For more details see (Rubiano, 2011). 1

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one of those who dragged Roa’s body down a block, until the mob snatched it from him to take it to Nariño’s Palace2 (Pedraza, 2016).

Likewise, it underlies as an elegy and perhaps also as a war song, the words of Gaitan himself shortly before his death: If I go forward, follow me; If I step back, push me; If I betray you, kill me; If I die, avenge me3 (Lara, 1991, p. 26).

The war between the liberal and conservative parties, whose genesis lies in the Independence, broke out again, taking over the countryside and the villages; this period of the history of Colombia is called “La Violencia” (The Violence). Historian María Victoria Uribe points out that rural violence was reborn by the Gaitanists who, enraged by the murder of their leader, attacked the symbols and properties of the followers of conservatism. To draw out the first wave of violence, the then president, Mariano Ospina Pérez, sent a forcible police team known as “Los Chulavitas,” who, with their rifles and machetes, relentlessly pursued all liberals, including civilians suspected of sympathizing with the Gaitanist cause (Posada, 2013; Sánchez & Meertens, 1983). Faced with massacres, always accompanied by torture and fires, the peasants fled to the mountains. From there, under the protection of the forest and the night, the embryo of future guerrillas would be born (Uribe, 1991). In the face of these events, populated by barbarism and discontent, one could ask oneself about the human condition, the same one that psychology studies, the one that from the pain and the clamor of the confrontations has had to transform and erect itself as the crucible of the times to come. Psychology, as mentioned by Alberto Rosa Rivero, has a historical interest in each era, an interest from which the hermeneutics of peoples and subjects are studied (Rosa Rivero, 1997). What was the interest of Colombian psychology in the late 1940s? At first, as Telmo Peña points out, psychological thought at the beginning of the twentieth century was debated between the Thomism of the colony and the psychiatric methods of Europe, a panorama from which, given illiteracy and scarce urban development, it would be impossible to have a formal psychology until the 1940s (Peña, 1993), where interest would seem to be located in laboratory experimentation. The nascent project of Colombian psychology was aimed at addressing various objects of study that were far from the social phenomena of the country. This led to an alienation of the social reality of Colombia in the name of the  “En la cuadra donde yo aprendí a montar bicicleta, en el Ricaurte me decían que vivía Roa Sierra, el que asesinó a Gaitán y con el tiempo vine a saber que mi papá fue uno de los que arrastró el cadáver de Roa por una cuadra, hasta que otros furibundos se lo quitaran y lo llevaran hasta el Palacio de Nariño (Translate from Spanish).” 3  Si avanzo, seguidme; Si retrocedo, empujadme; Si os traiciono, matadme; Si muero, vengadme (Translate from Spanish). 2

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traditional psychological currents that came from North America and Europe. We define this fact as academic colonialism that lasted in the following years of psychology as a profession in the country. Likewise, it is necessary to emphasize that Colombia of that time was still, despite more than a century since Independence, a young nation where the presence of the State did not reach all the boundaries of the national territory and the identity of what it meant to be a citizen of Colombia was still diluted (Rehm, 2014). However, another variable is born; beyond the experimental current is what Rosa Rivero has pointed out the interest of practice for each historical moment, a notion that echoes in Rehm’s thought when he proposed that the bipartisan war after Gaitán’s assassination arose from an identification with history, from an inherited rancor that must be defended at any cost. For Rehm, violence was above all an identification process that justified the massacres and the continuation of death. If we consider the very notion of psychological work towards the human condition, it is essential to investigate the place that the psychology of the time would give to the social and political changes that the country would go through, in short, to ask oneself about the very identity of Colombian psychology. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the Institute of Psychology at the National University was founded by psychiatrist Luis López de Mesa on November 20, 1947, just a few months before the Bogotazo, nor is it a coincidence that its director was the Spaniard Mercedes Rodrigo, exiled by the dictatorship of Francisco Franco (Herrero González, 2003), who would begin her formal teaching career on July 9, 1948, 3 months after the assassination of Gaitán and the destruction of Bogotá. The violence, the barbarity that would plague the country, and the presence of Rodrigo, who had fled Spain to save her life and who, in many ways, was a child of war (Rodrigo, 1942; Rodrigo & Roselló, 1922) are not a coincidence. In consideration of a discipline born among the fires of war, the question related to the interest of Colombian psychology at the end of the 1940s is repeated, a question that has been partially outlined by pointing out the experimental interest inherited from Europe and perpetuated by the formation of Rodrigo, Jean Piaget’s classmate in Geneva and successor of Wilhelm Wundt’s thought (Ardila, 1988). Despite the necessary experimentality as a previous step to epistemological consolidation, it is discouraging that the first steps of Colombian psychology have not made any mention, at least not officially, of the civil war that was spreading and reaching an unsuspected cruelty in the national territory in the form of tortures, executions, exiles, and banditry. What were the questions asked by Colombian psychology in the face of the era of the violence, in the face of the ghosts of past wars coming back to life? It can be seen, from the articles of Mercedes Rodrigo in the 1940s, compiled by Fania Herrero González (2003) and by Guil and Vega (2011), to the foundation of the Revista Colombiana de Psicología by Mateo Mankeliunas (Edgar, 1993) and its first publications in 1956, and even, until 1964, when the civil war ended, that there was no official study related to bipartisan violence, nor was there any dissertation on a conflict that showed, in its raw form, the most sordid side of the human condition,

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as if psychology in Colombia developed itself parallel and absent from the suffering of an entire country. It is only in the 1960s that Colombian psychology began to show some attempts to free itself from its academic skepticism and a call was made within the profession to recognize the social reality of the country. Recognizing the country’s reality implied accepting that violence was an imminent phenomenon in Colombia. Since the 1960s, violence has involved the participation of various actors, including the emergence of new guerrilla groups such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN), which led to the recognition of Colombia as a state suffering from the triggering of an Internal Armed Conflict (Cartagena, 2016; Shultz et al., 2014).

 he Configuration of a Psychology Facing the Reality T of the Internal Armed Conflict in Colombia (1961–1980) Outside the university grounds, “La Violencia,” which the government still refused to officially recognize as a civil war, scourged the Andean area and the eastern plains, the sectors most affected by conservative violence, bandits, the first guerrillas, and the armed forces (Uribe, 1991) unable to recover legitimacy and the monopoly on arms. As Rehm points out, the State’s presence, far from protecting and covering the Colombians of the time, was insufficient and weak in the face of a bipartisan predator who not only murdered but also banished the peasants who, forced to abandon everything, fled to less bloody grounds, or joined, perhaps wrapped in the desire for a certain amount of revenge, one of the belligerent factions (Marin Taborda, 1999). The generation of psychologists born after 1950 would seem not to worry about war, but until 1980 with the formal emergence of a psychology, not only experimental or existentialist, but also political as demonstrated by its founding facts (Molina & Rivera, 2012). The first attempts to recognize the reality of the armed conflict as a social phenomenon susceptible of being studied came from sociology, specifically from the work of Orlando Fals Borda (1928–2008). This, in a way, set a precedent for the future of psychology in the country. In this period, during the time of the National Front4 in the government of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, a group of specialized academics was created with the arduous mission of studying, analyzing, documenting, and understanding the causes and situations that up to that moment had been taking place in the phenomenon of violence in Colombia. This group was called the commission (Ocampo-López, 2009). The Commission soon became a kind of centrifugal movement that permeated the development of research with a social commitment. A major and unprecedented

 The National Front was a political pact or agreement between liberals and conservatives in Colombia between 1958 and 1974. The characteristic of this front was the alternation of the presidency during four periods (16 years) of coalition government (see Gomez-Suarez, 2020). 4

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work is the History of Violence in Colombia5 published in 1962 in two volumes by Monsignor German Guzmán Campos, Orlando Fals Borda, and Eduardo Umaña Luna. In the specific history of Colombian psychology, we can highlight the publication of three important works. On the one hand, there are two works published in 1961 by José Gutiérrez (1927–2008), namely From the pseudo-aristocracy to authenticity: Colombian social and The Colombian rebellion: psychological observations on political news and the important work on non-violence in the Colombian transformation in 1964 (Gutiérrez, 1961, 1964). On the other hand, the book Psicología y clases sociales en Colombia (Psychology and social classes in Colombia) by Álvaro Villar Gaviria (1921–1999) published in 1978 appears. The legacy of José Gutiérrez, Álvaro Villar, and Orlando Fals Borda set a precedent in the evolution of Colombian psychology. On the one hand, the influence of Gutiérrez and Villar soon became a point of reference for Marxist leftist circles of thought and at the same time they saw in psychoanalysis a tool for the emancipation of the unconsciously rooted chains in Colombian culture (Sánchez, 2012). On the other hand, Fals Borda’s contribution from his methodological proposal of participatory action research (PAR) constituted an important tool to reconfigure the field of psychology in Colombia. For the Colombian social psychologist Carlos Arango Cálad, the work of sociologist Orlando Fals Borda would constitute the outline of the first paths that psychology would take, no longer related to the experimental notion prevailing in national psychology, but from the community, from the approach of communities affected by bullets, machetes, and the endless terror woven by extortion, threats, torture, and exile. Fals Borda’s work contained also his methodology and his intention to transform relationships and even idiosyncrasies (Arango-Cálad, n.d.). It also supports the ideal, perhaps for the first time in the history of Colombia, of working alongside the peasant and not against them (Fals Borda, 1956). Fals Borda began his immersion in the Andes of Cundinamarca with the initial question of whether the peasant deserved his/her destiny of poverty and silence, not only from “La Violencia,” but also from the very foundation of the Republic (Vizcaíno, 2017). The State forgot, perhaps deliberately, about the peasant lands, which were soon devoured by the war and the industrial and agricultural backwardness that surprised the country at the beginning of the twentieth century. Fals Borda became involved in the life of the Andean peasant trying to understand his/her way of life, his/her relationship with the land, and the fear of losing it to the various bandits who roamed the boundaries of his/her properties (Fals Borda, 2017).

 The book presents testimonies and interviews with actors, victims, and witnesses of the period known as La Violencia (1948–1953). It talks about its historical background, the conflictive stage of 1930, the change of government in 1946, and “the fateful year of 1948.” It talks about geographical, regional, and human aspects; it describes the groups in conflict and makes a semblance of several guerrilla chiefs. It also mentions the tactics and norms of the groups in arms, as well as their cultural manifestations. It addresses issues such as the breakdown of fundamental institutions, some consequences of La Violencia, and socio-legal factors of impunity and closes with an analysis of the conflict, violence, and social structure.(See Guzmán, Fals-Borda & Umaña, 2005) 5

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Fals Borda’s proposal became an important reference to carry out an applied and transforming practice to intervene in the population most affected by violence. In this period, violence had already established itself as an essential aspect in all spheres of Colombia’s social structure. In this period, a transformation of the actors involved in the country’s violence began to take place (Dennis, 2006). This transformation forced a transition from a bipartisan dispute to a dispute between the state and criminal groups outside the law, such as guerrillas, paramilitaries, and drug traffickers (Meltzer & Rojas, 2005). This scenario made the country’s social reality exponentially more complex and acute. Despite all the efforts made up to this point, Colombian psychology did not have the necessary resources to address the problems and requirements that led to the worsening of the armed conflict in Colombia, namely: the phenomenon of forced displacement, cultural implosion in the main cities of the country, violence and terrorism in the cities, psychosocial care for victims of the conflict, and emergence of a drug trafficking culture in Colombia (Dennis, 2006). It was not until the 1980s and early 1990s, with the so-called expansionism of academic programs in psychology, that the first interest began to appear in thinking about a generation of psychologists who would have sufficient resources and preparation to meet the demands of the citizens of Colombia (Arango-Calad, 2010). Up to this point, Colombia’s social phenomena derived from violence are beginning to be considered as approachable topics that will lead to specialized lines of research in search of solutions and practical understandings of the chaos orchestrated by violence in the country.

 he Bet of a Political Dimension in Colombian Psychology T (1981–1990) In this period “La Violencia” ended only to transform and continue under new forms that live on until today, covered by the same unquestionable indifference towards violent death and contempt for human life that continues to be part of the Colombian culture, as something natural and indivisible that can happen at any time to any citizen of Colombia without meaning anything (Escobar, 2018). The executions, skirmishes, tortures, and cycle of revenge would end up diluting, even to this day, the position of victim and victimizer; from those who remember the roar of the time it is stated that liberals and conservatives at the same time became equal, barely differentiated by a color and the remains of an ideology (Caballero, 2013). Those who died and those who were inflamed with hatred were similar to those that Fals Borda addressed in Cundinamarca, those who were perpetually exiled from all glance, who fell before the choice of arming, hiding, or fleeing; they were the liberals and conservatives who, as William Ospina declares, fought a war of poverty to satisfy interests whose benefits would never be destined for them (Ospina, 1997).

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This approach to the subjectivity of the individual and his/her society immediately echoes the psychological praxis still so alien to the facts of the time, to the study of psychic and social phenomena that would constitute a transdisciplinary origin of a communitarian psychology, as Arango Cálad pointed out, or in synthesis, of a psychology in itself for Colombia. For Carlos Arango Cálad the seed of social psychology would be glimpsed in Colombia 10 years before it did in North America in the 1960s, perhaps because of the violence that needed to be understood, elaborated, and above all stopped. Thinking about a political dimension within Colombian psychology is a characteristic aspect of the discipline in this period. This is partly due to the emergence of the first undergraduate and graduate academic programs specialized in community psychology offered at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Bogotá) and the Universidad del Valle in the city of Cali, Colombia (Arango-Cálad, 2010). In the history of Colombian psychology, we can place the work of social psychologist Gerardo Marín as one of the first works to have an impact on the configuration of the field of community psychology in the country. He does not completely distance himself from applied social psychology; it is enough to see his definition of community psychology, “Community Social Psychology, although incipient and therefore bad defined, shares with the Applied Social Psychology the emphasis on obtaining scientific data in a natural environment” (Marín, 1980, p. 173). With the growth of academic psychology programs throughout the national territory and their organization in the early 1990s, the most critical forces of psychology had to be conjured up to revive a postponed debate. However, community psychology was established as a project that allowed the longing to create a social psychology for the people that could differentiate itself from the individualistic and aseptic models of North American social psychology, what Ignacio Martín-Baró called breaking “with the slavery of psychology” (González-Rey, 2004). Community psychology demonstrated that it could emancipate itself and build a project of its own that allowed it to break out of its own slavery, and this attributed a political dimension to the development of psychological praxis. Recognizing a political dimension in the practice of Colombian psychology constituted, over time, an important advance in thinking about the development of psychology in the country. The assassination of Ignacio Martín-Baró quickly took up again his academic work with the aim of finding tools to combat the most terrible barbarism that was being experienced throughout the national territory. This proposal was in tune with the theoretical and conceptual advances in the approach to the realities of Latin American peoples. In these debates, the Spanish social psychologist Tomás Ibañez put forward very well the crossroads faced by Latin American political thought: Can community social psychology, critical social psychology, and liberation psychology be considered intrinsically political? The answer is no. Since Martín-Baró, it has been thought that social psychology is political if it studies issues traditionally related to politics (ideology, power, political attitudes and representations, violence, racism, etc.). Latin American social psychology can indeed become the main toolbox for a political psychology that in any case must ask itself the following questions: “can social psychology contribute to the knowledge

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of political phenomena? and can social psychology act on political problems?” (Ibáñez, 1993, p. 21). However, we return to the problem of what is ultimately a political phenomenon, and in addition to the elements traditionally contemplated in political studies, ideology, leader representations, racism, and dimension of historical memory were added. Memory is the main political phenomenon to which political psychology studies have been devoted from the political constitution to the present day. Memory is at the same time a particular and a collective phenomenon, which has led to a redirection of the way political phenomena had been approached. The political psychology of Baró and the communitarian psychology of Maritza Montero saw society, the community, the people, and the individuals as actors with a political capacity, that is to say, with the self-conscious capacity to examine their position within their historical and class context in order to free themselves from their ideological ties that keep them in their condition of servitude. It is necessary, rather, to examine all those processes that go from an individual’s belonging to a class to his way of behaving, in order to discern why that individual acts in one way and his brother. belonging in principle to the same social class. no: but it is also necessary to examine the relationship in the other direction, that is, the meaning that the actions of one and the other have within their society, and the impact that their diverse forms of action produce in the balance of social forces. In this sense, political psychology must focus its attention on the shaped processes of being and acting of individuals and groups, as well as on the mediating experiences and the effects of that acting. (Martín-Baró, 1991, p. 35).

Martín-Baró’s work gives the definitive opening to psychosocial studies. Ignacio Martín-Baró defined psychosocial theory as that which accounts for the social reality of the group and cannot be reduced to the personal characteristics of individuals; however, it must be capable of integrating aspects where the personal converges with the social and the social becomes individualized (Martín-Baró, 1992).

 he Evolution of Psychology Facing a Post-conflict Colombia T (1991–2020) Colombian psychology would have since 1991 an institutional capacity and a more mature society to be able to carry out a responsibility that had been postponed to a great extent due to the vexations of the war (Cepeda, 1998). Nevertheless, in this period we must emphasize that the development of Colombian psychology was already taking place in the context of a deeply politicized environment. In the country, with the peace processes and the demobilization of paramilitary and guerrilla groups, a scenario was beginning to take shape that would allow progress towards the consolidation of a truly political society through the recovery of the truth in the processes of historical memory (Arboleda-Ariza et al., 2020). The signing of the peace agreements between the government of Juan Manuel Santos and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in 2012 was a very important milestone in the history of Colombia. The signing of the peace

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agreement implied the return of hope to think of a fairer Colombia and, in turn, all doors were opened to take on the challenge of thinking of a post-conflict Colombia (Suarez, Arias-Arévalo & Martínez-Mera, 2017). In a post-conflict Colombia, the indicators showed a desolate panorama that required, among many other things, the attention of the country’s psychologists’ guild to provide a psychosocial care program for the victims of the armed conflict, to establish processes of care and reparation for the victims, to lead processes of demobilization and reincorporation of former combatants into civilian life, and to establish processes of demobilization and reincorporation of former combatants into civilian life (Arboleda-Ariza et al., 2020). Historically, it is important to mention that Colombia has had the experience of developing large-scale collective demobilization processes, which have led to work over the last decade on a proposal for psychosocial care throughout the national territory. For example, the collective demobilization of approximately 30,000 combatants from self-defense groups, between 2003 and 2006, led the State to design massive care strategies for this population. The first strategy was the outsourcing of services for the execution of tasks aimed at the stabilization and initial orientation of the demobilized combatants. This assistance was carried out through the Program for Reincorporation to Civilian Life (PRVC). The strategy was characterized as a short-term program with emphasis on economic reintegration. Although at the time it constituted a significant advance in the implementation of public policy for the care of ex-combatants, the PRVC had limitations to meet the required capacity of care, which is why it was necessary to design and implement a larger program. Subsequently, the Psychosocial Attention for Peace Program was created, which took several years to design. It was implemented from 2010 to 2013 and was consolidated as a program that contributed to the systematization of care and follow-up processes. Based on this, activities with a differential approach were carried out leading to the development and/or strengthening of four basic competencies in the demobilized population: responsibility, achievement orientation, nonviolent conflict resolution, and assertive communication (Avila-Toscano & Madariaga, 2010). The level of detail required by this type of procedure was beyond the scope of the strategy since it implied an almost personalized follow-up. This led to the transformation of technical, conceptual, and operational aspects of the Psychosocial Care for Peace model. Thus, the Multidimensional Care Model was created, from a holistic perspective (Medina, Layne, Galeano & Lozada, 2007). This model has been in operation since 2013 with the reintegration of demobilized persons prior to the peace process collectively agreed with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). This model places the person in the reintegration process at the center, giving him/her a leading role in the accompaniment, abstracting him/her from the passive role of the subject receiving attention. This strategy asks the person to identify, with due accompaniment, his/her main needs and to formulate commitments through concrete, systematic, and achievable actions within a certain time limit, in order to satisfy them. The evolution towards an understanding of the psychosocial care of demobilized combatants was influenced by the institutional transformations that occurred in

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Colombia for the implementation of the public policy on care. In 2003, it began with outsourced and short-term services, coordinated by the Ministry of Defense. Subsequently, in 2006, the State took over the provision of care with the creation of the High Counselor’s Office for Reintegration (Fisas, 2011). In 2011, the Colombian Agency for Reintegration was created in order to promote greater administrative autonomy and ownership in the execution of resources. This had an impact on the possibility of increasing the team of professionals for the psychosocial approach. In 2017, as a result of the peace agreement with the FARC, the Agency for Reincorporation and Normalization (ARN) was created to carry out the reintegration processes that were underway and the reincorporation processes agreed upon after the signing of the recent agreement. In addition to these, there are the processes of accompaniment to the population released from prison from the self-defense groups. Finally, law 1448 of 2011 or Victims Law was implemented as a strategy for the symbolic and/or economic reparation of the victims of the Colombian armed conflict (Delgado-Barón, 2015). This led to the creation of the Psychosocial and Integral Health Care Program for Victims (PAPSIVI). The PAPSIVI, attached to the Ministry of Health, focuses on two components, mainly psychosocial care and health care with a psychosocial approach. The approach to psychosocial practices is a proposal that does not intend to standardize actions that are grouped together. In this sense, the action, commonly called psychosocial intervention, comes from a thought that suggests itself critical as a substantive exercise with the community, group, or person that accompanies the action (Millán et al., 2020). This action is, consequently, susceptible of being applied in contexts where the members of a community or subjects consent to it, without implying unilateralism or imposition of agreements. From the above, it follows that critical thinking in the psychosocial is linked to its practical and political dimension. The dyad constituted by critical thinking and practice makes psychosocial action emerge in a widely justified transforming sense. Since action is not an accidental activity in human beings, but appears articulated to thought, it acquires here a transforming and creative attribute. The psychosocial is, consequently, a political action par excellence that arises from thinking (critically) about the particular human realities within communities and social groups (Martín-Baró, 2012). That said, the psychosocial takes place in necessarily heterogeneous practices since the human condition is plural, hence the pluralization of the expression psychosocial approaches. The pluralization of the expression has to do with the recognition of the intertwining between the structure of social relations and their agents, the reciprocal affectations. This means that psychosocial intervention, even if it implies a political dimension, does not constitute a unified model of activities to be carried out, nor should it represent a model of intervention related to domination practices. The expression of psychosocial approach, detached from its plural, critical, and political dimension, is far from its foundational stakes and becomes a psychosocial practice that responds to demands of a different nature where its transforming character is not at stake.

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Final Consideration It is necessary to ask, for further reflection, why psychology is absent in Colombia in the face of the human condition. At first it could be argued that, unlike Europe, Latin American psychology, as Gemelli (1957) pointed out, was a relatively recent science. Likewise, it could be said that the number of psychologists during the 1950s cannot be compared to that of our days, when psychology has settled in the main cities of the country. However, it underlies what Alberto Rosa Rivero said when he stated that all psychology obeys its time, the precise questions to try to understand it. Psychology in Colombia remained absent from its theoretical eagerness, from the not inconsiderable ambition of becoming and growing as a science. However, in the face of death, barbarism, and condition of human science of all psychology, it is discouraging in many ways that Colombian psychology has not officially addressed a massacre that is still remembered as the worst that the Republic has ever experienced. Currently, in the midst of the complexity of the country, growing social problems, and phenomena, there are still huge gaps of social inequality, precarious conditions of employment, health, and education that were ultimately the structural causes of the armed conflict. For a long time, the political commitment of the disciplines was delayed as a consequence of processes that exceeded the disciplines themselves and showed a rather violent panorama, so much so that thinking was insufficient to forge an alternative type of resistance to the armed one. However, it seems that the agreements reached and the last collective popular expressions and the massive rejection of civil society for the selective assassination of social leaders announce that we are in a different Colombia. Faced with this Colombia that is beginning to awaken, the psychologist inevitably finds himself/herself in a confluence: on the one hand that of assuming the commitment that emanates from his/her praxis to the impact of the ordering of a society (ethical dimension) and on the other hand that of having the means to intervene—to a large extent—for purposes of social transformation (political dimension). This confluence has been defined by Ignacio Martín-Baró as a politics of psychology— as the discipline; in its ethical-political dimensions it possesses a configuring effect on society, which is essentially the disposition of a social and political power in psychology (Martin-Baró, 1991). This implies analyzing the psychologist’s practices in the different fields of intervention and observing the contributions of psychology in social changes—as well as in the advances of the discipline in the country. This is why reviewing the history of Colombian psychology is an important resource that allows us to transform our present and shape our future. For decades, Colombian psychology has concentrated on examining various topics within the framework of different fields of intervention and research. This has led to overlooking of a review of our practice as a discipline and to placing of the discussion that psychosocial studies bring with them in the work agendas, as a political bet in psychology in Colombia.

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The emergence of a political project for psychology in Colombia needs to situate the psychologist’s relationship with politics in a social and historical context. Although it is true that today it is difficult to frame a work route in which psychology finds all its potential, it is important to recognize that some ground is beginning to be covered. It is a call to the entire guild of psychologists in the country to heed the call of unity and contribute to the recovery of the social fabric.

References Arango-Calad, C. (2010). Las políticas de la convivencia. En. Hincapíe, E.(Coord.), Sujetos Políticos y Acción Comunitaria. Claves para una praxis de la psicología social y de la clínica socialcomunitaria en América Latina. (pp. 85–114). Medellín: Editorial UPB, Medellín. Arango-Cálad, C. (n.d.). Historia de la psicología en Colombia (p.  8). Grupo de Educación Popular, Instituto de Educación y Pedagogía, Universidad del Valle. Arboleda-Ariza, J. C., Piper-Shafir, I., & Prosser-Bravo, G. (2020). Reparation policies in Colombia: Memory as a Repertoire. Memory Studies. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698020982036 Ardila, R. (1988). Mercedes Rodrigo (1892-1882). Revista Latinoamericana de Psicología, 20(3), 429–434. Avila-Toscano, J. H., & Madariaga, C. (2010). Redes personales y dimensiones de apoyo en individuos demovilizados del conflicto armado. Psicología desde el Caribe, 25, 179–201. Caballero, I. (2013). Cuando “La Política”: veintiún testimonios de La Violencia en las provincias Norte de Boyacá y García Rovira de Santander (Tesis). Universidad de los Andes. Cartagena, C. (2016). Los estudios de La Violencia en Colombia antes de la Violentología. Diálogos Revista Electrónica de Historia, 17. Cepeda, M. J. (1998). Democracy, state and society in the 1991 constitution: The role of the constitutional court. In E. Posada-Carbó (Ed.), Colombia. Institute of Latin American Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­1-­349-­26050-­8_4 Delgado-Barón, M. (2015). Las víctimas del conflicto armado colombiano en la Ley de Víctimas y Restitución de Tierras: apropiación y resignificación de una categoría jurídica. Perfiles latinoamericanos, 23(46), 121–145. Dennis, M. (2006). National identity and violence: The case of Colombia. In W.  Fowler & P. Lambert (Eds.), Political violence and the construction of national identity in Latin America. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230601727_6 Edgar, A. (1993). Mateo V. Mankeliunas. Revista Latinoamericana de Psicología, 25(2), 311–316. Escobar, J. (2018). Marcuse. Muerte, Memoria y Dominio en Praxis Filosófica, 47, 11–23. Fals-Borda, O. (1956). El campesino cundi-boyacense: Conceptos sobre su pasividad. Revista Colombiana de Psicología, 1(1), 74-83. Fals Borda, O. (2017). Campesinos de los Andes. Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Fisas, V. (2011). Educar para una Cultura de Paz. Quaderns de Construcció de Pau, 20, 1–8. Gemelli, A. (1957). La profesión del psicólogo en el mundo moderno en. Revista de Psicología, 2(2), 123–152. González-Rey, F. (2004). La Crítica en la Psicología Social Latinoamericana y su Impacto en los Diferentes Campos de la Psicología. Interamerican Journal of Psychology, 38(2), 351–360. Gomez-Suarez, A. (2020). A short history of anti-communist violence in Colombia (1930–2018): Rupture with the past or rebranding? In C.  Gerlach & C.  Six (Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of anti-­ communist persecutions. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi. org/10.1007/978-­3-­030-­54963-­3_18

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Rehm, L. (2014). La construcción de las subculturas políticas en Colombia: Los partidos tradicionales como antípodas políticas durante La Violencia: 1946-1964. Historia y sociedad, 27, 17–48. Medellín. Rodrigo, M. (1942). Niños españoles en tiempos de guerra, en: Revista Española. Rodrigo, M., & Roselló, P. (1922). Lo que piensan de la guerra los niños españoles. Revista de Pedagogía, 71, 422–425. Publicado también en 1923 en L’Educateur, Febrero. Rosa Rivero, A. (1997). Historia y psicología, ¿Una nueva alianza? Escritos de psicología, 1, 39–46. Madrid. Rubiano, R. (2011). Guerra, nación y derechos A los 112 años de la Guerra de los Mil Días (1899-1902). Opinión Jurídica, 10(20), 175–192. Sánchez, G. (2012). Obra de Álvaro Villar Gaviria (1921-1999). Psicoanálisis, 24(2), 68–89. Sánchez, G., & Meertens, D. (1983). Bandoleros, gamonales y campesinos. El caso de la violencia en Colombia. El Ancora Editores. Shultz, J. M., Garfin, D. R., Espinel, Z., et al. (2014). Internally displaced “victims of armed conflict” in Colombia: The trajectory and trauma signature of forced migration. Current Psychiatry Reports, 16, 475. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11920-­014-­0475-­7 Suarez, A., Arias-Arévalo, P., & Martinez-Mera, E. (2017). Environmental sustainability in post-­ conflict countries: insights for rural Colombia. Environment development and sustainability, 20(3), 997–1015. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-017-9925-9 Uribe, M. V. (1991). Violencia y masacres en el Tolima. Desde Gaitán hasta el Frente Nacional. Credencial Historia Tomo II, 18, 66–69. Bogotá. Villar, A. (1965). Desarrollo de la Psicología en Colombia. Aporte para el estudio de su historia. Revista de Psicología, 10(2), 7–26. Vizcaíno, M. (2017). Campesinos de los Andes γ otros escritos antológicos, de O.  Fals Borda (Reseña de libro). Rev Colomb Soc, 41(1), 223–226.

Chapter 8

Psychological Approach to the Study of the Original Peruvian Man Tomás Caycho-Rodríguez, Miguel Barboza-Palomino, and José Ventura-León

Introduction The history of psychology has undergone significant changes since the 1960s (Brock, 2017; Watrin, 2017), a period in which the first psychological organizations, specialized scientific journals (Watson, 1975), as well as the first training programs in psychology history were established (Fierro, 2018a, b, 2019). In fact, during that decade there was a theoretical and methodological reorientation that has been described and analyzed in detail in recent years (Brock, 2017; Green, 2016; Lovett, 2006; Vaughn-Blount et al., 2009; Watrin, 2017). Prior to 1960, studies related to the history of psychology were characterized as being notably internalist (with great biographical details, but without mentioning the social or political changes that occurred), presentist (referred to the use of the latest information to better understand historical events and choose topics to be analyzed) (Kragh, 1987), and celebratory or ceremonial and based on the concept that psychology progresses over time and that psychologists currently know much more than in the past (Furumoto, 1989; Harris, 1980; Lovett, 2006). This period has been called the Old History of Psychology (Brock, 2017; Lovett, 2006). In contrast to the previous period, there is currently the trend of the so-called New History of Psychology, which is characterized by its critical vision, the use of primary sources and archival documents, and the consideration of sociopolitical conditions to analyze the findings that emerged during a certain period of time (Furumoto, 1989). In Peru, the studies related to the history of psychology have followed the course of the old history of psychology. An example of this is the book Historia de la Psicología en el Perú [History of psychology in Peru] by Reynaldo Alarcón (Alarcón, 2000) which provides an important account of the historical findings of T. Caycho-Rodríguez () · M. Barboza-Palomino · J. Ventura-León Universidad Privada del Norte, Lima, Peru

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. C. Ossa et al. (eds.), History of Psychology in Latin America, Latin American Voices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73682-8_8

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Peruvian psychology from the Colonial Period until right before the twenty-first century. The book has been considered to be the main source and also the most important text about the history of psychology in Peru. Although its contribution is undeniable, the book lacks a critical vision about the evolution of psychology in Peru. Also, at the end of the 1960s, Alarcón wrote the book Panorama de la Psicología en el Perú [Overview of psychology in Peru] (Alarcón, 1968), which is considered to be the first book about the history of this science in Peru (Caycho & Gallegos, 2015). Historical research in psychology conducted in Peru has paid little attention to the relationship between political, economic, and social circumstances (Orbegoso, 2018). However, in recent years, a movement that reflects on the social origins of psychology in Peru has arisen (Orbegoso, 2016, 2017, 2018). In the words of Orbegoso (Orbegoso, 2018, p. 35): Some recounts refer only to the context of a period of time in a very generic way, giving the mistaken impression of a psychology which was spontaneously conceived in a peaceful social environment. This vision writes off the rich social dynamic that accompanied the birth of Peruvian psychology. This presents us with the challenge and need to develop a historical review of psychology in Peru considering the different political, economic, and social turning points. Thus, and despite the brevity of this contribution, in this chapter a revision is conducted to the following subject: the explanation of the characteristics and behavior of the original Peruvian man during the Colonial Period and in the early twentieth century.

I deas About the Psychology of the Peruvian Indian in the Colonial Period The ideas concerning the inferiority of the Peruvian Indian in the Colonial Period are primarily found in the work Observaciones sobre el clima de Lima y su influencia en los seres organizados, en especial el hombre [Observations on the climate of Lima and its influence on organized creatures, especially man] (Unanue, 1915) written by the Peruvian medical doctor and naturalist Hipólito Unanue (1755–1833). In his book, Unanue tries to provide responses to the ideas of European thinkers and scientists who argued that the geography and the climate of the American territories were responsible for the inferiority of the human beings in America (León, 2003). At the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth, Lima was “a rich city, with a considerable and large concentration of inhabitants, and of artistic prestige for its houses and temples” (Miró Quesada, 1994, p. 82), with about 50,000 inhabitants, according to the population census of 1793 carried out by José María Egaña (García, 2010). There were also pockets of misery and serious difficulties in the city. Various travelers who came to Lima were amazed by the beauty of the city, but also by the number of beggars and the taste for the easy life (Núñez,

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2013). In terms of sanitation, the supply of drinking and sanitation water, as well as the drainage and sewerage system for the disposal of waste and excreta, was defective (García, 2010). The inhabitants of Lima obtained drinking water from public fountains, one of which was in the main square of the city, while the ditches ran through open channels, being sources of infections, diseases (such as diarrhea and malaria), and epidemics such as measles and smallpox. Despite this, the luxury did not stop for the most notable families in the city. The final decades of the seventeenth century were characterized by the broad European diffusion of a new philosophical movement based on reason and science which questioned the religious beliefs that were considered to be absolute truths in the intellectual landscape (Salaverry, 2005). Different enlightened movements such as neo-Aristotelianism, neo-Cartesianism, Leibniz-Wolffianism, and Newtonianism struggled to be the best explanation for the changes in the world (Israel, 2002). In Peru, as in other regions of Latin America, liberal European thought was not copied exactly because different aspects of the colony’s way of thinking were still being expressed aggressively (Castro, 2009). Beginning in the second half of the eighteenth century, the authority and validity of Aristotle’s postulates began to be discussed (Rodríguez de Mendoza, 1791), and studies on the rationalism of Descartes, Newton’s mathematics and physics, philosophy of Leibniz, Locke’s empiricism, Condillac’s sensualism, and medical texts of Boerhaave arose (Alarcón, 2000). These changes were also seen in the field of psychology, where issues on the nature of the soul, immortality, relationships with the body, willing, sensations, memory, imagination, and intellect were widely addressed (Aramburú et al., 1819). Despite the advent of enlightened ideas, European ideas continued to come to Peru that maintained the American Indian’s lack of humanity, considering him/her to be an inferior creature, which due to his/her condition, deserved to be enslaved (León, 2003). Some thinkers like Buffon, Voltaire, and De Pawn argued that the weather and the environment explained the inferiority of the Peruvian natives. In this regard, Buffon, in the middle of the eighteenth century “tries to sustain the hostility and the deficiency of the American environment to the development of living species” (León, 2003, p.  43). Likewise, Voltaire claims that America is a semi-­ empty continent, full of swamps that pollute the air and inhabited by hairless natives, which would be related to cowardice, the ease of being defeated by the enemy, and the degradation of all expression of virility (León, 2003). The idea of the degeneracy and inferiority of the American Indian reaches its peak with the ideas of Cornelius De Pawn, who considered the Native Americans weak, selfish, indolent, cowardly, unmasculine, and living in total destitution. Regarding Peru, Pawn stated that Peruvian indigenous people were physically grotesque, with pyramidal skulls in some regions and square ones in others near the jungle (Gerbi, 1946). Thus, De Pawn maintains that the American Indians are “superior to the animals, because they have the use of their hands and the tongue, they are really inferior to the least of Europeans; deprived at the same time of intelligence and perfectibility, they only obey the impulses of their instincts” (León, 2003, p.  45). In addition, he points out that Cuzco, contrary to what the Inca

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Garcilaso de la Vega narrates, is a crowding of huts, without windows, and that the universities were made up of a group of people who cannot read or write, who tried to teach various subjects to ignorant others (Gerbi, 1946). For Unanue, the central theme of the inferiority of the Peruvian Indian was not biological or racial but depended on the climate in which they lived (Alarcón, 1992; Caycho, 2016a, b; Flores, 2013). Concerning the race, Unanue points out, “The outer factions of the body are a certain sign of the excellence of the soul that inhabits it” (Unanue, 1915, p. 87). This affirmation was based on the principles of the Greek physiognomy that postulate that the external factions of the body are an expression of the soul (Alarcón, 1992). Despite this initial interpretation, Unanue considers physiognomic theory insufficient to explain the development of human intelligence. According to Alarcón (Alarcón, 1992), for Unanue, also following a Christian tradition, all races have characteristics which can be modified by an area’s climate. This idea is associated with Unanue’s concept of race, which is a set of characteristics, both structural and functional, that are typical of human groups from a given geographical area. Following this methodology, he distinguished the Asian, European, American, and African races (Graubart, 2015; León, 2003). Unanue described several psychological features of different races. For instance, he considered the European man as generous, having a sound thought process and the ability to discover truths that require reflection. On the other hand, the African man features a heavy and barbaric spirit, while the Indian is a sensitive, shy, lover of loneliness, yet at the same time imaginative. Unanue tries to provide a physiological explanation for certain characteristics of the Peruvian natives: “In a country located in the center of a hot zone, but with a climate reduced to a benign strength by the superabundance of humidity in the atmosphere, those who live there must have weak bodies” (Unanue, 1915, p. 81). In this sense, for Unanue, Peru’s climate produces a weak body and nervous system, which is easily agitated by the presence of different things. This characteristic would be associated with the sadness, melancholy, and laziness of the Native American man. Unanue points out that “in the digestive organs is where the signs of weakness first appear” (Unanue, 1915, p. 112). In this regard, he argued (Unanue, 1915, p. 137): The organs of digestion are the main site of this weakness; that is why the ancient philosophers believed that the seat of the soul was located in the upper part of the stomach. Democritus searched all around for the source of melancholy, because he knew that from there would arise the black fumes that eclipse the clarity of the reason, the strange ghosts, the bitter sustenance of the imagination, and the memory of austere death, which is continuously tightening the noose. Likewise, for Unanue, the imagination and timidity of the natives would have their origin in their body structure and weak nerves. With regard to the former, he mentioned that the feedback received by the sensitive organs is transferred to the spirit with great impact. Thus, the imagination is not a series of recurring impressions; instead it is a rapid perception of images of objects, which causes “thoughts to clear up and feelings and sensations to be invigorated” (León, 2003, p. 55). With regard to the latter, the surprise produced from being in contact with the stimuli

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takes hold of the soul, which gives rise to a fear of the danger that a new stimulus may have negative consequences. Regarding laziness, he points out that it is caused by a warm and tropical climate, and also it belongs to the sphere of morality (Castro, 2009). Finally, Unanue also mentions that “the rational spirit is equally distributed across all parts of the Earth. In all of them, man is capable of anything, if it is aided by education and example” (Unanue, 1915, pp. 96–97). This allows him to consider the Indian a social and rational being, as long as he/she is equipped with morality and the ability to succeed thanks to education. According to León (León, 2003), for Unanue, the Indian is a “man able to overcome the impasses of the climate by means of moral causes, [and] assuming a priori a morality that can be possessed by all individuals, then in that totality, the Indians are included as well.” Unanue’s observations regarding race should not be interpreted superficially as racist ideas for two reasons: (a) He believed that along with the negative characteristics, one can find virtuous people with great talent and (b) the idea of attributing negative features to people of color was common in society and the colonial state of his time, where racial or ethnic aspects marked the main aspects of the relationships between the emerging classes (Caycho, 2016b). In the words of Castro (Castro, 2009), Unanue considered the indigenous people to be human beings that were capable of reasoning, creating, restoring their integrity, kindness, and morality. Unanue uses empirical observation as a method of approaching reality, mentioning that: “Following in the footsteps of these illustrious geniuses, I have also wanted to examine the true qualities of Lima’s temperament, and the effects of its influences on organized entities, man especially. The first and main foundation in this type of work must be observation. As human talent is limited, it cannot always surprise all circumstances, which make any part of the time constantly determined, covered with varieties and metamorphoses” (Unanue, 1915, p. 20). As Castro (Castro, 2009) mentions, the use of the observational method by Unanue “requires a truly scientific and fact-centered reflection.”

I deas About the Degeneracy of the Peruvian Indian at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century The studies on the degeneracy of the Peruvian Indian, from a psychological and psychiatric perspective, have their origin in the studies of the Peruvian psychiatrist Hermilio Valdizán (1885–1929). Valdizán began an exhaustive study about the factors involved in the degeneracy of the indigenous race. He mentioned that his work “is the personal contribution that was made to further the understanding of a problem whose best solution is closely linked to the development of nationality” (Valdizán, 1924, p. 146). With this, Valdizán suggests an improvement of the indigenous race and its adoption of the rights and duties of the Peruvian nation in that period.

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Valdizán studied in Europe with Sante de Sanctis, with whom he shared his interest in modern psychology (Mariátegui, 1981). For de Sanctis psychology deals with the states and acts of consciousness, those psychic and internal phenomena lived by the subject and the laws or constants that govern them. Trying to overcome the materialistic monism and the interactionist parallelism, he postulates a “psychophysical proportionalism,” thanks to which it would be possible to understand the relative weight of the psychological and the organic and how the psychic is objectified in the physical. In short, he proposed to reconcile the study of the subjective with the objective methods, that is, to fuse introspection with external observation and experimentation (Di Giovanni, 2015). Upon his return from Italy, Valdizán promoted a series of initiatives that replicated in Lima what de Sanctis was doing in Rome. Specifically, Valdizán disseminated psychoanalysis and other psychological theories; he acted as a forensic expert; he applied intelligence tests; he was interested in the study of mentally deficient children; and, most pertinent to this research, he managed to install an experimental psychology laboratory in 1919 in the Asilo Colonia de la Magdalena, later Larco Herrera Hospital (Mariátegui, 1981). Valdizán’s ideas about the degeneracy of the Peruvian indigenous people have been formulated and discussed in previous studies (Caycho et  al., 2015), which allowed for the identification of the core texts that form the basis for his ideas. Among them one can identify: La alienación mental entre los primitivos peruanos [The mental alienation among the primitive Peruvians] (Valdizán, 1915), La alienación mental en la raza india [The mental alienation in the Indian race] (Valdizán, 1925), and El cocainismo y la raza indígena [Cocainism and the indigenous race] (Valdizán, 1913). Regarding the factors that negatively influence the progress of the indigenous people, Valdizán (Valdizán, 1924) mentioned: The toxic factors included their favorite beverage, chicha, whose alcoholic toxicity was augmented by the introduction of animal meat substances capable of contributing to the production of serious toxins, such as Ptomaines. In addition, the sacred leaf of the Incas, coca, whose harmfulness is undeniable, was another toxic factor. Valdizán placed the consumption of coca within the toxic factors due to its narcotic properties. Note that in addition to the consumption of coca, alcoholism and goiter were degenerative factors that should be of interest to doctors. Valdizán (Valdizán, 1990) mentioned: Perhaps if the Spanish, who suppressed so many native customs, some of which must have been as dear to the Peruvians as the use of coca, had been able to realize the harm that it caused, they could have mitigated its use and even suppressed it. Unfortunately, conservation of the indigenous race was not given great importance. One of the first to mention the existence of coca consumption in the northern region of South America was the Spanish priest Tomás Ortiz, in 1499. Years later, in 1535, Oviedo and Valdez made known the relationship between coca consumption and resistance against hunger and fatigue. For his part, Francisco de Xerez (1533) and Bishop Vicente Valverde (1539) mention the habit of coca in the region of

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Cuzco, which is consistent with the observations of Pedro Cieza de Leon (Gutierrez-­ Noriega & Zapata, 1947). The widespread use of coca exposed by previous chroniclers does not coincide with other later ones (Stolberg, 2011). For example, Fernando de Santillan (1567), Bernabe Cobo (1653), Jose de Acosta, and Juan de Solorzano point out that the cultivation and consumption of coca were restricted to the Inca and the aristocracy (Gutierrez-Noriega & Zapata, 1947). Baudin (Baudin, 1928) points out that the Incas gave less hierarchy to the use of coca and prohibited its indiscriminate use. In the face of these contradictory observations, Gutierrez-Noriega and Zapata (Gutierrez-Noriega & Zapata, 1947) mention that “confronting all these assertions, we are inclined to believe that coqueo was limited to a certain social class and religious worship in the time of the Incas, and that this limitation disappeared after the colony” (p. 23). On the other hand, reference is also made to the important commercial value of coca, the value given by the Peruvian Indians and its stimulating properties as an agent to resist fatigue, and the proposal of the Jesuit Antonio Julián, for whom coca should be used instead of tea and tobacco (Gutierrez-Noriega & Zapata, 1947). However, it was Hipólito Unanue who was one of the most important defenders of the use of coca because he “attributed extraordinary properties, pointing out historical facts in which this drug was a valuable aid of the troops in the campaign” (Gutierrez-Noriega & Zapata, 1947, p. 26). Hermilio Valdizán (Valdizán, 1913) also clarifies that Unanue wisely exposes the biology, properties, forms of cultivation, and economic benefits of coca. From the clinical point of view, coca consumption by natives, known as coca degeneration, was considered by Valdizán to be a psychophysical decay, based on coca intoxication and coca-induced insanity. Valdizán (Valdizán, 1924) points out: “The stimulant effect of coca […]. Is exercised on the nervous system, and this system, permanently stimulated and perennially subjected to an intense excitatory action, suffers fatal damages resulting from this artificially imposed rhythm.” For Valdizán, some of the ancient Peruvian traits, such as lack of responsiveness, irresolution or inactivity, submission to the rigors of the environment, neglect of others, ingratitude, dishonesty, and even sentimental mood, could be some kind of expression of coca degeneration. Thus, Valdizán (Valdizán, 1924, 1925) suggested that the consumption of coca cannot be excluded from the etiology of the degeneration of the indigenous people, despite not having the same characteristics of the classic picture of coca degeneration observed in asylums and sanatoriums. Now, Valdizán’s thinking cannot be analyzed without considering its sociocultural context. The first years of Valdizán’s study and professional performance were characterized by the influence of positivism in the study of behavioral and experimental psychology (Mariategui, 1981). Thus, the psychiatry of the early twentieth century was influenced by the positivist and scientistic ideas of Kraepelin (Mariategui, 1990). Along with positivism, Valdizán experienced the rise of phenomenological orientation in psychopathological research, represented primarily by Karl Jaspers, along with the influence that brought about the birth of psychoanalysis. In this regard, Valdizán was associated with a focus on the development of psychoanalysis in Peru, both in his work as a teacher and in his practice of

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dissemination (Mariategui, 1989). The aforementioned does no more than stressing that “Valdizán was situated in a position of openness towards new trends and processes of clinical research, conscious of the provisional nature of many of the formulations hitherto accepted as dogmatic” (Mariategui, 1990, p. 34). By their ideas, some historians of Peruvian psychology consider Valdizán as a eugenicist, because, like Honorio Delgado, he supported the idea of the inferiority of the indigenous race (Orbegoso, 2012). In this sense, at the beginning of the twentieth century, his proposals gave scientific basis to this supposed inferiority, which was explained, according to his research, by the extensive use of the coca leaf. It should be mentioned that Valdizán did not make sociocultural comparisons with samples of indigenous consumers and nonconsumers of the coca leaf, which would have allowed him to have greater control of the study variables and therefore made his claims stronger. It is worth mentioning that Valdizán’s ideas were postulated within a social context characterized by a coexistence of a nascent economic modernization, racist views, and an exclusionary code of laws. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Peru was characterized by the coexistence of the urban upper class, indigenous serfdom in the Andes, and quasi-slavery in the jungle. This discrimination perpetrated against the indigenous population of the Andes and the jungle was based on the ideas of scientific racism that legitimized the power of a modernizing elite based on the scientific idea of racial superiority (Portocarrero, 1995). Many intellectuals of that time pointed to the indigenous population as an inferior race due to heredity. For example, Clemente Palma proposed that the only way to overcome Peru’s problems was through crossbreeding with superior races (Palma, 1897).

Conclusions The history of psychology initially developed from an internalist perspective, characterized by defining a type of personality from which heroic or celebratory events are reconstructed. This view of history was detached from the evaluation of social processes and has hindered a critical view of the context in which the events took place (Meza et al., 2018). In the past couple of decades, the history of psychology has begun moving towards a new form of inquiry that does not focus exclusively on characters, and instead factors the political, economic, and social events into the analysis and discussion of the facts. This new way of writing history is differentiated by geographical location; for instance, in the Latin American countries, it has been identified that the studies in the history of psychology continue to present the traditional nuances. In fact, Peru is not on the sidelines of this trend. Much of the historical research has been focused on the biographical study of characters and a brief characterization of the environment. Therefore, the challenge is to reconstruct a Peruvian history of psychology that analyzes and discusses the issues being studied in relation to the political, economic, and social context of a given period of time. This task must be carried out by

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investigating particular issues that will be connected to others, and that eventually allow for a deeper and broader understanding of the findings. In this chapter, a compilation of the ideas about the features and behavior of the native Peruvian man in the Colonial Period and in the early twentieth century has been made. The ideas of Hipólito Unanue and Hermilio Valdizán were presented and discussed, considering the context in which they were formulated. Both Unanue and Valdizán convey the idea of the inferiority of Peruvian Indians, which they characterize with different psychological attributes. The differences in relation to the causes and possibility of developing other psychological characteristics were also identified. It should be noted that the ideas of the aforementioned thinkers were formulated in a context where the intellectual idea that undervalued the features and personality of the original American man prevailed. Although Unanue raised the idea of inferiority of the Peruvian man, he also outlined a vision that contradicted the intellectual idea, since he formulated that this man has the capacity of reasoning, creation or imagination, goodness, morality, and integrity, as well the possibility to develop through education and example. On the other hand, the ideas of Valdizán maintained that the consumption of the coca leaf was the factor that caused the inferiority of Peruvian natives, but these could not be considered as his final ideas, because he was open to their verification. However, he did not have the opportunity to do so. There is still much work to be done in order to construct a history of psychology in Peru. The starting point for this task has to be the strengthening of the teaching of the history of psychology, which should include content that allows for critical reflection, interest in local issues, and implementation of methodologies for historical research (Barboza-Palomino, 2015). This will enable the reconstruction of new histories that can be connected to what was discussed in this chapter.

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Chapter 9

Psychology, History, and Culture in Paraguay José E. García

Introduction One of the essential problems that must be solved before undertaking any history of psychology, be it conceptual, social, or cultural, consists of deciding from where it is pertinent to begin the reconstruction of the events studied. At first glance, this seems an easily solvable dilemma by establishing reasoned criteria that conveniently satisfy the researcher’s interest and delimit the scope of the view. But as usual, the reality is more complex. Academics who are responsible for clarifying the evolution of psychological knowledge also do not share a unanimous criterion. For authors such as Danziger (1990), the history of psychology should begin at the time of the founding of Wilhelm Wundt’s laboratory (1832–1920) at Leipzig, or perhaps a few decades earlier. In his various writings, he questioned the existence of a linear continuity between the ancient psychology of philosophical cut that was cultivated in the days before Leipzig and the psychological science as practiced today. However, the predominant opinion of academics who wrote psychology history texts, including the first works published on the subject at the beginning of the twentieth century (Baldwin, 1913; Brett, 1912–1921; Klemm, 1914), places the origin of the temporal accounts in the writings of the Greek philosophers, particularly Plato and Aristotle. Other writers (Riquelme, 1948) estimate that if psychology is the study of the soul, as seems appropriate if the etymological definition is followed, it becomes imperative to start with a consideration on how this concept evolved over the centuries until it took the form that gives it the modern conceptions. Even others, such as Hergenhahn and Henley (2013), suggest that psychology should begin its historical journey with the first mental representations that perhaps found shelter in the brain of our hominid ancestors. These, when asked about such pressing issues as death, thought, and individual survival, were in fact creating a significant antecedent J. E. García (*) Universidad Católica, Asunción, Paraguay © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. C. Ossa et al. (eds.), History of Psychology in Latin America, Latin American Voices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73682-8_9

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for the first psychological elucidations. Although speculative and difficult to prove, such ideas could shed light on the real beginnings of psychological reflection. These issues run in parallel to the questions that culture interposes, which in fact places the imperative of a substantive discussion as to the real meaning that environmental events can exert on behavior, as well as the greater or lesser extent that should be granted to its study. Actually, the discussion is as old as psychology itself. Undoubtedly, the influence exerted by cultural variables on character and behavior is an issue that has generated interest at least since the time of the Greeks, as well as the relative weight of nature versus nurture, to express it in terms that Galton (1869) made classics. These are issues that have played a very decisive role in the theoretical elaborations of philosophers and scientists since then (Lindholm, 2007). The same can be said of all Latin American nations. But in the case of Paraguay, a country that we will briefly discuss in this chapter, the culture factor, although decisive, is not always easy to appreciate in its fair and broad dimension, especially in matters such as the history of psychology. But it is not possible to ignore the strongly multicultural reality of the nation, in which at least 17 different ethnicities coexist (Zanardini & Biedermann, 2001), each with its own history and traditions. Such ethnic groups were already in the territory at the arrival of the Spaniards. As in all Latin American nations, the arrival of Europeans on the American stage during the first half of the fifteenth century did not mean in any way the beginning of the first, only, or definitive “culture” on the continent, speaking in absolute terms, since it was already possible to register a great diversity of original inhabitants, each with a different language, religion, traditions, and customs. The books that deal with the history of psychology in Latin America are not always receptive to this aspect of the original inhabitants, except for some texts such as the one written by Ardila (1986) more than 30 years ago, and which incorporate this dimension of the problem. The fact that there are people who physically inhabit a certain territory and from whom it is possible to presume a shared psychology with the same members of their ethnic group, due to the effect of socialization and intragroup dissemination, is a probability that it is not appropriate to avoid under any aspect. This psychology should cover the validity of particular collective beliefs, singular forms, and processes of reasoning, emotions, attitudes, stereotypes, values, etc., which should also be recognized as different from those associated with the majority population, if this exists, at least in some significant aspects. The statement, however, does not go beyond deriving an assumption, although very plausible, indeed. In addition, these individuals could be assigned differential characteristics that derive from their own “culture” and their assimilation. But it will be impossible to be considered as factual data as long as there is no verifiable information to support it. In the academic context of Latin American psychology, a few publications that focus on the study of the mentality of the indigenous and what Mardones Barrera (2017) called the invention of the native psyche (Mardones Barrera, 2017) began to explore the path that this elementary finding should impose, although only very recently. Although at present there is no well-developed and conceived psychology that focuses on the privative peculiarities of the original inhabitants of the American continent, there is, in fact, a human population with respect to which

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it is reasonable to presume a particular mentality, or that could possess such condition in some specific period of its past, before losing much of its specificity by the merger, at least partial, with a dominant culture. That is to say, when talking about an indigenous psychology, it is a question of supposing a conglomerate of own experiences, capable of constituting a clear sediment on which it is constructed— or should be built rather—a very important part, although not the unique of course, of Latin American psychology.

The Colonial Stage and the Previous Times The temporal roots for the problem can extend as far back as you want. We know that the passage of the first humans through the Bering isthmus would have occurred about 14,000 years in the past, although some alternative hypotheses that account for the crossing and the concrete route that was followed delay that date up to even 20,000 and 25,000 years (Madsen, 2004). It is clear that human migration to the south did not happen quickly and took a few thousand years to complete. Studies carried out with indigenous populations living in countries bordering Paraguay, using the identification of genetic markers and other very sophisticated techniques (Marrero et al., 2007; Sala et al., 2010), allow to calculate the degrees of genetic differentiation that arise between these populations and determine the possible age of each of these groups in the occupation of South America. Estimated, his age could go back up to 5000 years. By the way, we still do not have more precise information on dates that set the establishment of the first human settlements in what is now the Paraguayan territory. However, we have reasonable elements to maintain that the antecedence of these first settlers to the arrival of the Spanish colonizers goes back a few thousand years. By itself, this data would already give sufficient basis to any argument that gives substantial qualitative importance to the knowledge of psychology attributable to the first native inhabitants. Soon we will see that some researchers had the same idea in Paraguay and tried to develop it in different contexts. The problem is that the Spanish colonizers, largely due to the prejudices inherent to their time, visualized the original inhabitants as mere savages, a characterization very congruent with the prevailing thinking at the moment (Jahoda, 1999). They felt that the only valid culture was their own and insisted on erasing any distinction that could represent a divergence. This was felt more acutely on the religious level, where the urgency of assimilating the Indians to the Faith brought by the Europeans seemed an unquestionable imperative and was perceived as one of the most sensitive and necessary edges to lead to their humanization, being as far from God as from European civilization. This was the authentic foundation of the evangelization efforts that the Catholic Church carried out throughout the following centuries. The process for propping up a supremacy of European culture over native traditions in Paraguay did not reach the violence and open confrontations that could be seen in other parts of America, although it was very constant and effective. But on

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the other hand, one can speak of a significant rescue of many elements that originated in the cultural heritage of ancestral communities and that were incorporated into the process of formation of the Paraguayan nation, assumed in a broad sense. The most important of these was the assimilation and use of the vernacular language, that is, the Guaraní. This use of the aboriginal language as a linguistic resource ended up integrating completely with the habits and customs of the general population and they have remained unchanged until today. However, the characterization of the original inhabitants as human groups that were very far from the worship of the true God with which the Spaniards identified and also with the customs characteristic of the European culture also led to another kind of marginalization, which converted to the indigenous population from that time in a minority of people who were systematically deprived of the same rights and possibilities enjoyed by the direct descendants of the colonization. In the first centuries, this led to practices such as the encomienda, which constituted a service of provision that the native aborigines had to perform to Europeans and their descendants in conditions that, on occasions, were very unfavorable for them and that kept certain analogies with a mitigated form of slavery, or at least dependence. The practice prevented many things, such as being the owners of their ancestral lands (Pastore, 1972). In this way, the indigenous people enjoyed a fairly limited freedom, although the persons who had the indigenous people to their care, called encomenderos, had to keep, dress, feed, and protect them. With the implementation of the encomienda regime, the Spaniards stopped considering their indigenous relatives as political ones, and went on to visualize them as mere servants, which was the germ of several of the indigenous rebellions that were seen in Paraguayan history (Durán Estragó, 2010). The situation of the native inhabitants did not improve so much in the later centuries, for which the acute social marginalization and poverty in which indigenous peoples live today are proof. With the arrival of the Europeans and the subsequent beginning of the colonial era, the idea was imposed that civilization, that is, the way of life and beliefs that the Spaniards adopted, had finally arrived to this region. This would start the construction of a system that should crystallize in a new society for this part of the world. In Paraguay, this vision did not exclude racial mixing, but even propitiated it, although within certain precise limits. In this way, the incorporation of the indigenous element would be admitted as long as it did not contradict or violate certain precepts admitted as valid by the Europeans, and on which they were not willing to compromise. The Christian religion, and Catholicism in particular, played a preponderant role in this context (Payne, 1984). The way to build the culture that, seen from the prism of ancestral peoples, would end up being hegemonic and dominant began. The beliefs that these indigenous groups possessed, particularly the Guaraní, would be either completely deactivated, or reabsorbed, or drastically reinterpreted (and sometimes even very distorted), in a context consistent and functional to the conqueror’s mentality. What has remained in our time is what survived the potential distorting effect that this process had. All of this has its unquestionable weight and value if a thorough understanding of the historical formation of Paraguayan psychology is sought, mainly in the first centuries, and whose initial manifestations on the local stage would occur in this

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specific context and time. In other words, the interest in mental processes did not arise in response to the uniqueness that the indigenous population could have at the psychological level, nor as an attempt that could be attributed to European explorers to understand the peculiarities of aboriginal groups, compared to the Spanish culture. The truth is that there was no purpose of learning something about racial differentiation between the two populations, which would have denoted a truly genuine scientific spirit. On the contrary, the agenda that prevailed was radically different. The intention that was installed very quickly and that served as a concrete project for the colony was the direct import of the theological and philosophical models cultivated in Europe, mainly in Spain, still very tied to the mold of medieval philosophy, and it achieved its assimilation in the new overseas territory. This would be a way to establish on these ideas the process of supplanting the theological conception that evolved in the original inhabitants. For this reason, religious orders within Catholicism, and in a very particular way the Jesuits, played a fundamental role in fulfilling this mission in Paraguay. The conceptual framework they had was that of a late scholastic philosophy that for several centuries permeated everything that concerns Paraguayan education seen as a whole (Peters, 1996). Within this fusion of Christian thought with Aristotle that the model represented with such fidelity, the first glimpses of a psychology in Paraguay emerged. The background context, let us not forget, was produced within the framework of the evangelizing efforts. It was necessary to form clerics born on this earth to spread the message of the true God and to remove the religious deviations that characterized the natives. It was a fundamental task that had a firm ally to philosophy, within which, even at that time, psychology occupied a fairly secondary role. To carry out the task, several of the main religious orders arrived to Paraguay, and organized their respective theological centers in Asunción. This activity begins with the authorization of the first seminar led by the Franciscan Fray Alonso de Buenaventura, and in which field the first priest, Luis de Bolaños (1549–1629), a native of Marchena, Seville, was ordained in 1585. Shortly before, around 1580, another seminar of similar characteristics was opened with the support of Bishop Alfonso de Guerra (Massare de Kostianovsky, 1968). Of course, at that time psychology was not yet an independent science anywhere in the world. There were still at least two and a half centuries left for the emergence of the famous laboratory in Leipzig, which a significant part of historians consider the starting point for our discipline in a modern sense. But if one wishes to find the first psychology that emerged in Paraguay, one must necessarily look for it in the context of these teachings that were given in the seminars (García, 2009). However, here it did not happen as in other parts of the colony, mainly the Río de la Plata, where the bibliographic production was the demonstration of a congruent intellectual activity linked to the clerical magisterium (Furlong, 1952), which was undoubtedly recognized in the publication of books. But in the Río de la Plata this profile was more prominent than in other parts of the continent and accompanied the teaching of the moment with some important texts. On the contrary, in Paraguay the didactics for theology and philosophy was essentially oral, and they left no written products. Despite this, the important thing is that there was already an implicit and very

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diffuse psychology in the contents of the theology and metaphysics that was practiced. Psychology referred to the study of the attributes of the soul, of the properties inherent in judgment and reasoning, the processes of will, and other similar matters. All were subjects that fascinated the attention of the scholastics, and constituted their main areas of interest (Robinson, 1995). It is with these teachings and subsequent studies that what has been called the pre-university period of psychology in Paraguay begins, which is a fairly long stage that extends until the emergence of psychological training in universities, in the decade of 1960, three and a half centuries later (García, 2005). Certainly, this phase is not completely homogeneous and can be further subdivided into a greater number of consecutive substages, taking into account some criteria such as the evolution of the teaching of psychology in its different historical moments and the varied scenarios in which it was practiced, from secondary to university education, through teacher’s training (García, 2003a). Anyway, the great time extension that reached this period is very clear. It is difficult to mention, however, an author or a written work that could be considered as a primary reference for the theoretical production of these centuries and that was identified with this primitive psychology. Which is to say, there were no defined leaders in this primal philosophical psychology. In the most external aspect to psychology, the society as a whole continued to advance, although at a slow pace. Except for some very disruptive events for collective coexistence, such as the events that led to the Revolution of the Communards, which began to manifest itself strongly as of 1717, political and cultural quietism was the current norm in Paraguay. As is known, the communards raised in the eighteenth century the need for greater local autonomy based on the exercise of popular will and the right to freely choose who should be the governors of the province (Díaz-Pérez, 1973; Romero, 1995). But the revolt was stifled firmly and its leaders were executed. The status quo was reinstated. Despite this, the local community continued to move towards the first signs of full political autonomy in 1811, effectively materializing the independence of the Spanish crown in 1813. A gradual change in the philosophical horizon began to be seen in the final years of the eighteenth century, when the first intellectual echoes came from the French Illustration (Goodman, 1994). The irradiation was focused mainly on the ideas of the Geneva philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), disseminated in certain Paraguayan academic circles and maintained mainly through the teaching of Dr. José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia (1766–1840), who years later would integrate the Superior Government Board in the government split from Spanish power (1811–1813), later the consular government (1813–1814) with Fulgencio Yegros (1780–1821), to finally be appointed Perpetual Dictator of the Republic, a position he held between 1816 and 1840. However, Rodríguez Pardo (2016) points out that in the configuration and the political discourse of that Board, the influences emanating from scholastic thought still remain quite strong, despite any Rousseauian influence. Francia graduated as a master in philosophy and obtained his Doctor of Sacred Theology degree from the renowned University of Córdoba del Tucumán, at the

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young age of 19, having rejected his ordination as a priest (Báez, 1910). When he returned to Asunción the following year, he served as a professor at the Royal Seminary College of San Carlos, whose operation had begun in 1783 (Caballero Campos, 2011). The activities of that institution included the teaching of philosophy, scholasticism, theology, dogmatic, and grammar. Although there continued predominantly a scholastic orientation, Francia complemented that formation with the discussion of the ideas of Rousseau, of whom he was a great admirer (Zea, 1993). However, in his government management he ended up closing the Seminary in 1823, being again enabled 34 years later, in 1858, by President Carlos Antonio López (1792–1862) (White, 1989). Cardozo (1985) has pointed out that these doctrines of enlightenment, socialized in the cloisters of the Seminary, constituted a very important revolutionary ferment in the decades before independence. For psychology, however, the influence that could have exerted this diffusion is imperceptible, at least if our criterion is the existence of specific publications in this regard, or the dissemination of ideas concerning human psychological processes, based on this orientation. However, Francia’s dictatorship diluted any element of what could have been an advance of the Illuminist doctrines in Paraguay. The rules of the game changed substantially since his appointment as Perpetual Dictator. The country’s isolation reached superlative degrees under its political aegis. He was an unyielding defender of national independence, which he perceived to be under a serious threat due to the annexationist claims of Buenos Aires’ Governor, Juan Manuel de Rosas (1793–1877) (Jara Goiris, 2004), whose expansionist projects seem to have been very broad, including even the Brazilian territory. That circumstance seemed such a real risk that it generated mutual defense agreements with Paraguay in 1850 (Rodríguez Alcalá & Alcázar, 2007). The vision of Francia was then far from being a simple expression of paranoia. But the heavy filter imposed on the borders did affect not only human trafficking, but also ideas. He systematically prevented the Paraguayans from accessing the intellectual currents that circulated around the world, avoiding what he feared was dangerous contamination to the desired independence. Consequently, the renovating ideas passed Paraguay until the death of the Dictator in 1840. But during his rule, in return, a political centralization project was initiated that not only served to form on a firm basis the Paraguayan national state at a time when neighboring countries were just beginning this process and were just far from being constituted in unified nations, but also helped to establish a strong sense of cohesion among the inhabitants of the country (Morales Raya et al., 1982). This was also reinforced by the domestic policy of achieving a lasting and stable bond with the poor in rural areas, reinforced by a great perception of collective linkage by the formation of the army (López-Alves, 2003). The connection between such events and psychology may not be obvious, but this gradual formation of a basic sense of belonging and unity under the concept of shared nationality is of great importance for a vision of behavior that takes into account the indigenous factors, because, in fact, part of it reflects the interests of some local writers to access a clarification of the typical and characteristic of the Paraguayan. Within this particular vision

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psychology should gain importance, as an element for the explanation of the peculiarities of the national being. It is a subject to which we will return in a moment. From the beginning of the nineteenth century, some efforts to search for the typical and characteristic of the inhabitants of the country began to be noticed, which also included variables associated with the mind and behavior. The birth of this interest can be conceived, at least in principle, from two different perspectives, although closely related. On the one hand, observations and doctrines emerged concerning the nature of the indigenous, their culture and customs, which formed an object of study and reflection for explorers and anthropologists, many of them sneaking through the country. In certain cases, and although indirectly, these elaborations also involved an attempt to unravel the psychological singularity that was supposed to be characteristic of those inhabitants. On the other hand, versions aimed at clarifying the peculiarities of the Paraguayan man, conceived as a conceptual entity different from the native Indian, began to emerge. These visions of the Paraguayans were more linked to the cultural heritage transmitted by the Spaniards, and nuanced in varying degrees by the selective incorporation of the indigenous element. This is what has been commonly called the mestizaje. It is assumed, on the one hand, that the shortage of Spanish women that the founders of Asunción had, and on the other that the Guaraní admitted carnal cohabitation with foreigners and that this, moreover, was seen as an expression of friendship (undoubtedly as a strategy to consolidate political alliances), is what greatly favored the initial mestizaje in Paraguay (Mora Mérida, 1973). This process of racial combination, which accompanied the vicissitudes of history, wars, and European immigration processes, had in Paraguay some particular and dissimilar characteristics that differ to any of the other South American nations (Sardo, 2011). The first that represents a tendency to explore the psychology of the natives as a well-defined object of study was Félix de Azara (1742–1781), a military engineer and Spanish ship captain who arrived to Paraguay under the reign of Carlos III (1716–1788), with the task of studying the terrain and local geography in view of a precise and definitive delimitation of Spanish colonial possessions, as had been provided in the Treaty of San Ildefonso of 1777 and the Madrid one of 1850, signed between Spain and Portugal. Despite the changes of history, these were quite similar to the current ones between Paraguay and Brazil (Mota & López, 2009). Azara had to physically set the demarcation limits to curb the great volatility that was observed in the layout of the borders, which had always been handled by the Portuguese at their own convenience and desire, and of course always in their favor (Contreras Roqué, 2011). But Azara had to wait almost 20 years before receiving the documents and study elements he needed to begin his technical work. Due to this, and due to the prolonged waiting period, he had enough time to enter new research fields, outside his original training profile, but which attracted his scientific interest by initiating a new vocation (Ocampos Caballero, 1999). As far as our interest is concerned, these inquiries were oriented in at least two different directions. On the one hand, Azara made extensive observations on the wildlife of Paraguay and surrounding geographical regions, especially analyzing the habits of reproduction, defense, and foraging of animals. Papini (1987) points

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out that, in many aspects, these works constitute a direct antecedent to the work of Charles Darwin (1809–1882), who even explicitly mentions them in some of his writings (Ramírez & Gutiérrez, 2010). The other interesting aspect for highlighting is that Azara (1809) also rested his attention on the native inhabitants. As it is easy to understand, it did not escape at all a prejudiced precept of the natives, in line with the very Eurocentric thinking of the time. In all, and perhaps for this reason, his vision of the aborigines was pessimistic and bleak (García, 2016a). On issues such as his appearance and physiognomy he said that they appeared to be sad and dejected, did not show many emotions, were not very laborious, and used a language that did not serve to encourage abstract thinking. But Azara, apart from his little edifying considerations, used the path of psychological observation as an implicit strategy for the description of his object of study, or at least part of it. He advanced assumptions concerning the way of thinking and emotional expressions of the indigenous people, which together with the considerations he made about religion and culture suggested some alleged differences with Europeans, with a marked tendency to conceive them as inferior. With this type of discourse, a pattern was gradually established in the conceptualization of the psychology of the natives that would later be repeated with several subsequent authors, who in a similar line attempted a description of the peculiarities of these peoples, which incorporated elements that can be described as psychological among its fundamental components. Among these writers stands out, for example, the French physician and academic Alfred Demersay (1815–1891), who arrived to these lands sent by the government of his country with the purpose of collecting first-hand information about Paraguay and thus contributing to his better knowledge and understanding in Europe, especially after the death of the enigmatic and inscrutable Doctor Francia (Bell, 2010), who made Paraguayan customs something difficult to understand for foreigners. Demersay published a work entitled Physical, economic and political history of Paraguay and the establishments of the Jesuits (Demersay, 1860) that should be a part of a major structural plan, but which the author did not complete to satisfaction. In his basic approach, Demersay considered that, in the racial union of the Spaniards and the Guaraní, their characteristics remained in the form of a maternal imprint, which became one of the most distinctive and recognizable characteristics of the Paraguayan population. He thought that the characteristic aspects attributed to Guaraní, which had demonstrated a great ductility for fusion with Iberian elements, are very clear and easily recognized in the usual treatment and ways of being that are typical of Paraguayans. These, therefore, denote a powerful indigenous matrix. Although he has not ruled out the influence of the climate on the generation of these qualities, as was quite common in other authors of the time, Demersay considered that the most prominent was what he called the law of the blood, which synthesized the condensed elements in the concept of race, of very frequent use in the mid-nineteenth century, and which alluded to the vigor inherent in the hereditary elements (García, 2017a). The union of both human types made decrease in the Paraguayans the energy of the personality that was typical of the Spaniards, while the features of the passive behavior were accentuated, leaving also well established the predominance of the sweetness in the daily treatment. At

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the same time, Demersay (1860) believed that the characters he called “morals” came mostly from the strong matrix imposed by the indigenous part. Another author who dealt with Paraguay and its original inhabitants was Charles Ames Washburn (1822–1889), who was ambassador of the United States in Paraguay at the time of the War Against the Triple Alliance, and also maintained very tight relations with Marshal Francisco Solano López (1826–1870), who considered him nothing less than a conspirator contrary to the national cause during the war conflagration. But leaving aside his tumultuous relationship with the power of the day, Washburn wrote a well-known work entitled The history of Paraguay, with notes of personal observations, and reminiscences of diplomacy under difficulties (Washburn, 1871) in two volumes, in the first of which he elaborated a concise story about the Guaraní, paying special attention to their culture. Washburn’s opinion was also dismissive. He believed that three centuries after the joint history of the coexistence between the Guaraní and the Spanish began, they continued to demonstrate much of their original primitivism. He was also very skeptical of how successful the decision of the Iberians was to conserve the ancestral language of the natives, since the results obtained in the advancement of that town made doubtful the real benefits that had been obtained with such determination. Even so, he maintained some favorable judgments about the Guaraní, highlighting his liveliness, and especially some qualities of women, whom he considered haughty, honest, very virtuous, and beautiful and of a soft character. But it was the Swiss naturalist and anthropologist Moisés Santiago Bertoni (1857–1929) who took the observations on the native inhabitants of the country as close as possible to the field of psychology, at least if compared with the previous writers (García, 2014a). Bertoni ventured into scientific research early in his career, while sharing the ideological and political guidelines that the anarchism of his time outlined. In this sense, it was nourished by the ideas defended by the Russian prince Piotr Kropotkin (1842–1921), who at that time resided in exile. Marshall (2008) described the Russian prince as the most systematic and profound of the anarchist thinkers who crossed through the nineteenth century. The ideological sediments of Bertoni suggest very well what his real interests were and, above all, explain the intention he had of founding an anarchist colony on American soil. For this he embarked on an uncertain adventure that dragged his entire family behind him. The trip took them first to the Argentine territory and then to Paraguay, where they arrived approximately in November 1888. Bertoni established a research center nestled in the middle of the jungle, in a place of very difficult access through which it was only carried through the Paraná River, and it was close to the border on the east with Brazil. This was his center of operations to carry out the numerous investigations he undertook in various fields. For the topic that concerns us in this chapter, the detailed observations he made about the culture, religion, morals, and customs of the Guaraní and which he published in several books and articles are of special interest. Although psychological inquiries are dispersed in many of them, The Guaraní Civilization has a special interest, a work that was published in three volumes between 1922 and 1956. The last one to be published (Bertoni, 1956), which was the second of the trilogy and not the third one, because of a question that

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had much to do with the economic narrowness that Bertoni suffered in the 1920s, condensed the purpose, never fully achieved, of supporting the psychology of the Guaraní in a more organized and systematic way. It is hard to condense in only a few lines all the details inherent to the behavior of the Guaraní that Bertoni was able to collect, and which are very numerous. The central idea that crosses all his work is that the Guaraní constituted a superior race, whose advancement, social organization, and cultural advancement originated what he, without ambiguity, called a civilization, and that the progress they achieved in all orders placed them in front of the other towns in the region. But his vision was not limited to that. He developed a paleoanthropological theorization that explained the origin of humans in the Americas, and in whose context he placed the Guaraní, in comparison to all other aboriginal races (García, 2016b). With regard to these, the condition of the superior race was reflected very clearly in aspects such as their physical beauty and the high spiritual condition that they presumed and that, in their opinion, was perceived in the particular conditions that took their religion and morals. Baratti and Candolfi (1999) indicate how Bertoni appealed to certain premises that agree with the phrenological assumptions of German physicians Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828) and Johann Spurzheim (1776–1832), still in force at the time, regarding the essential characterization of both the skull and the face shape. However, Bertoni’s theories did not receive approval or blessing from the leading anthropologists of the twentieth century who worked decades after his death on the study of the culture of the Guaraní. On the contrary, these researchers felt that their conclusions were saturated with questionable statements that were nothing more than ideological formulations rather than scientific ones, and they found no support in reality. That is why they were practically ignored. From time to time they get some sporadic mention, but it is only to be criticized. Possibly, the problem with these findings that invalidate Bertoni’s theoretical postulates globally and categorically is that these authors have not stopped sufficiently to assess the singular observations he made, and whose details may be useful in future research, regardless of the conclusions its author elaborated (García, 2014a). A complementary side to the study of indigenous psychology was taken by those who emphasized the characteristics of the Paraguayan man, but scrutinized as a separate category, although very interrelated, to that of the native inhabitants. In general, the basis for this approach is that the Paraguayans descend from the Spaniards who arrived during the colonization, and that as a result of the mixture of races that occurred over several centuries between them and the original settlers of the country became a peculiar racial symbiosis. This union combined aspects of both human groups, predominating, in some aspects, the Spanish heritage, and in others the indigenous. Assumptions such as these can already be found in authors who wrote during the nineteenth century and who, while passing through the country, contributed their respective insights concerning cultural reality. One of them was the aforementioned Demersay (1860), as well as the Belgian historian and naturalist Alfred du Graty (1823–1891), who produced an influential work entitled The Republic of Paraguay (Du Graty, 1862). Within certain limits, Washburn (1871) can also be located among them. These authors, however, were external observers,

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that is, with a presence in the country that was circumstantial and limited. His motivation to approach these problems necessarily had to be varied, although always guided by the curiosity aroused by the idiosyncrasy and customs of Paraguayans, which some perceived as samples of the purest exoticism. Indeed, the exceptional nature of the country and its inhabitants as a striking feature is something that appears repeatedly in very diverse contexts (Baratta, 2018). But there is a very significant qualitative difference with the considerations made by the first writer who dealt with the personality of Paraguayans, and who advanced towards an attempt to clarify a particular psychology of them. That person was Manuel Domínguez (1869–1935), a lawyer and historian born in a city in the interior of the country, and who positively valued the conditions of Paraguayans much more than any previous author would have done, even in aspects that do not always sound very realistic. Although Domínguez was also a citizen of his time, considering these aspects is essential in the critical assessment of his thinking. To understand Domínguez’s motivations and reception, as well as the acceptance that Bertoni’s ideas gained in the Paraguayan society at the beginning of the twentieth century, is necessary to point out the context that had occurred in the previous decades. After the end of the dictatorship of Doctor Francia, and after the government of Don Carlos Antonio López, Paraguay had to face the 5 years that the War Against the Triple Alliance lasted, fought contrary to Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. During that period, and especially in the final years, the contest destroyed the nation’s economy and material infrastructure, significantly decimating the country’s population, particularly adult men, who perished in immense numbers in fulfillment of their duty to national defense. With defeated Marshal Francisco Solano López, the war’s driver, with the remains of his army, the country entered the postwar period, where the efforts in national reconstruction stood out (Warren, 1978). On the intellectual level, there was the entry of many of the modern ideas, then in force in the world, and which were transmitted mainly from the Río de la Plata. However, before the end of the war, the isolation had not been absolute either. Already during the government of Carlos Antonio López it was possible to speak of a certain presence of romanticism, which influenced poetry and creation of cultural magazines such as La Aurora in 1860 (Pizarro, 2011). Amaral (2006) argues that literary romanticism finds concrete expressions in the days of Solano López. If one observes cultural activity as a whole, although modest, it also gained a certain degree in the years before the war. Pla (1983), for example, mentions that the sale of books, among whose topics she includes psychology, had an interesting commercial outlet that, at the same time, generated some mentionable receipt to the treasury for taxes. But any real possibility of progress was brokered by the constraints imposed by an exasperating economic situation, with acute dearth of resources, caused by the material and financial devastation produced by the contest and the weight of an immense war debt imposed by the victors (Juliá, 2002). During the first decades, the figure of the Marshal was strongly undermined, and the accusation of having destroyed the country with his war action fell on him. During the provisional government that was installed in Asunción when the last battles against the

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Brazilians were still being fought, the Marshal was declared a criminal (Rodríguez Alcalá, 2006). This vision was very congruent with the first postwar governments, which had been placed by the victors, and therefore shared the essentials of their political perspective. But at the beginning of the twentieth century the situation began to change significantly, with the development of a progressive nationalist sentiment, which found determined cultivators in several of the most prominent exponents of the Paraguayan intelligentsia, such as historians Blas Garay (1873–1899) and about all Juan E.  O’Leary (1879–1969) (Scavone Yegros & Scavone Yegros, 2008). This was the beginning of an accentuated historical revisionism, which revalued how much was perceived by these authors as the past glories of war, and diametrically changed the intellectual perspective on the Marshal, the Paraguayan soldier, and his destiny. They not only claimed the figure of Marshal Lopez and provided the conceptual support for his elevation to the category of maximum hero of the nationality, as he was designated a few years later, but also exalted the Paraguayan as such, the value of his traditions and cultural heritage. The resulting nationalism became the clearest ideological imprint of many prominent Paraguayan intellectuals, in which positivism made a strong counterweight, which we will discuss later. Both nationalism and positivism were relevant for Paraguayan psychology in that specific period, as well as for other surrounding fields, such as historical research (Viel Moreira, 2010), although in very different ways. The emergence of this almost exultant nationalism is fundamental to fully place all aspects of Domínguez’s work that might interest us. The triumphalist-cut psychology that he so clearly embodied and the concept of the Guaraní representing the architects of a superior race as Bertoni engineered are perfectly compatible and congruent with the prevailing thinking in this historical scenario. It is a peculiar case in which psychology allies or becomes functional to the intellectual conditions that maintained an important part of the collective ideology. The vision of the Paraguayan as superior in all orders to the citizens of neighboring nations, one of the central arguments that Domínguez wielded, can be seen in the need to lift the national spirit before the feeling caused by the enormous defeat suffered. It is not that these authors falsified the story on purpose, or that they played to produce an analysis based on deliberately false or invented assumptions. They wrote under the ideological hegemony that marked the time, by the empire of the zeitgeist it could be said, and following the dictates generated by the perceived expectation of their societies, which very subtly imposed certain frameworks on their work. Which means that objectivity, in many important respects, was dangerously relegated to the rule of doctrine. But it does not imply, once again, that everything said, even being the basis for some very notorious misunderstandings, was simply negligible. Regardless of the qualification he receives, Domínguez had the merit of developing the first coherent characterization of the Paraguayan man, and incorporated clear psychological variables in his perspective (García, 2012). Domínguez had a surprising erudition, the result of his condition as an indefatigable reader. The knowledge he had about the fundamental authors of his time, including many psychologists among them, was copious and abundant. His peculiar vision of the singularities of Paraguayans was motivated by his keen nationalist

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zeal, and the trigger element for him to manifest was an affirmation that, precisely, made a dent in that emotional disposition. It happens that the American ambassador Washburn, after concluding his diplomatic work in Paraguay, was established for a time in Buenos Aires, where he continued to express himself with very critical judgments against Marshal Lopez. At that time, it was already commented in the world, and even by officers who were part of the opposing armies of Paraguay, regarding the bravery of soldiers in war and their apparent decision to continue fighting until death even without ever surrendering (Whigham, 2010). But Washburn had commented in a loose journalistic work that it was very easy to appear to have presumed heroic value when Lopez’s own troops were organized in such a way that they kept platoons in the rear whose mission was to shoot the cowards who tried to escape from behind. In that case, it would be preferable to perish by enemy fire and appear brave, than to die as a deserter. The statement, about which Washburn offered no evidence, immediately ignited Domínguez’s patriotic indignation. Just to counterbalance what he perceived as the expression of insidious slander, he wrote resolutely about the Paraguayan and his virtues. But he did not do it on an isolated occasion, and continued for several years, spreading his observations in numerous articles and books (Domínguez, 1903, 1915, 1918, 1946). But in addition, the author had the advantage of not being an impromptu in historical matters. He knew the temporal evolution of the country in depth, and to substantiate his arguments, he sought support in the publications made by naturalists and travelers who had crossed these lands. He was also very aware of the need to establish a characterization of the mental and emotional aspects that distinguished Paraguayans and use them as components of their explanatory strategy. That is why, and very significantly, he described his attempt as that of writing a modest essay on historical psychology (Domínguez, 1903). He also used the concepts of psychology in force at the time, mainly the ideas of Ribot (1873) on race and inheritance, and evolutionism designed by the pre-Darwinian German naturalist Hermann Schaaffhausen (1816–1893) (García, 2016c), without discarding either the doctrines on racial degeneration that outlined, among others, the Italian physician and criminologist Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909) or theories on environmental and geographical influence regarding the uniqueness of human groups according to their place of residence, and which were widespread in their time. Certainly, the description of the Paraguayan that Domínguez made reminds a lot of Bertoni’s about the Guaraní, at least in his essential perspective. That is to say, they are descriptions made with an undeniable vindictive eagerness, which placed the Paraguayan as a possessor of very high virtues, and considered the qualities that were seen, especially during the hard days of the war, as prototypical. The Paraguayan, for Domínguez, was superior to other peoples, especially to neighboring nations, for his/her ability to face any adversity, his/her self-denial, and his/her fortitude for suffering. He could achieve feats that would never be matched by others. For Domínguez, mainly, the explanation was in what he called the internal cause, comparable mainly to the concept of race on the Ribot slope, as we indicated earlier, although the climate, orography, hydrography, and clear air from the country were also preeminence. In the heat of the war, the leadership and inspiration that a

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chief could exert were also fundamental, in obvious allusion to Marshal López (Domínguez, 1915). On the other hand, the Paraguayans are the result of the mixture of the indigenous element with that of the Spaniards, mainly of the Basques and Castilians, which Domínguez considered the best that Spain had produced, speaking in a racial sense. Domínguez (1903) also established many ingenious observations, although some of them quite unlikely. He speculated, for example, on the alleged relationships between aspects that concern the typical diet of Paraguayans, especially the consumption of native tubers such as cassava, and the high fertility that is characteristic of Paraguayan women. Such assumptions were never brought to rigorous experimentation. But beyond the correctness or not of his statements, the importance concerning Domínguez’s ideas was that he produced the first fully psychological approach to Paraguayans. He considered that these people, because they were born in this country, and while participating in the same race live in the same soil and climate and share the same history, possessed certain essential qualities that made them different from other peoples. It was, in a generic way, an approach similar to what indigenous psychologies propose (Kim et al., 2006), which would arise in the field of psychology many decades later. The concept that Domínguez possessed about the interaction between genetic, climatic, orographic, and atmospheric factors with the particular history of each town, its set of beliefs and values, and what is generally considered culture was that these elements, due to their own presence, predisposed individuals to developing a certain psychological configuration, which although did not discard individual differences implanted a certain uniformity in regard to collective manifestations. This is, neither more nor less, what has been called the national character in the context of Latin America. It is a subject that continues to be very important and intriguing, although as Ardila (1986) indicated many years ago it still requires a greater methodological refinement in its psychological approaches. The emerging reflections of classical studies have resulted in contrasting positions. Valderrama (1986) stressed, in relation to authors such as Carlos Octavio Bunge in Argentina (Bunge, 1918) and Alcides Arguedas in Bolivia (Arguedas, 1979), that predominant views in such reconstructions were essentially pessimistic. The aforementioned authors did not even avoid speaking in a very direct and not at all metaphorical terms about the racial degeneration that afflicted these peoples, which was an alleged consequence of the mixture of the Spanish with the indigenous element. At that time, it was common that everything that meant differences with the European in aspects such as height, skull conformation, nutrition, or frequency of births, among other aspects, and all that depart from the common characteristics in those individuals, will be considered as certain indications of this alleged degeneration (Herrera, 2013). But Domínguez’s perspective, far from that spirit, proved absolutely contrasting. He stood at the antipodes of most of the authors of his time, and his vision of the Paraguayan, as well as vindictive and positive, was clearly exultant. Domínguez was not the only one nor the last to be interested in glimpsing the psychology of the Paraguayans, although those who came later did not follow the tonic of their approach, maintaining a level of more neutral assessments, and often

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without taking psychology as an element central to his explanation, but as a secondary one in the face of culture and history. Among these works is the book produced by the lawyer and historian Justo Prieto (1897–1982) entitled Paraguay, the Giant Province of the Indies (Spectral Analysis of a Small Mediterranean Nation) (Prieto, 1951), which developed a point of singular view and which of course requires its own historical explanation (García, 2018a). Also at the same time, Juan Natalicio González (1897–1966), a nationalist intellectual and politician who would occupy the Presidency of the Republic for a mere 5  months, that is, between August 1948 and January 1949, wrote a very influential work called Process and Formation of the Paraguayan Culture (González, 1988), which also contains relevant aspects about the relationship between history, culture, and the national being. More recently, other authors belonging to fields outside of psychology, such as the journalist and lawyer Helio Vera (1946–2008) and the priest Saro Vera (1922–2000), delivered books full of very rich observations about typical behavior of the Paraguayans. The first of them published In Search of the Lost Bone: Treaty of Paraguayology (Vera, 1990), a very sharp and incisive work but conceived in a style that does not completely exclude the resource of irony, while the second, writing with greater sobriety, unveiled The Paraguayan: A Man Out of His World (Vera, 1996). These books, both old and modern, testify the importance that these issues have gained in the psychological reflection on the singularities of the Paraguayan, although they also show that it is an area that until now continues to be very neglected by professional psychologists, who by greater affinity and professional training should be their primary theoretical supports.

 ducation and Sociology in Their Relationships E with Psychology During the stage characterized as the pre-university period, psychology found its foundations on three great traditions, fields, or areas of theorization, since, during the aforementioned time, it would still be premature to talk about research in a strict sense. But in these years it is feasible to notice, although with varying degrees of depth, what could be called reception processes or, as it has been more common to name in some studies that deal with these issues at the local level, the assimilation of ideas and contents (García, 2017b). The concept of reception refers to the ways in which that psychology developed at the international context and which addressed problems of a diverse nature, covering a wide range of topics, was incorporated into the local intellectual environment. What somehow characterizes this pre-university psychology is that it served as an element of support for the advancement of related disciplines and that it materialized in dissimilar spaces, both in the debates that arose within its strict limits, as in the conceptual proposals and/or practical purposes that encouraged them. These fields diverse to psychology sought to rely on psychological knowledge in order to achieve their own ends, although they were

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often very compatible with those of psychology itself. The academic psychology of the early twentieth century, as a science emerged in Europe and later strengthened in the United States, conveyed very distinctly the image of genuine and reliable knowledge, the use of which could bring real benefits when it had to be oriented towards wider and more diverse spheres of human action. However, such initial recognition was not yet enough to generate a professional interest directed at the psychological problems themselves. This intellectual climate was greatly favored by the diffusion of certain currents of thought that were established in the local environment at the end of the nineteenth century, mainly positivism, which encouraged a very strong interest towards scientific knowledge as a product and intellectual novelty in general (Benítez, 1983). The current initiated in France with the philosopher Auguste Comte (1798–1857) was intended to establish the basis for a genuine knowledge that would move as far away as possible from any ethereal metaphysical presumption, and be fully identified with the empiricist course of science (Singer, 2005). Positivism emphasized education and, at the same time, sociology, a discipline that Comte created precisely to strengthen the knowledge of society towards which change efforts should be directed through teaching. That is why experimental science was crucial for the advancement of humanity, and it has a central place in this philosophy. In Latin America, positivism gained a similar influence in several countries. In some of them, such as Argentina, its history is well documented (Fernández, 2006; Nervi, 2007). However, the initial process for psychology’s development in Paraguay exhibited an eminently theoretical aspect, and the appearance of some concrete research activity would still have to wait several decades to strongly emerge. In the literature concerning the development of psychology in Paraguay, four fundamental tendencies from which psychology derived in its origins are recognized: (a) education (García, 2006a); (b) sociology (García, 2003b, 2018a); (c) reflections concerning the national character (García, 2012); and (d) study of the mentality or psychology of the native inhabitants (García, 2017a). On the latter two we have commented their representatives and main ideas in the previous pages, so it is not necessary to repeat them here. About the other two, several topics and authors that delved into their respective lines of work can be listed. Education has been described as the most important, not only because of the greater number of authors who stood out in their specific context, but also because of the broader social influence of teaching, given its effect on the learning of students, children, and young people, considering the more circumscribed environment of the school, and national development in a more general way. Some of these authors received separate studies that review their respective works, and others are still waiting for those who provide them with further insight. Of all of them, six are the ones that stand out most clearly in their particular relationships with psychology: (a) Francisco Tapia (1859–1914); (b) Juan Ramón Dahlquist (1884–1956); (c) Ramón Indalecio Cardozo (1876–1943); (d) Manuel Riquelme (1885–1961); (e) María Felicidad González (1884–1980); and (f) Emilio Uzcátegui (1899–1986). Although in different ways and under divergent philosophical influences, they all made significant contributions to national psychology. The former, such as Tapia and Dahlquist, moved under the

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intellectual aegis of positivism, while some of the latter ones, such as Cardozo and González, identified themselves with the pedagogical program proposed by the active school, with a clear Rousseauian inspiration, and which had a broad value and influence in the first decades of the twentieth century. Cardozo developed fruitful contacts with some of its European leaders, such as the Swiss pedagogue Adolphe Ferrière (1879–1960). Riquelme maintained a more spiritualist orientation and moved so close to German phenomenology and romanticism, about which he even wrote some books (Riquelme, 1934, 1956), while Uzcátegui contributed very important initiatives consistent with experimental psychology. It was they who embedded the singularities of psychological discourse in the field of Paraguayan pedagogy. Tapia published some general essays on pedagogy (Tapia, 1897), and one more delimited, offering an interpretation of human intelligence (Tapia, 1898), with obvious relevance to school education. He was based on the ideas of the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829) and his classical principle that emphasized the inheritance of the characteristics acquired by the organism throughout life, which marked a determining influence before Darwinian evolutionism (García, 2018b). Tapia’s essays were disseminated in the Journal of the Paraguayan Institute, owned by the homonymous institution, which was published between 1896 and 1909, in Asunción (Kallsen, 1984). In addition, this magazine served as a forum for several of the initial publications dealing with psychology in Paraguay (García, 2014b). Dahlquist (1912) raised, in the second decade of the twentieth century, the need to establish experimental psychology laboratories with the aim of scientifically studying the Paraguayan child, and not simply applying the knowledge and theories from research abroad, providing them with the necessary adaptation. One of his main references was to the Cuban pedagogue Alfredo M.  Aguayo (1866–1942), and he stressed his efforts in the promotion of psychological applications to school education. Unfortunately, he did not succeed in his endeavor. Regarding Cardozo, his work was probably the most extensive of this group of authors, with an abundant bibliographic production in the form of articles, books, and edition of the magazine The New Teaching (García, 2015a). Cardozo, in addition, was responsible for introducing the principles of active school in Paraguay (Álvarez Cáceres, 1989), along the lines promoted by the Swiss Édouard Claparède (1873–1940) and Ferrière mainly, and achieving very original adaptations, which in his time were much praised. At the same time, Cardozo contributed to the local teachers the discussion of John Dewey’s, William James’, and Sigmund Freud’s ideas, in addition to those of Ferrière and Claparède, of course. He was the first to use the Stanford-Binet test application in the 1920s, rehearsing a Paraguayan adaptation, and wrote a paper of psychology applied to education, located in the perspective of active school, among other important advances with specific relevance for psychology. He published several important works for psychology, with the main being The Pedagogy of the Active School, between 1938 and 1939, and whose first volume (Cardozo, 1938) was entirely devoted to psychology. At the institutional level, and apart from his work as a teacher, who exercised all his life, he held the position of General Director of Schools for 11 years, between 1921 and 1932 (Cardozo, 1991).

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In the first decades of the twentieth century, the figure of the teacher Manuel Riquelme served numerous functions in public administration, including the Secretary of the Ministry of Justice, Worship and Public Instruction in 1912, and the General Director of Schools, in 1915. Towards the end of the second decade of the twentieth century, he obtained a parliamentary office as a deputy. Paraguayan political life was then a constant occurrence of military coups and revolutions. Riquelme suffered the consequences of the internal tumults of his political nucleation, the Liberal Party, and as a product of the bloody revolution of 1922 he had to go into exile in neighboring Argentina. There he was able to act in university teaching, in Buenos Aires and Entre Ríos. But above all, he conceived his well-­ known Lessons of Psychology (Riquelme, 1948), whose first edition was published in Buenos Aires in 1936. He also released other works on education and psychology, as we have mentioned. By the time of editing his psychological text, he had already returned to the country. His arrival came in 1932, when political conditions turned out to be more favorable. He continued to work actively in teaching and publishing books until the end of his days. But his psychology one was the first that can be considered a general introductory text published by a Paraguayan author, although it was printed in the Argentine capital. The variety in the thematic of the book includes the main topics that concerned the psychological research of his time, although identified with a very particular spiritualist perspective in Riquelme. We still lack a systematic and organized study on its content, although certain aspects of it, such as its precedence in the exposition of the universal history of psychology, have been highlighted in previous articles (García, 2008). On the other hand, an important collaborator of Cardozo in the dissemination of the active school was María Felicidad González, a teacher who enjoyed a long and profitable life devoted entirely to education. He published articles of great interest in the magazine The New Teaching, directed by Cardozo, as well as in other pedagogical forums, and wrote a couple of books of interest. One of them deals with fundamental pedagogy and school organization (González, 1951), and the second is an introduction to paidology, intended for use by parents and educators (González, 1942). The overlapping of paidology with psychology was still very common at that time, and many understood the first as a global discipline of the child, where all other particular sciences dealing with infants had to converge (Chrisman, 1920). Already in the second half of the twentieth century, the brief but intense activity developed by the Ecuadorian educator Emilio Uzcátegui, who arrived to the country in order to address the direction of the first UNESCO office in Paraguay, remained between 1955 and 1959. Uzcátegui led very diverse projects in different fields of education, primary, secondary, and university, and in the organizational sphere of the then Ministry of Education and Worship. But it is particularly relevant for national psychology for having installed the first experimental psychology laboratory, which was conceived for use by future professors in the trades that involve the practice of experimental psychology and of psychology applied to education (Uzcátegui, 1956), in the Normal School of Teachers N° 1 “President Franco” of Asunción. However, Uzcátegui could not take care of his organization and operation for a long time, due to temporary constraints for the end of his mission. Insurmountable difficulties also

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arose in finding a suitable person to direct him after Uzcátegui’s departure, so, despite its importance and promising contributions to local psychology, the laboratory quickly became completely disused. Uzcátegui, also, founded the Bulletin of Paraguayan Education. As regards to the peculiar relationships between social psychology and sociology, these begin with the creation of the chair of Sociology at the National University of Asunción, within the curriculum of the Faculty of Law and Social Sciences. The subject was established in 1900 and began to be taught from 1903. At the head of the chair were several very prominent professors, but two of them, Cecilio Báez (1862–1941) and Ignacio A.  Pane (1881–1920), also wrote texts for the students (Báez, 1903; Pane, 1917), using them as a complement to the larger works, and which were foreign texts, such as that of the Spanish scholar Sales and Ferré (1895), and some translated from English, of which a good example was that of the American Franklin Giddings (Giddings, 1943). The National University of Asunción was founded in 1889, and three were the first open careers within its academic offer: law, medicine, and mathematics. So this Chair of Sociology began its existence with very little time distance from the creation of the law degree and even from the university itself. The importance of the two texts mentioned is that both present a profile of sociology very intertwined and related to concepts of a psychological nature. In fact, the distances between the two disciplines were less categorical in the early twentieth century than today (House, 1981). The text of Báez, Introduction to the Study of Sociology (Báez, 1903), allows us to glimpse a marked influence of positivism and Spencerian evolutionism. In Pane’s text, Notes on Sociology (Pane, 1917), the positivist spirit is also noticeable, although Spencer’s evolutionism is less perceptible than that in Báez. Evolutionary mechanisms and processes influenced both the conformation of the physical form and the soma, as well as the modeling of thought, by Báez (1903). Therefore, the processes responsible for organic evolution are considered the basis of the cognitive functions of the individual, since they emerge on the basis of those, and from there, the human being proceeds to gradually establish society, as a continuation of their psychological operations. In this vision, sociology is in a close and inevitable connection with psychology, and it could even be said that it sits on it. The way in which Báez conceived social phenomena conforms to this same dynamic, which is why psychological and social processes form a permanent continuity. The author thought that the experimental method and introspection were apt to analyze social reality, as well as psychological phenomena such as consciousness. On the other hand, the text of Pane (1917) was related to psychology from a different angle. In this work there was a very extensive and erudite discussion about the relations of sociology with the other sciences, in an effort to demarcate their specificity, but also emphasize their obvious ties. Thus, Pane (1917) offers the first systematic analysis on social psychology, collective psychology, mass psychology, and individual psychology in its connections with sociology (García, 2017c). The Notes presented an extremely erudite profile and profusion of quotes from foreign authors, which also fully complies with the style that is usually considered typical of positivism. Pane also ventured into other areas that border our discipline, producing for example

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an interesting analysis on the psychology of Don Quixote (Pane, 1916, see García, 2019). In the 1940s, the first article written on the work of Austrian psychiatrist Alfred Adler, of which the lawyer and politician Guillermo Enciso (Enciso, 1941) was also the author, stands out. The work is very interesting, because it presents Adler’s ideas related to social psychology, and because of the utility that Enciso attributed to them as a means of improving Paraguayan social life (García, 2017b). This was the last relevant article that can be considered genuinely related to social psychology, before the first university careers were established, and with which psychology acquired a completely new profile.

 he Establishment of Psychology as an Autonomous T Training Area The last six decades coincide with the development of the university and professional period of national psychology. In this second stage, the most important thing is the beginning of the professional training of psychologists. It began in 1963 with the formal establishment of the psychology degree at the “Universidad Católica Nuestra Señora de la Asunción” (“Our Lady of the Assumption Catholic University”). Before that, psychology classes had already been taught, but in different contexts, such as the teachers training in the Normal Schools (which later were designated “Teacher Training Institutes”), and in some careers that were already taught from a time before in the Faculty of Philosophy of the National University of Asunción, specifically in philosophy and in education sciences, beginning in the middle of the decade of 1940. After the foundation of the Department of Psychology at the Catholic University, the University National in 1967 came, as well as the subsidiary of that university in Ciudad del Este (which today has been transformed to “Eastern National University,” after applying a decentralization process). After the overthrowing of dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner in February 1989, a large number of new careers emerged. There are currently 16 in Asunción, and at least two more in the process for obtaining their legal authorization. Several other institutions distributed in the main cities of the interior of the country may also be listed (García, 2015b). In Paraguay, psychology advanced more as a profession than as a science, with research production and specialized publication being quite limited in quantity. The stimuli to carry out research suffered a slight increase since the National Council of Science and Technology (Conacyt) established specific projects such as the “Pronii” (National Program of Incentive to Researchers), created in 2011, as well as the regular research project financing that falls under the program called “Prociencia.” But even so, the frequency of work is still quite low. García (2006b) carried out an inventory that is currently in the process of updating literature and in which the main thematic areas where psychologists made contributions are reviewed, despite the occasional and unsystematic ones that may have been. These fields where there is a greater abundance of studies of psychologists are (a) mental health,

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(b) clinical psychology, (c) alternative psychologies, (d) psychoanalysis, (e) educational psychology, (f) developmental psychology, (g) academic training of psychologists, (h) university education, (i) social psychology, (j) political psychology, (k) violence against women and children, (l) history of psychology, (m) epistemology, (n) drug dependence and substance intake, (o) foreign publications by Paraguayan psychologists, and (p) a last category that groups certain minority publications made in neighboring fields. The outstanding feature of research in Paraguayan psychology is its sporadic and discontinuous nature. Many authors publish once or twice in their careers and then never do it again. Most psychology careers require their students to prepare an investigation as their final degree project, called tesina or tesis, depending on the institution, and for most of the graduate psychologists, this is the only research experience in all their professional lives. On the other hand, dedication to research is a condition that is not sufficiently valued when choosing teachers for chairs, frequently giving priority to other criteria. This is one of the main reasons why research production as a regular practice has not been strongly inserted in psychology careers. Some authors, such as the Jesuit priest and psychologist José de Jesús Aguirre (1922–2002), dedicated themselves to contrasting the model of character and personality of Heymans-Wiersma-Le Senne to populations of Paraguayan youth (Aguirre, 1966). His work had enough international repercussion to receive a space in the well-known text of introduction to psychology of Americans James O. Whittaker and Sandra J. Whittaker (Whittaker & Whittaker, 1987, see García, 2014c), where Aguirre himself explained, in brief lines, some details of his work. In addition, he has published on other important topics, such as the use of the Rorschach projective test (Aguirre, 1990), among other themes. Psychologist Merardo Arriola-­ Socol, who has lived in Canada for four decades, also published books focusing on experiential learning (Arriola Socol, 1992, 1994, 2002). These achieved a great diffusion in the country, reinforced by their numerous and periodic visits in order to teach courses. The psychologist Oscar Serafini, meanwhile, has made important contributions in the field where psychology and education coincide, and mainly in the development of psychometric tests, which were published in magazines abroad, such as Portugal (Serafini & Geada, 1989). More recently, other psychologists delivered relevant contributions, especially in the area of clinical psychology and psychotherapy, such as Susana Vázquez with her “memory-time-processing” model for the treatment of post-traumatic stress (Vázquez, 2014) and José Britos with his manual on cognitive-behavioral therapy (Britos, 2017). During all this time, psychology has been identified more with the model of an applied profession than with that of a scientific, inquisitive, and investigative discipline. Because of this, it managed to obtain certain advances, but is also accused of notorious ups and downs. The reduced productivity of its exponents in the form of publications and discoveries and the low international visibility are two direct consequences. Two psychology journals are currently published: Eureka, which began in 2004, and Basic and Applied Psychology, since 2015. Both are linked to the psychology degree at the Catholic University of Asunción. A very important fact has been the promulgation by the Executive Power of Law 6.293 of the Professional

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Practice of Psychology, on May 3, 2019. This event culminated a long series of unsuccessful attempts, which began as early as August 18, 1983 (Lezcano, 1983), when a bill was first presented to the National Congress. There were several subsequent attempts (Britos, 1999). Psychology has also gained greater visibility in recent years, which is attested in the realization of some very relevant academic meetings, such as the III Regional Congress of the Interamerican Society of Psychology, which met from August 4 to 6, 2010, and the First International Seminar of ULAPSI, on June 8 and 9, 2017, both in Asunción. The future holding of the VIII Latin American Congress of Psychology of ULAPSI in 2020, which will meet in Ciudad del Este, and the XXXVIII Interamerican Congress of Psychology, in 2021, again in Asunción, also generate expectations. These factors, coupled with other elements such as the increasing internationalization of Paraguayan psychology and the gradual breakdown of cultural isolation that prevailed during the Stroessner dictatorship, seem to predict further progress in our environment for the years to come, as long as the civil society and the university levels consolidate their support for academic studies and scientific research, as well as the profession of a psychologist too.

Conclusion Taking the chronological sequence suggested by the events into account, psychology records its first manifestations in Paraguay in the very beginning of the seventeenth century, when the educational centers created for and dedicated to the education of the clergy who had to care for and ensure the spiritual development of the Province began to be inaugurated in Asunción. There was, at that time, no intention or purpose to institute an independent psychological science, as it certainly did not happen anywhere in the world. It was not even intended to establish a specific chapter, with its own and exclusive domain of knowledge, within the most global spectrum represented by philosophy or theology. But, regardless of the manifest purposes, an implicit psychology, a de facto psychology, that focused on the intrinsic attributes of the human soul began to develop, which emerged as a logical consequence of the predominant scholastic orientation. But it was culturally aseptic. There was no intention of understanding the singularities of pre-Columbian culture as it had manifested in Paraguay, and that it could generate studies or reflections of a psychological nature. What was of interest was, fundamentally, the impersonation of the beliefs that the original inhabitants of this part of America possessed, considered false by the dogmatism of colonial Christianity, in the same way as it also happened in other corners of the continent. But the natives, with their peculiarities and their ways of life and beliefs, so distant in appearance and in content from the European molds in force at the time, soon aroused the curiosity of some lucid and awake minds, which, although they moved conditioned due to the narrowness of multiple prejudices, very explainable by the inclinations of their cultural and educational surrounding, advanced numerous interesting insights

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regarding the nature of these unique humans that occupied the places of America before the arrival of the Spaniards. Such reflections also reached, before too much time passed, the psychology of the Paraguayan, understood as a differentiated racial entity, originating at the same time from the indigenous Guaraní and the Spanish colonizers. It was a human category that absorbed the characteristics of both groups, but that, at the same time, differed from them. In the synthesis lays its originality. Thus, together with the congruent scholastic psychology, built on the molds of medieval European reflection, and that would act as an initial sediment to add upon it all the changes that the subsequent conceptual evolution of the discipline introduced, a second psychology began to insinuate, more attentive to the mental and behavioral uniqueness of both indigenous and mestizos. In this way, they became subjects of interest for those first reflections. Their attractiveness came precisely because of the diversity they possessed, and the uniqueness they had, which gave them the validity of a culture disparate to the Spanish one. This happened even with everything that in turn could be considered different and divergent between the specific social and cultural sphere of the indigenous people and that of the descendants of the Spaniards who were born on Paraguayan soil. These people carried, in their mentality and customs, enough of what was proper in their parent culture, that is, European, but adapted with the passage of time to their own experiences imposed on them by this particular corner of the colony. In very general terms, the historical evolution of Paraguayan psychology can be conceived as a pendulum swing between both sides. However, for reasons attributable to the force that the dominant European culture always exerted, and which are likely to be recognized even in those cultural products that are already derived from their local absorption and modification, the psychology of the original inhabitants and also of those who resulted from the gradual formation of the Paraguayan cultural tradition was not glimpsed or did not seriously deepen, even to this day. Of course, they were also not focused on the scientific methods that psychology provides today. It is time to start doing it. The scientific purpose of psychology is the search for universal laws of behavior, but these, to be valid, must reflect, to the extent that is possible, the entire variety of local human expressions. As is known, these are generated by the adaptation of the behavior to unique and unrepeatable conditions, which occur in specific contexts, and that respond to what we call “culture.” It is a difficult balance between the general and the singular that is imposed to psychology. And it is one more reason why the rescue of the forgotten or ignored traditions of thinkers and writers of different criteria and of several historical moments, and who meditated on the singularities of their peoples, has an enormous and imperative value for us. The history of psychology, once again, shows in these crucial matters its deepest and irreplaceable facet. Acknowledgments  This chapter is dedicated to my mother’s memory, whom I will always miss, no matter how much time has passed.

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teóricas, metodológicas y experiencias de investigación (pp. 265–301). RIL Editores/Editorial Universidad Santo Tomás. García, J. E. (2016b). De la paleoantropología a la psicología de los guaraníes en la obra de Moisés Bertoni. Revista Peruana de Historia de la Psicología, 2(1), 7–39. García, J. E. (2016c). Influencias de Hermann Schaaffhausen en Manuel Domínguez. Revista de Historia de la Psicología, 37(2), 22–30. Retrieved from http://www.revistahistoriapsicologia.es García, J. E. (2017a). Los estudios psicológicos y antropológicos sobre los indígenas del Paraguay en el siglo XIX y las primeras décadas del siglo XX. In R. E. Mardones Barrera (Ed.), Invención de la psique nativa: Construcción discursiva de las características psicológicas atribuidas al sujeto indígena en América Latina (pp.  109–200). RIL Editores/Editorial Universidad Santo Tomás. García, J. E. (2017b). Las ideas de Alfred Adler y su asimilación en el Paraguay por Guillermo Enciso. Persona, 20, 29–53. García, J. E. (2017c). Los “Apuntes de Sociología” de Ignacio A. Pane a una centuria de distancia: Análisis de su relevancia histórica para la psicología paraguaya. Revista Peruana de Historia de la Psicología, 3(1), 33–72. García, J. E. (2018a). Ciento dieciocho años de psicología social en el Paraguay. In A. M. Jacó-­ Vilela (Ed.), Psicologia Social: Itinerários na América Latina (pp. 147–196). Juruá Editora. García, J. E. (2018b). El recorrido histórico hacia el lamarckismo y su repercusión en la psicología. Revista Peruana de Historia de la Psicología, 4(1), 7–28. García, J.  E. (2019). La aproximación de Ignacio A.  Pane a la psicología de Don Quijote. Manuscrito sometido a publicación. Giddings, F. E. (1943). Principios de Sociología. Análisis de los fenómenos de asociación y de organización social. Albatros. González, J. N. (1988). Proceso y formación de la cultura paraguaya. Cuadernos Republicanos (edición original 1938). González, M. F. (1942). Misceláneas paidológicas para padres y educadores. Edición de la autora. González, M. F. (1951). Organización escolar: Manual de pedagogía fundamental para estudiantes de los cursos normales. La Colmena, Segunda edición. Goodman, D. (1994). The Republic of Letters: A cultural history of the French Enlightenment. Cornell University Press. Hergenhahn, B. R., & Henley, T. B. (2013). An introduction to the history of psychology (7th ed.). Cengage Learning. Herrera, M. C. (2013). Educar el nuevo príncipe: ¿asunto racial o de ciudadanía? Universidad Pedagógica Nacional. House, J.  S. (1981). Social structure and personality. In M.  Rosenberg & R.  H. Turner (Eds.), Sociological perspectives on social psychology (pp. 525–561). Basic Books. Retrieved from. http://www.ufjf.br/psicologiaempesquisa/home/1678-­2 Jahoda, G. (1999). Images of savages. Ancient roots of modern prejudice in western culture. Routledge. Jara Goiris, F. A. (2004). Paraguay: Ciclos adversos y cultura política. Servilibro. Juliá, C. (2002). La memoria de la deuda: una deuda con la memoria. Biblos. Kallsen, M. (1984). Revista del Instituto Paraguayo (RIP). 1896-1909. Universidad Católica Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, Centro de Publicaciones. Kim, U., Yang, K.  S., & Hwang, K.  K. (Eds.). (2006). Indigenous and cultural psychology: Understanding people in context. Springer. Klemm, O. (1914). A history of psychology. Charles Scribner’s Sons. Lezcano, R. (1983). Presentación del proyecto de ley que reglamenta el ejercicio de la profesión del psicólogo. In J. E. Jiménez (Ed.), Tercera Jornada de Estudiantes de Psicología (pp. 43–56). Vice-Rectorado de la Universidad Católica. Lindholm, C. (2007). Culture and identity: The history, theory and practice of psychological anthropology. Oneworld Publications.

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Chapter 10

Psychology and Education: Childhood Mental Hygiene in Chile (1920–1946) Gonzalo Salas, Hernán Scholten, and Rodolfo E. Mardones

Introduction Childhood has been a target of profound and diverse interventions during the last few centuries of Western history. It has been widely contemplated, visualized, and manipulated, to the extent of being overly analysed in many ways. Whereas a naturalistic perspective of childhood would imply ahistoricity and universality, childhood interventions require being approached from their problematic nature. Since the work of Ariès on L’enfant et la vie familiale sous l’Ancien Régime [The Child and Family Life in the Ancien Régime] (1960), several studies have highlighted the historicity of childhood.11 Some inquiries have taken a global or international perspective (Criado, 1998; Cunningham, 2005; De Mause, 1974; Goddard et al., 2005; McNamee, 2016; Milne, 2013; Roth et  al., 2013; Sterns, 2011; Turmel, 2008), whereas others have sought such historicity from a local perspective, for example, studies involving childhood in Britain (Sleight & Robinson, 2016; Taylor, 2017), the United States (Curry, 2019), Russia (Byford, 2014), Argentina (Carli, 2012; Lionetti & Miguez, 2010; Nari, 2004) and Chile (Flores, 2004, 2010). These studies have sought to demonstrate that childhood is subject to a very complex and

 Regarding these historical and sociological approaches (see Gabriel, 2014).

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G. Salas () Universidad Católica del Maule, Talca, Chile H. Scholten Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina R. E. Mardones Universidad Austral de Chile, Valdivia, Chile

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. C. Ossa et al. (eds.), History of Psychology in Latin America, Latin American Voices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73682-8_10

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heterogeneous process that, to some extent, justifies initiating a discourse on issues related to childhoods in the plural sense rather than childhood. Indeed, what is a child? Addressing such a question represents an excess and a deficit at the same time. On the one hand, answers multiply depending on the approach (e.g., anthropology, psychology, sociology, medicine, law, philosophy), which reflects a diversity of views regarding the ‘stages of life’. On the other hand, the etymology of the Spanish term seems so enigmatic that it hinders or directly precludes even giving one answer. From the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) has proposed at least three versions of the term’s origin in other words, excess and deficit at the same time. Within the framework of problematization of the child and the multiple and diverse studies that have been devoted to it, this chapter aims to define and characterize a particular manner of childhood intervention whose promulgation began in the 1920s and, shortly thereafter, led to its arrival in Chile: mental hygiene. In this sense, a journey beginning with general thoughts on mental hygiene (regarding the concept, its institutional dimension and some practices involved) is proposed, followed by consideration of its subsequent international proliferation. Following this general overview is an attempt to define, from a local perspective but without neglecting international connections, the childhood mental hygiene interventions that occurred in Chile between the 1920s and 1940s. Namely, this approach involves analysing a heterogeneous set of projects, theories, practices and scientific institutions that, far beyond their diversity, facilitated the implementation of local child-based mental hygiene. In fact, under the terminology ‘childhood mental hygiene’ or ‘school mental hygiene’, it was possible to implement a set of novel procedures that aimed to provide a solution for children who, between the constraints of normality and madness, were considered ‘maladapted’. In this sense, the present study attempts to uncover a fragment of the history of childhood mental hygiene in Chile from a psychological and educational perspective, emphasizing cultural and institutional matters in the period described. Special attention should be paid to the characteristics of the Conduct Disorder Clinic [CDC] created in 1936, which clarifies a few ways of approaching such cases.

Mental Hygiene: Concept, Institutions and Practices From a conceptual point of view, the story of mental hygiene can be traced back to the mid-nineteenth century. As noted by Bertolote (2008), the term ‘mental hygiene’ was first mentioned in 1843, in the book Mental Hygiene or an Examination of the Intellect and Passions Designed to Illustrate Their Influence on Health and Duration of Life by William Sweetser (1797–1875). Subsequently, the term was widely used in the Anglo-Saxon medical literature, especially by Americans. This does not imply certain consensus nor homogeneity in these multiple references: in fact, in most of the texts that mention it, defining mental hygiene is not

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even considered necessary. Beyond this point, as Gerald Grob defines it largely within the context of the United States, mental hygiene ‘was a diffuse concept that meant different things to different persons. Whatever its meaning and significance, however, it reinforced the growing chasm between psychiatry and mental hospitals by focusing attention on noninstitutional populations and problems’ (Grob, 1983, p. 144). Even though mental hygiene during the nineteenth century was largely used synonymously with ‘prevention’ or ‘prophylaxis’, the twentieth century brought a radical change. In fact, if prevention in the nineteenth century was based on free will and if individuals were responsible for deciphering the causal relationship between behaviour and mental or physical illness provided by the medical literature, then mental hygiene of the twentieth century (similar to other contemporary perspectives, such as eugenics) has the characteristics of a social intervention programme. Confident that they possessed the requisite knowledge to prevent as well as to treat pathological behavior, mental hygienists launched a broad-based crusade to create a better society. The destiny of the American people was no longer to be left to chance or to the decisions of atomistic individuals, but was to be purposively guided in a direction that enhanced the welfare and happiness of all citizens (Grob, 1983, pp. 144–155).

Therefore, historical accounts of mental hygiene often give special reference to Clifford Beers (1876–1943). This young American, a Yale University graduate without any training in medicine or psychiatry, initiated a mental hygiene movement in the United States in the early twentieth century. In 1908, he published A Mind that Found Itself, a book in which he presented a detailed account of his hospitalization upon being diagnosed with depression and paranoia after a suicide attempt. For Beers, this text would be a prelude to a foundation of what, at first, would be the National Society for the Improvement of Conditions Among the Insane. The psychiatrist Adolf Meyer persuaded him to shift his attention from the care and treatment of a specific group of patients to mental hygiene ‘to show our people better ways of healthy living, prevention of trouble, and efficient handling of what is not prevented’ (Grob, 1983, p. 150). Therefore, he founded the Connecticut Society for Mental Hygiene, which, the following year, became the National Committee for Mental Hygiene [NCMH]. As Grob demonstrates, the objectives of the mental hygiene movement were marked by tensions between Beers’s and Meyer’s projects: while the former wanted to give a national scope to mental hygiene from the outset and argued that lay people should assume organization and control, the latter intended to delay its expansion by proposing that psychiatrists should be the ‘dominant force’ and that Beers ‘was an individual whose talents could be put to effective use only if they were controlled by physicians’ (Grob, 1983, p. 152). The operation of NCMH relied heavily on contributions provided by private financing, such as the Rockefeller Funds [RF] and the Commonwealth Fund [CF], which supported some of its diverse activities in different ways (Grob, 1983; Thomson, 1995). Through the Program for the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency, the CF supported the establishment of Child Guidance Clinics, which began to flourish in the 1920s and whose objective was ‘the psychiatric study, treatment, and prevention of juvenile

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delinquency and conduct and personality disorders in 3- to 17-year-old non-mentally retarded children’ (Wright & Flanagan, 2010, p.  296). Mental hygiene, and these clinics in particular, provided a fertile workspace for a profession recently emerged: social work or social service, whose practitioners could be integrated as equals into teams of doctors, psychiatrists and other specialists. By then, the International Committee for Mental Hygiene (1919) had been created and, shortly after the end of the Great War, mental hygiene organizations began to emerge in Canada, France, South Africa and Great Britain. From May 5 to 10, 1930, the First International Congress on Mental Hygiene was held in Washington, D.C., under the honorary presidency of Herbert Hoover, with an official attendance of 3042 representatives from 41 countries. By then, mental health institutions had been organized in 22 nations (Thomson, 1995). It is necessary to pause, even briefly, to note the internationalization features of the mental hygiene movement. In fact, the various mental hygiene institutions that operated throughout the world did not follow the American organization model but instead adapted native components and different models that had more significant impacts (Thomson, 1995). Such is the case of the Ligue Française d’Hygiène Mentale, created in January 1921, which seems to have inspired many of these types of institutions that would emerge in Latin America a few years later. The mental hygiene movement in South America began in 1923 with the foundation of the Brazilian League of Mental Hygiene (Liga Brasileira de Higiene Mental), based in Rio de Janeiro. Three years later, also in Brazil, the Paulista League of Mental Hygiene (La Liga Paulista de Higiene Mental) appeared (Figueira & Boarini, 2014). In 1929, the Argentine League of Mental Hygiene (Liga Argentina de Higiene Mental) was founded, which, a year later, opened a branch office in the city of Rosario, Argentina (Dagfal, 2015; Klappenbach, 1999).

I nstitutionalization of Mental Hygiene in Chile and Its Expansion into Childhood From the end of the nineteenth century, Chile experienced a series of events mobilized by macroeconomic processes that showed their greatest dynamism in the second half of the nineteenth century, with regard to the exploitation of new resources and an incipient industrialization of the cities, which promoted migration from the countryside to the city (Hurtado, 1966). At the same time, the country was involved in warlike actions such as the ‘War of the Pacific’ that confronted it with Peru and Bolivia (1879) and the ‘occupation of the Araucanía’ (1862 and 1883) that sought military possession of the lands of the Mapuches, an indigenous people of southern Chile. These events promoted economic expansion to new territories and a significant increase in the urban population, as well as a series of consequences in the precarization of living conditions due to deplorable working conditions and saturation of urban infrastructure (Pinto, 2007). This set of consequences was called a

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‘social issue’, a concept first used by Augusto Orrego Luco in 1884 to refer to the phenomenon linked to illiteracy, overcrowding, poverty and disease, among other problems (Orrego Luco, 1884). It was a time of collective ailments and, at the same time, a process of awareness of the population about their living conditions, which ended in an exhortation to the oligarchic State to achieve greater welfare (Grez, 1995). Among the responses that emerged on the part of the State in the face of this social crisis, there was an interconnection between ‘psi’ knowledge (mainly psychiatry), hygienic rationality and incipient model of Chilean economic development (Mardones et  al., 2016), which had a direct impact on the appearance of mental hygiene as the response to a series of situations that affected the lives of adults but also directly affected children. In this context, the situation of children was complex; abandonment due to the death of parents, child labour, malnutrition and infant mortality were common problems at the beginning of the twentieth century (Salazar, 2006). Infant mortality was one of the issues that most concerned the hygienists. Sierra and Moore (1895), in a publication of the Society for the Protection of Childhood, stated, ‘any child treaty from European countries gathers all the data that teach how to avoid infant mortality, studying the same causes and advising the same measures’ (p. 6). Their concern was with the diseases that most frequently caused the death of children: digestive system disorders, tuberculosis and smallpox, which would later be displaced to socially maladaptive behaviour. The mental hygiene issue has its prologue in public hygiene and social medicine, relevant issues for Chile which are denoted in several publications of the time, such as the Revista de Hijiene, the Boletín de Hijiene y Demografía and the Council Hygiene Archives of Valparaíso (Salas, 2013); however, not until the early 1930s were the first meetings held, with the aim of elevating the new category of mental hygiene to an institutional level in the country. With regard to such a milestone, a few documentary sources (Garafulic, 1931; Molina, 1937; Plaza & Garafulic, 1932) have posed certain concerns that must at least be considered here, foremost of which is the institution’s name. Indeed, some texts refer to it as the Chilean Association or Chilean Society of Mental Hygiene (Asociación o Sociedad Chilena de Higiene Mental), and other contemporary publications mention the National Mental Hygiene League (Liga Nacional de Higiene Mental) or, a few years later, the Chilean Mental Hygiene League (Liga de Higiene Mental Chilena). Given such discrepancies, the term Chilean Association of Mental Hygiene [Asociación Chilena de Higiene Mental AChHM] will henceforth be used to refer to the institution whose inauguration in the Medical Association of Chile (Asociación Médica de Chile), which had begun its activities the same year (Garafulic, 1931; Molina, 1937; Plaza & Garafulic, 1932), was held on December 21, 1931. Its Organizing Committee, elected on that same date, was formed by professionals from multiple disciplines (doctors of diverse specialties, lawyers, philosophers, writers, etc.), as in many similar local and international organizations. Beyond their diversity, a common feature exists across most of the AChHM members: an outstanding concern or even direct role in explicitly child-related institutions that, in

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most cases, had been recently created. This is justified by the need to offer protection to children regarding the living conditions in which they found themselves and a notable abandonment by the State that could not be replaced by the charity of the Catholic Church (Salazar, 2006). Orrego-Luco warned of the terrible distribution of resources for the benefit of the rich, while forgetting about the children who would later be useful to society, leaving the responsibility ‘to individuals, to a few pious ladies, to take care of them and to provide them with relief through popular collections’ (Orrego, 1912, p. 239). The foundation of these institutions must be based in relation to the development of a growing sensitivity towards childhood in Chilean society. This process started in the second half of the nineteenth century upon the publishing of the first Chilean hygiene manual Hygienic Catechism (Miquel, 1859), which included advice on food, hygiene and clothing. In 1860, the ‘General Elementary Education Law’ was promulgated, whose first article places the State (through the Ministry of Public Instruction) as the main educational support, establishing its gratuity and application to both genders (Larraín & Larraín, 1871). The aim of the reforms conducted by this law was essentially to civilize and enlighten the masses not motivated by a democratic spirit, thereby allowing equal opportunities for all citizens. Subsequent debates on Chilean educational policy, within the context of the constitution of a ‘Teaching State’ during the early twentieth century, focused on the legislation of mandatory elementary education. Differences between liberals and conservatives revolved around educational content (secular or religious, theoretical or practical), its political lean (democratic or segregative), public or private control of the process and, finally, public or private incentivization. As a result of such extensive controversies, Act No. 3654, or the Mandatory Elementary Education Act, was promulgated in 1920 (Dirección Jeneral de Educación Primaria, 1920), which will be discussed later. On the other hand, it is necessary to consider that, since the beginning of the twentieth century, the care and education of children began to be subjected to intervention by professional specialists, such as paediatricians, pedagogues and psychologists. In 1908, Dr. Wilhelm Mann founded the first Laboratory of Experimental Psychology of Santiago at the Pedagogical Institute of the University of Chile (Universidad de Chile) (Salas & Lizama, 2013). In the 1920s, his successor, Luis Tirapegui, developed a local adaptation of the method created by Binet-Simon to measure the intelligence of school children (Tirapegui, 1928). The adaptation of this technical-scientific method was aimed at measuring the children’s capacities in order to educate them and make them produce for the nation. In this way, it was also possible to observe individual differences and select the best on the basis of a notion of merit or talent (Moretti, 2018). For Mac-Giver (1900), this spirit of selective development was impregnated by the challenges, not only economic, of the young nation, but also of overcoming the moral crisis of the Chilean race, which positioned the local population as inferior to the colonizers. Furthermore, service or social work, which was professionalized during the same period, was posed as a scientific organization model of preventive assistance, which aimed to reduce the use of

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curative assistance and suppress all palliative measures that were, for a long time, the only remedies used to heal ‘all misfortunes, all miseries’ (Cordemans, 1927, p. 8). Finally, in the legal sphere, it is necessary to emphasize Law 4447 on Child Protection (1928), which intended to correct the shortcomings of the Protection of Disabled Children Law (1912) and established, among other things, the creation of a Shelter for Minors and the General Directorate of Minors (Ministerio de Justicia, 1928). The AChHM vice president, Judge Samuel Gajardo (Attorney, Professor of the University of Chile and first juvenile judge), was a supporter of this Child Protection Act (Ruperthuz, 2014), and the first director of the General Directorate of Minors, created in 1928, was Hugo Lea Plaza Jencquel, president of the Association (Escobar, 2012). Like several members of the AChHM, both were also linked to the School of Social Service, which was initially directed by Jenny Bernier (Cordemans, 1927), the only woman in the first organizing committee of AChHM, and later by Cordemans (1927). This School, dedicated to training social workers, depended on the Central Board of Charity, whose creation had been promoted by Dr. Alejandro del Rio Soto Aguilar, future member of the AChHM.  Its founding in 1925 was inspired by the work of Belgian physician René Sand (1877–1953), Secretary General of the League of Red Cross Societies, who in 1919 had put into operation the Ecole Centrale d’application de Service Social in Brussels. Dr. del Rio Soto Aguilar met him during a trip to Europe, and Sand himself provided advice regarding the creation of the School in his visit to Chile in 1924 (Oliva, 2006). One of the most common activities for AchHM members in the School of Social Service was holding conferences, frequently with childhood-related themes, and subsequently producing the journal Servicio Social, the institution’s means for disseminating information. In 1927, two presentations from the National Conference of Social Service were published: The social service in the protection of schoolchildren by Eugenio Cienfuegos Bravo, who worked in the Children’s Hospital Manuel Arriarán, and Social protection of the abnormal and delinquent child by Hugo Lea Plaza (Cienfuegos, 1927; Plaza, 1927). The problem of child offenders, which will be discussed in the following section, is the axis of much of the published texts by the members of the AchHM in that journal: for example, articles by Samuel Gajardo on Household deficiencies as a factor of child delinquency (1930) and The abandoned juvenile delinquent in our legislation (1931), and those of Leo Cordemans on Juvenile delinquency and social service (1933) and Juvenile delinquents (1935). Furthermore, in 1930, the journal Mental hygiene was published by Lea Plaza and, the following year, the transcription of a conference that Dr. Juan Garafulic Dabravicic presented at the School of Social Service by invitation of its Director Leo Cordemans and where he presented the general action programme of the League of Mental Hygiene.22

 A few months earlier, the journal published an article by Dr. G. Heuyer on a ‘Childhood Mental Hygiene Center’, preceded by this brief note: ‘At the moment that the Mental Hygiene League is organized in Chile with a complete programme of child assistance, it is interesting to present the activity of a French mental hygiene centre, as stated in the Institution’s Report’ (Heuyer, 1931). 2

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This began to reveal the close tie between the AChHM and the School of Social Service, which also hosted the first organization meetings of the Association in April 1931 (Plaza & Garafulic, 1932). In fact, it might be argued that the creation of the Association or Mental Hygiene League was projected as a type of extension of both the School of Social Service and the Central Charity Board, as well as previous experiences of AChHM members in relation to childhood. In such a way, it is understood how childhood as a social problem (and especially in relation to school) became the main focus of concern for institutionalized mental hygiene in Chile. This can be clarified when considering the lecture of Dr. Juan Garafulic Dabravicic mentioned above, which was published under the title Current Psychological Problems, where he presents a series of reflections that seek not only to justify but also to demonstrate the need for organized mental hygiene. This is because, according to this author, deviations, imbalances and mental disorders have acquired a ‘social transcendence’ and therefore could not be contained by the current procedures of that time. The action programme Garafulic Dabravicic proposed for AChHM proposed four basic objectives. Although it adopted a comprehensive perspective, that human life is ageless, without a trace of its influence (Garafulic, 1931), the first of these objectives was still focused on childhood. Indeed, in trying to provide individuals the means to develop and strengthen their social adaptation abilities, it attaches special importance to eugenics and childcare, approaches from which the action programme developed. Moreover, the second objective (helping the individuals solve their psychological conflicts) raised the need to intervene in the pedagogy field: among the many activities that could be carried out (institutional, professional and legal), the author refers, initially, to the CDC. This is the first local mention of such institutions inspired by the North American Child Guidance Clinics, referred to by other authors and discussed again later in this chapter. Towards the end of his writing, he emphasizes the close connection between these two objectives and the two remaining ones (preventing the individual’s psychic disorders and avoiding relapsing if they occur), for which he concludes: ‘It is unquestionable that the action of Mental Hygiene should be intensified in the prenatal and formative periods; otherwise, it would be incomplete with insufficient results’ (Garafulic, 1931, p. 220). In the last pages of the same issue of Social Service containing the Garafulic Dabravicic conference, a short text was published announcing the creation of the National League of Mental Hygiene and summarizing the president’s words on the inaugural session of the institution, where, as mentioned, its organizing committee was elected. This same text, preceded by the conference of Garafulic Dabravicic, was published a few months later, almost without modification, by the Zig Zag journal. However, references to AChHM are not found again in later issues of Servicio Social. This makes it seem doubtful whether it had managed to organize and operate as an institution. After 1932, traces of it seemed to disappear, at least until late 1935. In fact, the first issue of the Revista de Psiquiatría y Disciplinas Conexas published some papers presented by Chilean representatives at the First Inter-American

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Conference on Mental Hygiene, held that same year in Brazil, which were also discussed in the Society of Neurology, Psychiatry and Legal Medicine. Among them, the article about the Organization of school mental hygiene by Dr. Gustavo Vila stands out. In addition to exposing the inadequacies of the existing school mental hygiene system, this paper analyses the role that pedagogues and physicians should play, as well as the characteristics that they must meet. It also proposed the creation of an individual school record, which Vila prefers to refer to as the ‘school life index’, that would include a varied range of information of each individual: family and personal background, social status, biotypological and biopsychological results as well as different tests to determine the ‘assimilative pedagogical capacity’ (Vila, 1935, p. 28). Finally, three determinants to the problem of childhood mental hygiene are mentioned, which should be addressed: inappropriate films, extemporaneous reading and sexual ignorance. The discussion focuses mainly on the role of pedagogy and medicine and on the preponderance of the teacher or the doctor figure. Garafulic Dabravicic states that the doctor should be responsible for the schoolchildren’s file and that conduct disorder clinics should be created ‘where doctors, teachers and social workers collaborate. The League of Mental Hygiene has sought to form these clinics but has lacked the collaboration of doctors’ (Vila, 1935, p. 38). Salvador Allende [later president of Chile between 1969 and 1973], in his thesis leading to the title of physician, cited Garafulic’s work, adding two fundamental aspects: firstly, that mental hygiene has as its objective the prevention, cure and prophylaxis of individuals who, because of their neurological and psychopathic disorders, constitute a disharmonious unit in our social environment, and secondly, the connections of mental hygiene which, as a scientific discipline, includes problems related to preventive medicine, sociology, psychology, psychiatry and pedagogy (Allende, 1933). Allende was a clear defender of social medicine and was against Lombrosso’s theories to conclude that race had no influence on delinquency, making it clear that the main reason for the health of the population is its socio-economic level, which directly influenced childhood. Likewise, many of these issues were later expanded on by Baldomero Arce Molina in the chapter on ‘Mental Hygiene Leagues’ in his book Mental Hygiene, published in 1937. Drawing on the documentation provided by Garafulic Dabravicic (who remained as Secretary General of AChHM, which since 1933 was chaired by Dr. Arturo Vivado Orsini),33 the book presents ‘a synthesis of relevant activities of the Chilean League of Mental Hygiene, from its founding to the present day’ (Molina, 1937, p. 182). Although the text does not present very innovative aspects, it provides a broader list of professionals involved in this institution as well as a list of the activities carried out: verbal and written publicity from public lectures or radio broadcasts and publication of press articles. For the main concerns of the Association, he mentions ‘the newspaper police blotter, so damaging to the children’s mental development and for the predisposed children’ (Molina, 1937, p. 183),

 A presentation on ‘Evolution of Psychiatry in Chile’ by Garafulic Dabravicic in 1955 dates the dissolution of the AChHM towards 1949–1950 ‘after the premature death of Professor Vivado’ (Garafulic, 1951, p. 72). 3

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and states that the AChHM ‘has broken spears defending film censorship, sex education, conduct disorder clinics and the delicate and interesting social issue of juvenile offenders’ (Molina, 1937, p. 183). In this sense, the contributions of Vila and Arce Molina deserve to be highlighted as they articulate the institutionalization of mental hygiene with the CDC, which had been founded in the previous year under the leadership of Dr. Guillermo Agüero Correa, who also participated in the AChHM. To conclude this section, it is important to mention what kind of childhood we are talking about here. What image or consideration of the child can be extracted from this article of discourses, institutions, regulations and professional practices presented in this section and which accounts for a growing concern for children in various fields? To answer these questions, the analyses proposed by Harry Hendrick (2010) on the ‘ways of seeing’ childhood in Great Britain can be a valuable guide to sort out the perceptions and attitudes prevailing at that time in Chile. In this sense, as previously mentioned, the repeated references to ‘child protection’, especially in the legal field, seem to consider the child as a ‘victim’.

Childhood Mental Hygiene at the Conduct Disorder Clinic The technique in childhood mental hygiene far exceeds the limits of the psychiatric clinic, presenting a much broader social base, corresponding to a new stage of psychiatry, which is the transition from clinical psychiatry to social psychiatry; in other words, in child psychiatry, curative action is confused with preventive action (Agüero, 1938, p. 38). At this point, it is wise to briefly review and highlight some issues from earlier sections of this chapter. First, the concern of several members of the AChHM regarding childhood, especially as it relates to crime, was the case of its top authorities, Dr. Hugo Lea Plaza Jencque and Judge Samuel Gajardo. On the other hand, but related to the above, since the early 1930s, several figures related to the AChHM made references to the CDC.44 An attempt to implement such institutions in South America had been undertaken in Argentina by Dr. Telma Reca, who, after travelling to the United States and obtaining a PhD with a thesis on juvenile delinquency, had founded a mental health clinic in 1934, affiliated with the paediatrics department at the Clinics Hospital in Buenos Aires.55

 According to Vetö, according to what Samuel Gajardo’s claims in The rights of the child and the tyranny of the environment, Conduct Disorder Clinics operated within the General Directorate for Minors Protection as early as 1929 ‘provided guidance to parents or legal guardians of children in an irregular situation [...] seeking to prevent or cure behavioural problems that could present themselves from simple family misunderstandings’ (Vetö, 2015, p. 194). 5  It is necessary at least to mention that, in the same year that the Conduct Disorder Clinic was created, the Ercilla publishing company published Personality and child behaviour: the principles of mental hygiene as guidelines for childhood education by Telma Reca (1936). The work of Borinsky and Talak (2004), available at http://www.historiapsi.com, can be consulted. 4

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The CDC created in Santiago de Chile 2 years later should initially be historically placed relative to the aforementioned ‘Mandatory Elementary Education Act’ (Dirección Jeneral de Educación Primaria, 1920). More precisely, it is necessary to highlight that such an act failed to be as mandatory or widespread as it had been intended, and the critiques received shortly after its promulgation promoted an educational reform that began to be implemented in the late 1920s. Rojas Flores emphasizes the importance of these innovations, for example, in relation to ‘the education of children with some form of mental deficiency [who] should resign to not being educated and, in some cases, live locked up in their homes’ (Flores, 2010, p. 344). In fact, the Decree with Force of Law (DFL) No. 5291 or ‘Law of obligatory elementary education’, promulgated on 29 November 1929, clearly demonstrates innovative intentions (Ministerio de Educación Pública, 1930). Article 26 of this DFL placed different types of schools and courses (kindergartens, general elementary schools, primary vocational schools, etc.) as well as so-called experimental schools under the supervision of the General Directorate of Elementary Education, under the Ministry of Public Education.66 The latter were considered, according to Article 30, as a means to ‘promote the diffusion and progress of elementary education and the optimization of its teaching staff’ (Ministerio de Educación Pública, 1930, p. 7). In turn, Article 102 raises the distinction between two classes of experimental schools. On the one hand, Limited Experimentation Schools [LES] would test educational plans and methods successful abroad in order to evaluate their partial or complete incorporation into the Chilean school system. Article 105 mandates the establishment of two LESs, with two different educational methods (Decroly and Dalton). On the other hand, in Extensive Experimentation Schools [EES], diverse educational plans would be compared and combined to ‘determine the features that Elementary Schools must meet to adapt to the conditions of Chilean childhood and national needs’ (Ministerio de Educación Pública, 1930, pp. 23–24). The establishment of seven such schools was done.77 Finally, Articles 115 and 116, regarding schools for the blind, deaf-mute and mentally weak, argue that such schools should be considered EES. In fact, Article 105 proposes the creation of an Experimental School of Development for the mentally weak in Santiago. However, according to Rojas Flores, the newly created institutions were insufficient to make a substantial change in the fate of many of these children, adding that ‘there was no treatment for more moderate conditions’ (Flores, 2010, p. 344). This last statement can at least be discussed in light of the characteristics of the CDC,  This DFL contains at least two particulars barely mentioned here. First, Article 26 establishes the creation of the General Directorate of Elementary Education, which was already in operation. On the other hand, Articles 102–109 reinstate much of what was stipulated 1 year before in DFL 5881, promulgated almost 1 year before, without any reference. 7  Article 104 of this DFL also establishes the creation of ‘Model Schools’ which will incorporate the final outcomes of the experimental schools and courses into their curriculum, and provide guidelines in all aspects to the rest of the country’s schools. 6

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which was created as a section of the Experimental School of Development at the end of 1936, with the support of Claudio Matte Pérez, president of the Society of Elementary Education (Agüero, 1938). So far, the main sources available for reconstructing this Clinic’s features are the articles published by some of its main supporters between 1936 and 1941. These are texts that were reviewed in several journal publications: first, Revista de Education, of the Subministry of Education (Agüero & Gallinato, 1936, 1937a, b); second, Acción Social, the main dissemination medium of the Mandatory Workers’ Insurance Fund for Illness, Disability and Old Age, under the Ministry of Health (Agüero, 1938); and finally, Medicina Moderna (Agüero & Gallinato, 1941; Gallinato & Agüero, 1937) and the Revista de Psiquiatría y Ciencias Conexas (Agüero & Cubillos, 1938), which, as their respective names indicate, were directed at the medical field and, in the second case, at the most exclusive circle of psychiatrists. This heterogeneous range of journals was intended to showcase the characteristics of this particular service by the promoters of the CDC to a broader and more diverse public. However, an interesting additional source of information is the Proof Report to qualify for the title of State Social Worker, written by Francisca Valjalo Cepeda, which was published in 1942 under the title The child-problem and treatment. Although this last text reproduces, in many of its sections, that which was developed by Agüero in the article Psychiatry and childhood mental hygiene. Our experience (1938), it does provide some valuable references on aspects that are not considered by or that diverge in some way from the other sources.88 First, it is also necessary to consider the issue of the institution’s name, because several texts propose different denominations. Although the most common is ‘CDC’, it is sometimes referenced to as a Clinic of Psychopathology or as a Section of Childhood Mental Hygiene, or even as a Section of Child Psychopathology. The institution operated at Victoria Subercaseaux 292 (Gallinato & Agüero, 1937) or 148 (Cepeda, 1942), on a plot of land adjacent to Cerro Santa Lucía, in downtown Santiago, and consulted on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 9:30 to 12:30 (Gallinato & Agüero, 1937) or daily from 14:00 to 16:30, except Saturdays (Cepeda, 1942). Regarding the professionals involved in the CDC, three figures stand out: paediatrician Alberto Gallinato Rodríguez and psychiatrists Guillermo Agüero Correa and Luis Cubillos Leiva. All of them were linked, to a greater or lesser extent, through criminology. Agüero Correa and Cubillas Leiva worked with Abraham Drapkin, Secretary General of the General Direction of Prisons (1935–1940) and a founder of the Revista de Ciencias Penales. It was there where they published their ambitious ‘Project of Criminological Sheet of the Institute of Classification and Criminology at the Santiago Penitentiary’ (1935), inspired by proposals from

 Considering that the sources correspond to different dates, data divergences can be a product of error in some of them or, as is understandable, through changes in how the institution operates. 8

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Belgium, Argentina and Uruguay.99 It is important to emphasize this previous experience with the delinquency problem because, as will be seen shortly, it played a relevant role regarding the prophylaxis and prevention projected by the CDC. In addition to Agüerro Correa, Gallinato Rodríguez and Cubillas Leiva, other professionals were involved in the CDC: for example, social worker Raquel (Agüero et  al., 1938) de Saavedra and the psychoanalyst Ramón Clares Pérez (Agüero, 1938). Likewise, in the 1937 Pan American Neuro-Psychiatric Conferences, social worker Cristina Galitzi spoke about psychiatric social service and conduct disorder clinics in the United States and may have also worked in the CDC (Vetö, 2015). Additionally, Valjalo Cepeda posed the following scenario: The [CDC] technical staff consists of a paediatrician, a psychiatrist, and a social worker. Later, it was abolished, and until 1941, a secretariat existed; but in carrying out office work, the social worker sees the need for verifying citation deliveries to clients and having strict control of children’s attendance, etc (Cepeda, 1942, pp. 51–52).

Perhaps more relevant than this is to address the issue of who were served at the CDC. Several articles classify them by socio-economic status: proletarian middle-­ class and, especially, lower-class children, which would be common in the Chilean school population (Agüero, 1938). These children showed limited development of ‘cultural conditions’, marked by indifference and disinterest in cultural activities, which was justified by their precarious conditions (Agüero & Gallinato, 1941). With regard to age range, the services were focused on but not limited to school-­ aged children. All sources agree that preschool, school and post-school age groups from 4 to 18 years old attended.10 Regarding gender, the number of boys (approximately 70% of the total) greatly surpassed that of the girls (Agüero & Cubillos, 1938; Agüero & Gallinato, 1941; Gallinato & Agüero, 1937). In the case of Valjalo Cepeda, the category of ‘problem-child’, hardly mentioned by other authors, plays a central role. Such cases are not necessarily classified by a particular social stratum; rather, individuals are placed within a preferably clinical framework: situated between the limits of normality and sickness, their behaviour (changes in intelligence, memory or temperament) not only makes it difficult to adapt to the school environment or, more seriously, to family and social environment but also elicits conflicts that hinder normal coexistence in such environments. In such cases, very different factors intervene and combine, and ‘generalization is practically impossible’ (Cepeda, 1942, p. 1). Although the rest of the sources hardly refer to the category of the ‘problem-child’, the adaptation issue is recurrent in the texts: the authors refer to juvenile and social maladjustment, treatment of maladjusted children, procedures used to prevent future maladjustments, study and  In 1941, Cubillas Leiva and Aguero gave an improvement course on psychiatry and mental hygiene for prison staff. They sought to ‘disclose some standards advised by Mental Hygiene in the preventive fight against mental illness and that can be applied in some cases to the prophylaxis of delinquency in general’ (Cubillos & Agüero, 1941, p. 18). Such standards include early childhood intervention, school mental hygiene and vocational guidance. 10  The Report of Valjalo Cepeda also indicates a significant percentage of children who do not attend school, but the report does not expand further. 9

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classification of various disorders and maladjustments, etc. In these articles, the cases of these children who, without being clumsy, present moderately severe disturbances of their affections, temperament or behaviour are often labelled ‘juvenile psychopathies’ (Gallinato & Agüero, 1937, p. 280). In this sense, no attention was to be paid to either imbeciles or idiots, who had to be treated in asylums, nor the mentally weak, who should be referred to the special pedagogical procedures of the Experimental School of Development. The CDC then took over the ‘maladapted’, ranging from 6 to 8% and 3 to 4% (Agüero & Cubillos, 1938) of the school population and whose problems required investment of special attention to the emotional factor, usually neglected: ‘It is necessary to start from observing the emotional or affective life of the child’ (Gallinato & Agüero, 1937, p.  281), their true core of personality or temperament, either normal, pathological or offensive. This occurs because a ‘state of inhibition or emotional repression’ (sometimes a product of social conditions or an organic phenomenon) could lead to the brink of maladaptation by preventing the child from releasing his/her affectivity. In this sense, although neither the intellectual aspects nor intelligence of school children is ignored, and upon which the traditional procedures of the time were focused (as was the case of the Simon-Binet test), these were placed in the background. How did these maladapted children arrive in the CDC? Who sent them to this service to be cared for? In most cases, it was the teachers or social workers who referred them to the clinic, although, on rare occasions, they were also referred by doctors, parents or guardians. In this sense, it is understandable that most of these referrals are motivated either by misconduct in school or by poor school performance. Once admitted to the CDC, they were classified based on a set of criteria that linked the clinical symptomatology with aetiological factors (Agüero, 1938). This classification changed over time: whereas authors mentioned 26 classifications in 1938, 34 were proposed in 1941, ranging from oligophrenia to the absence of disorders, malnutrition and rickets, educational errors, shyness, enuresis and onanism. Beyond the exoticness of some of these categories (for example, disorders produced by the cinema), the abundant use of psychoanalytic vocabulary, sometimes also called the ‘psychogenetic school’ or ‘genetic psychology’, becomes notable. The theoretical references in such matters exceed and even overshadow the figure of Sigmund Freud: in addition to mentioning the contributions of authors such as Ernst Jones and Marie Bonaparte, and remarking on the figure of Charles Baudoin as a ‘great pedagogue and psychoanalyst’, the authors emphasize the concept of the ‘sense of inferiority’ (Adler, 1912).11 In fact, such references do not constitute any particularity of the Chilean CDC, because psychoanalysis was one of the ‘guiding theories’ of Child Guidance Clinics and even in the practice of mental hygiene in Buenos Aires (Reca, 1936). Moreover, in Adler’s specific case, it is worth recalling that by the late 1910s, he had organized Educational Guidance Centres

11

 Regarding the reception of Adler’s ideas in Latin America (see León, 2002).

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[Erziehungsberatungsstelle], which are often compared to the Saxon Child Guidance Clinics (Danto, 2005). This ‘psychoanalytic inspiration’ is also evident in the procedures used for treatment. In fact, the sources realize the relevance given to psychotherapy which, although not reduced to child psychoanalysis, finds in the Freudian doctrine ‘great help in the knowledge of the infant soul’ (Agüero & Gallinato, 1941, p.  471). Several texts refer to the interpretation not only of the drawings, dreams and imaginative creations of children but also of various aspects of their daily lives and the use of certain ‘classical psychoanalytic tests’, such as free and determined associations. However, rather than its therapeutic efficacy, which the authors find scarce within the framework of the CDC, psychoanalysis is considered essential ‘as an aetiological and pathogenic criterion to reach the nucleus of abnormal manifestations and to establish prophylaxis or treatments in that nucleus’ (Agüero & Gallinato, 1941, p. 472). To refrain from using it in the CDC would ‘sterilize its action’, they stated. In addition to psychoanalysis, in the first articles on the CDC, references were frequently made to Nicola Pende’s biotypology and especially to the nipiology of Ernesto Cacace, which proposed a perspective that, by associating all branches of human knowledge, pointed towards a comprehensive study of the child and their family and the social relationships that go far beyond medicine or paediatrics. In the text Clinic of Child Psychopathology. Conduct Disorder Clinic (Gallinato & Agüero, 1937), there is an extensive quote from Giuseppe Mazzini, an Italian doctor who managed to implement with certain amount of success this type of approach in Chile in the 1930s and organized the First Chilean Conferences of Nipiology in November 1934  in Santiago (Catalán, 2002). However, these references quickly disappeared from the texts that documented the activities of the CDC, and psychoanalysis gained increasing influence. After World War II, both nipiology and biotypology rapidly lost ground because of their suspicious connection to the fascist regime, and by the 1950s, they had been practically buried. In addition to references to psychoanalysis and nipiology, the texts mention the use of ‘behaviour modification’, also called ‘behavioural or reflexological procedure’, aimed mainly at the family in order to modify certain ingrained habits and incorporate others ‘better adapted to reality and sociability’ (Agüero, 1938, p. 34). In addition, a procedure closely linked to the pedagogical-school environment is applied and intended to intervene with vocational skills. This was applied essentially to the so-called post-schoolchildren (over 12 years of age) and relied mainly on the use of psychotechnics. Due to its success, the authors even consider the need to have a dedicated board for this purpose. Although the usual procedures (in addition to psychotherapy, reflexology and vocational guidance) included isolation and confinement, the authors clarified that those were only used when forced to do so by the particular circumstances of the subjects under their care and that their intention was ‘doing prophylaxis and mental therapeutics in children living within the social environment’ (Agüero & Gallinato, 1941, p. 474). In this sense, whereas the authors considered that the positive results constituted almost 50% of the CDC’s findings, the remaining 50% also imply a failure of

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preventative efforts on the part of the schools that ultimately accentuate the issue of crime. In fact, the authors start from the assumption that behavioural alterations present two possible derivations or solutions: the neurotic, meaning, ‘at the expense of the subject’, or the criminal (or perverse), meaning, ‘at the expense of society’. Although it is impossible to foresee what outcome may arise for each individual, the authors start from the assumption that every maladjusted individual is a potential offender: ‘these maladjusted children constitute the basis of future offenders and will act as social parasites, becoming a serious economic burden for society’ (Agüero & Cubillos, 1938, p. 466). Based on the statistics provided by the Directorate-General for the Protection of Minors, the texts intend to show that in Chile, juvenile crime is greater than 7% and almost 80% of juvenile offenders have some form of mental disorder (Agüero & Cubillos, 1938). However, they insist that the focus should not be on ‘mental capacity’ or the IQ of these subjects but instead on the ‘affective personality emotions’. In many of the available sources, the authors aim to show that these children came mostly from very poor households and broken families, or had no home, a situation by which they were fixed at what Freud called the destructive or anal-sadistic stage of their instinctive life. However, although the economic factors at play remain outside the psychotherapeutic or pedagogical interventions, there is a wide range of factors on which it was possible for them to intervene ‘in order to avoid behavioural alterations that often fall within delinquency’ (Agüero & Cubillos, 1938, p. 49). In this sense, the authors emphasized the importance of the problem by arguing that ‘whenever faced with a case of child maladjustment, there has been an error in how the parents have educated their child’ (Agüero, 1938, p. 32). At this point, it is possible to note that the cases treated in the CDC were at a crossroads of several problems that can be organized chronologically: these cases are derived from the school environment, where it is clear that the aetiology of an abnormality requires going back to the past (to the failed education within a dysfunctional or non-existent household) and that the future is grim, towards the offender or, in broader terms, the socially dangerous individual. This justifies the importance of the CDC inspired by the experiences of Child Guidance Clinics, although with some notable differences. First, the misgivings shown by the very promoters of the CDC regarding the local application of foreign models: they repeatedly denounce the profound differences between the children treated in the clinic and those exposed to foreign literature; such conspicuous differences make them doubt the veracity of the cases presented in these publications (Agüero, 1938; Agüero & Gallinato, 1941). Moreover, but not least important, its placement is as a public institutional character within State agencies whose subsistence depends on State funds. In this sense, its opening and operation seem to have been strongly linked to the presidential efforts of Alessandri Palma (1932–1938) and, especially, Pedro Aguirre Cerda (1938–1941) who, since his inauguration speech, showed his explicit support for education. Therefore, it is not surprising that the last reports of the work developed by this institution were published between 1941 and 1942 (Agüero & Gallinato, 1941;

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Cepeda, 1942). Although it is not possible to precisely date the end of activities, it is likely that by the mid-1940s, the CDC ceased to exist.12

Conclusion The journey carried out throughout this chapter reveals some monitoring and control projects proposed between the 1920s and 1940s that targeted Chilean childhood and where the relationship between psychology, education and society is linked through different mechanisms. The social and macroeconomic processes of Chile, a young country that, in the period in which this work was stopped, was going through its 120 years of independent life, were destabilized by a social crisis that responded critically to the accumulation of wealth by the local oligarchy. This concentration of property by a few and the extreme poverty of the majority of the population motivated a movement that demanded from the State a series of welfare policies, among which child protection policies took on greater relevance (Grez, 1995). In this context, the hygienist perspective was the protagonist to implement a civilizing project that articulated the moral needs of the time with the economic model, expanding the fields of intervention to the domain of the psychology (Mardones et al., 2016). The institutionalization of mental hygiene in Chile in the early 1930s sought to concentrate and combine efforts from different disciplines (psychiatry, pedagogy, law, social service, etc.) and institutions (pedagogical, legal), either existing or to be created, and intended to organize a more effective management of human life, especially in its earliest stages. In the context of an era marked by the rise of educational reforms and the growing involvement of scientific knowledge on man’s daily life, the schoolchild became a focus of considerable concern. In fact, as mentioned previously, this particular subject allowed experts and specialists to illuminate different vital areas of childhood: first, the family sphere (its dynamics and resistances) and the larger social sphere, while school is one of the first exogamous spheres travelled by the subjects. School mental hygiene thus indicates a broader childhood mental hygiene that was proposed as a detection and management tool for subjects potentially dangerous to society. In this sense, it can be recognized that children are being treated as ‘the future of the nation’ and are being treated with hope in order to take them out of the masses and turn them into relevant subjects for the development of the country (Orrego, 1912): an important break with the consideration that until now the masses and their relationship with criminality had received (e.g. Sighele, 1892). However, we could understand with Rose (1999) that this visibilization of children as a relevant social  Although Roa (2013) claims that since 1949, a Conduct Disorder Clinic existed that was part of the Institute of Therapeutic Pedagogy, it has not been possible to find testimonies of its activities or its link with the institution created in 1936 (Roa, 2013). 12

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actor for the national development incorporates a series of devices for the government of a previously invisible population which was necessary to conduct under the principles of the new and urgent social project of the country. This allows us to reconsider here some previous references and to introduce a brief reflection regarding the status of the child within the framework of the CDC. Taking up again the axes proposed by Hendrick (2010), it is possible to appreciate in the sources the recourse to the narrative of the abnormality/normality, from the failures of adaptation of these children in the culture, which have their root in emotional, psychic factors, and as a threat, as a potential social danger and also as a victim, due to the lack of a home and a good education; finally, from a prospective approach, the child is appreciated here in terms of investment. The creation of the CDC or the Section of Childhood Mental Hygiene in 1936 was suggested by several AChHM members, even before the founding of this institution. The American Child Guidance Clinics provided a model for inspiration, but to be adapted to the particularities of the Chilean context its itinerary was marked by both the resistance of local idiosyncrasy (Gallinato & Agüero, 1937) and the limited number of facilities and economic resources provided by the State. Judging by the sources consulted, these projects did not achieve the expected attention and impact. In fact, the dissolution of the CDC (despite the successes announced by its supporters) and the Chilean Association of Mental Hygiene in the 1940s seemed to have gone completely unnoticed by the local media. Moreover, it was in that decade that scientific psychology began to be institutionalized in Chile, advanced by the creation of the Institute of Psychology in 1941 to achieve a major milestone in 1947 with the creation of the first psychology career in Latin America, through the Special Course of Psychology at the University of Chile (Parra, 2015; Salas, 2014; Salas & Lizama, 2013). The problems of mental hygiene began to transform, and specializations in psychopedagogy and clinical psychology began to form part of the new epistemologies and subdisciplines. In a new context, these new childhood experts began to emerge. Acknowledgements  The authors disclose receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this chapter. This chapter was supported by a grant from the National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICYT), through the National Fund of Scientific and Technological Development, FONDECYT Project N° 11150436, awarded to the primary author.

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Chapter 11

A Different Source for the Study of Psychology in Mexico: Catholic Education Salvador Iván Rodríguez Preciado

Introduction Most research on the history of psychology in Mexico shows that the teaching of the discipline began in 1897 at the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria (ENP) (National Preparatory School). Although some of the researchers rescue a previous debate about its teaching in 1880, it is recognized that no teaching of any psychology came out from those debates. However, although it is accepted that the introduction of the study of psychology was due to ideological debates and a political strategy from the Mexican Government, the only direction that the studies have followed is to look for the emergence of it as a subject in the ENP, perhaps because the previous researchers wanted to believe that they were treating with the rise and teaching of a science. The consequence, however, that the exclusivity of these research routes has implied is that it is ignored if there were studies on psychology in the rest of the educational institutions of the country that were still commanded by the diocesan church or by the schools of the religious orders. The aim of this text is to begin to clarify this vein of research, given that its study also allows to account for the ideological conflicts that occurred within the church and that affected in different ways the life of the country. This is done by finding important discontinuities in the history of the ecclesiastical institution in the international context, which would result in a more inclusive vision of the nascent sciences, the introduction of new ideas in translations of books printed in Spain which arrived to Mexico, and, finally, books on psychology that came out of the Mexican Catholic presses. The conclusion points out that while the Mexican liberals made an effort to prevent the teaching of psychology from occurring within the framework of positivist teaching, it already occurred in seminars for the formation of priests and conservative laymen. S. I. Rodríguez Preciado () Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente, Guadalajara, México © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. C. Ossa et al. (eds.), History of Psychology in Latin America, Latin American Voices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73682-8_11

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 he Introduction of the Study of Psychology T in the Educational Project of the Nascent Liberal State General Porfirio Diaz would begin his long presidency in 1876, after preventing the reelection of President Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, who came to the presidential chair after President Juarez died of heart problems unexpectedly. It was not precisely his charisma that made General Porfirio Díaz stand out in his third presidencial candidacy, but also, in the presidency, Lerdo committed some excesses such as the prohibition of worship activities in public places, prohibition of life in the cloister of the religious communities, and elevation to constitutional degree of the laws of reform. The expulsion of several foreign Jesuits and the order of the Sisters of Charity in 1873 had led to great enmities between the conservative groups. Although the Society of Jesus had been uncomfortable since the last days of the Colony, because their commitment and loyalty were with the Pope in Rome and not with the Crown of Spain, it was the most important religious order in matters of education. More seriously, the Sisters of Charity were known by their pious works, such as the assistance to patients in hospitals and children in orphanages. However, they never left the habit aside, despite being expressly asked to do so, nor did they stop devoting themselves to their merciful work, so the reasons for the expulsion were not clear, beyond the President’s displeasure. So after a long battle between Lerdistas and Porfiristas that took place in 1876, Porfirio Díaz entered the capital to be named president in November of that year. He did not know, however, that it would still be pending to resolve the differences with the president of the Supreme Court of Justice, who was the substitute according to the constitution. After the negotiations and until May of the following year, Porfirio Díaz became the President of Mexico for a period of 4 years (Vázquez, 2009). For President Diaz, the first goal of his government was to win the sympathy of the most important families and institutions in the country. To do so, he decided to attack the institution that had been the most controversial since its planning in December 1868 and its foundation in January of the following year and that had festered the hatreds around 1874: The ENP. It should be taken into account that the importance of the ENP was evident in education, given that it was apparently the only institution responsible for pre-­ university education, although as we will see, this was not completely true. On the other hand, a large part of the active civil servants had graduated from their classrooms, which also indicated their influence on ideology and politics. When inaugurated in January 1869, President Juarez trusted that the institution would save the great void of nationality and patriotism that was felt in the war against the US Government. From the beginning, the institution had been inclined towards positivist teaching, one that prepared young people to recognize in material, not spiritual, values, the mark of progress that the country so urgently required. To this end, the seminars and colleges that used to be in the hands of religious orders or in charge of the diocese were already closed.

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One of the main ideologists of Mexican positivism would be the physician, Gabino Barreda. During the previous war periods, Barreda had left the country to study in Paris, where he would come into contact with Comte’s ideas. Upon his return, he would join the commission that would formulate the Organic Law for public instruction that included for the first time a school that would teach not only knowledge that would facilitate students entering university classrooms. The curriculum of the ENP also considered the subject of Logic, which would be the subject where through a type of ethical-civic teaching, the teacher would instill in the minds of young Mexicans love and duty to their country. It would be the director of the institution, Mr. Barreda, who would teach this class through what Laura Cházaro García (2015) has called a humanistic positivism. The historical course of the ENP occurred not without frights and always under the criticism of the Catholic press. However, the events of 1874 would show the ideological weight that the institution had: the cut of the funds for the internship and the first student strike. But above all, the suicide (apparently independent) of three students (Angel Benavente, Manuel Acuña, and Salvador Castelot) was the strongest reason for the institution, which had complied well to his mission in general terms throughout the 10 years that was directed by Gabino Barreda, to become the center of the scandals and the next president, Porfirio Díaz, was well aware of this situation. Barreda was associated with the government and the projects of the former president, Benito Juarez, and according to Lourdes Alvarado (1997) had all the complications to join the new team of officials installed by President Díaz. In 1878, and before his reluctance to submit his resignation, Díaz sent him on a diplomatic mission to Germany, where he would depart on April 19 together with his wife and their four children. He would remain as director of the high school, with an indefinite license without pay. The only concession that was made to Barreda was that his most brilliant disciple, physician Porfirio Parra, would be at the head of the class that seemed most important to him, that of Logic. Although this movement could guarantee in the only important measure (the ideological one) the continuity of the project, Díaz would not cease his efforts to change the institution with the interest of pleasing the conservative, Catholic and liberal Jacobin groups. The direct movements against the ENP occurred in 1880: The textbook of Lógica (Logic) was the book of Alexander Bain, who had a clearly positivist heritage. With some deceptions, it was replaced in the month of September (although temporarily) by the two thick volumes of the work of Guillaume Tiberghien, Lógica, la ciencia del conocimiento (Logic, the science of knowledge) (1878). In the month of November, Parra was dismissed from his position as teacher of the subject of Logic and was replaced by José María Vigil, senior man, director of the library of Mexico, editor of the Revista filosófica (philosophical journal). Finally in December, Barreda retired as the school’s director and in his place, as director of the high school, Díaz officially installed Alfonso Herrera, who was director since Barreda’s departure and who shared the positivist ideals, but he was much more tolerant ideologically.

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The final knockout to positivism in this period would be the threat of a reform to the high school curriculum that would appear published in the official newspaper on April 21 and 25, although it would not take place. Its author, Ezequiel Montes, who was the Minister of Justice and Public Instruction, would retire a short time later for health reasons.

The First Proposal for a Psychology Class in 1881 In this context, however, the first proposal for a psychology class appeared in the ENP. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ignacio Mariscal recommended a professor who had arrived from Greece to disembark in Mexico in 1861 to Ezequiel Montes. It was the philosopher Plotino Rhodakanaty. Montes asked him to elaborate a course to teach in the ENP. The proposal of the Greek, suspiciously, would complement the study of logic as it would have been studied in the Tiberghien text and would be that of a psychology class. Alfonso Herrera, prudent as he was and surely sensing an ideological blow, rejected the proposal for three reasons: (1) the creation of a chair of psychology involved reforming the Organic Law of Public Instruction; (2) the school curriculum would be saturated with the consequent attrition of the students; and (3) the new discipline could be taught in the course of logic, which, in addition, would allow saving the salary of a teacher. Rhodakanaty refuted them one by one: it was not intelligent to modify the Law whenever a class not included in it was incorporated and it was absurd and arbitrary if with this trivial argument the dissemination of modern knowledge was proscribed. The students would have to work even more if they knew what they did not know. The change of the text of logic, which meant abandoning the “scholastic logic” and adopting the “real logic”, based on the “true metaphysics”, required a complete course and, therefore, the satisfactory teaching of two disciplines was not possible in only one subject. Herrera’s decision, product of his practice in the field of “physical sciences”, exhibited his “antipathy” towards rationalism and “his ill-concealed positivism” which, incidentally, considered psychological knowledge similar to that of “magic and astrology.” Finally, the public treasury frequently spent money on things less relevant than a teacher’s salary. Thus, Rhodakanaty said that it was better to go back to the old texts of logic than to teach a truncated system. Finally, he said harshly: “always the spirit of party, of false authority and routine must prevail and triumph [over the] reason and good sense, in a society as unjust and badly organized as ours, that greatly seems to oppose the march of enlightenment and progress.” Despite his insistence, the decision of the director of the ENP did not change anything. Wounded by the resolution, Rhodakanaty expanded his philosophical offensive into three articles explicitly devoted to combating the positivist theses of “Mr. Villamar,” who unofficially took up the debate by writing several articles for a student publication called La escuela de jurisprudencia (The School of Jurisprudence) (Illades, 2002, pp. 29–30).

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The answer to the Rhodakanaty proposal for the psychology class would be made public in February 1881 (El Socialista Newspaper, February 7, 1881). But March 10th would be the day of the strongest lost to the ENP and its old curriculum: Gabino Barreda died, which would mark a different period for the ENP. The dispute over the textbook, however, would continue and the board of teachers, which had proposed the text of Luis E. Ruíz Nociones de Lógica (Notions of Logic), would again be suppressed to be replaced by that of Paul Janet, which would be accepted in July of 1883 (Alvarado, 1994). In this way, the different works that integrated the dispute of the textbooks were: 1. Lógica. La ciencia del conocimiento. De G. Tiberghien (1875, 1878) that was imposed by the Minister of Justice and Public Instruction, Ignacio Mariscal, in 1880. 2. Nociones de Lógica. Of Luis G. Ruiz (1882), which was suggested to replace the previous one in 1882: It appeared first as a supplement serial in the newspaper “La libertad” and finally as an independent edition. 3. Tratado elemental de Filosofía, from Paul Janet (1882) who served from the beginning of 1883 to 1892. Charles A. Hale (1989) suggests not to overlook that boys from 13 to 18 who attended high school would be influenced more by teachers than by texts. However, and particularly in the case of Janet’s text, more than half of its content presented the study of psychology, as would other books and magazines that were published in French in order to summarize and present the main ideas, referring to the advances in Germany. Even Chávez in his biographical notes mentions how much he was impacted by his encounter with Janet’s text, during his studies at the ENP, for having known through it the nascent psychological discipline (Chávez, 1970, p. 22).

 he Definitive Inclusion of the Study of Psychology T in the ENP in 1896 When Ezequiel Montes, chief of the Ministry of Justice and Public Instruction, withdrew, Joaquín Baranda would succeed him. Alfonso Herrera would also resign in 1884 and leave Justo Sierra in his place. The aforementioned movements achieved what the president was so interested in: reconciling the institutions that had self-­ proclaimed themselves nonreligious since the Juarez government with the conservatives. However, episodes such as that of Rhodakanaty showed that the documents that gave guidance and sustenance to the institutions had to be changed in order to consider a definitive change. In fact, on December 1, 1888, Baranda would inaugurate the First Congress of Instruction, and in his inaugural speech he already pointed out the need to reform public education from its roots. He was particularly concerned about the heterogeneity of the studies in the country.

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The Logic course had been taught by Vigil until 1893. Upon his retirement, Minister Baranda would choose a lawyer of 24  years, in charge of the General History of Mexico and Constitutional Law classes, in addition to Geography, as a professor of Logic. The young man was the graduate Ezequiel A. Chávez. During the celebration, which would touch several points, the newly installed professor would give a speech at the request of his students, in which he would affirm that the government of the Republic was going to do in the educational institutions the reforms that they required. The affirmation and a series of reforms in proposal that he had in several notebooks earned him that the minister integrated a commission to review the ideas of Chavez and formalize them in a project. The commission would have legal backing with a decree that would be published on May 19, 1896, with which the Congress of the Union authorized the executive branch to review and reorganize all institutions of all branches of national education. By December of that year, the plan had been authorized in its entirety and would be published in January 1897. In addition to including physical activities for all students, there were the singing classes and the request was also made to all the teachers so that in each class that could do it, they would point out the moral qualities of the men of science. Finally, the plan included the study of two new courses. one of psychology and moral and another of experimental psychology. By 1902, Chávez translated the text of Edward B.  Titchener Outlines of Psychology, which, when compared to the syllabus for the teaching of the course, showed that it was Chávez’s guide to the design of the class. This would continue unchanged until it was influenced by Chavez’s contact with James Mark Baldwin, who would visit Mexico in 1905, 1910, 1911, and 1912 (Rodríguez Preciado, 2014).

 he Study of Psychology in Diocesan and Religious Colleges T and Seminars The first class of psychology in the ENP was taught in the Mexican capital at the beginning of 1897 as part of the reform promoted by Professor Ezequiel Chávez, which was approved by the Chamber of Deputies on December 19, 1896. The previous curriculum, properly named “Ley orgánica y de instrucción pública” (“Organic Law of Public Instruction”), was in force for almost 30 years since it was launched in 1868, the same year that the young Ezequiel was born in Aguascalientes. For him, the start of the curriculum of 1897 would have put an end to positivism as the dominant philosophy in the country and opened the doors to new educational times (Chávez, 1968, 1972). However, by 1897 the classrooms of the ENP already saw many discussions about psychology, whose first signs were in 1880, in a very unpredictable way. Less predictable, however, is the study of a different source of interest in psychology: study within diocesan and religious seminaries.

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The first text printed in Mexico that presented the study of psychology as a matter apart from philosophy was “Elements of Modern Philosophy” by Juan Benito Díaz de Gamarra y Dávalos in 1774. Christian Wolff (1728/1963) followed the same scheme of sciences, proposed by Gamarra y Dávalos, presenting psychology as a discipline that could be studied by empirical means. However, the war of independence would leave great challenges for Mexican Catholics, given their attachment to the Spanish crown, challenges within which there would be time for philosophical discussions. After the war of independence, the French and American invasions, the reform war, and the Three Years’ War (1859–1861), the Leyes de reforma (the laws of reform) would start with a complicated period for relations between Mexico and the Vatican. But what seemed to be a complicated conflict, however, would be nothing compared to what would come years later, when the alliance of the Mexican conservatives with Napoleon III organized an invasion of Mexico to head the French troops with the project of bringing a new emperor to Mexico: Maximilian of Habsburg. The context of the Vatican conflict, in addition to showing the influence of the Popes in Catholic education in Mexico and other countries where the church and the regular clergy meet and participate in the educational task, allows to complete the history of pre-university education in the country. There is not, as far as it is known, an analogous debate in Latin America or another country where the introduction of the study of psychology illustrates so clearly a controversy between the dominant ideologies and between the different state models that are under discussion.

The Context of State: Church Conflicts The papacy of Mastai-Ferretti, who would take the name of Pius IX, began in an unstable Italy in 1846 and ended with his death in 1878. The longest period of a pope would occur, in addition, in the midst of the changes that followed the first Industrial Revolution with the development of agriculture and eventually of transport thanks to the development of the steam engine. Italy would not be alien to the revolutionary movements and ideals and soon the church headed by Pius IX not only faced the Italian unification and the insurgency of the liberal states that obtained more resources for the technological advances but also faced the loss of the papal states that began in 1861 (Laboa, 2002). Its loss meant the reduction of the privileges of the clergy, the suppression of their corporations, and the reduction of their jurisdiction (Bautista García, 2005). But the crisis experienced by the church was not only political but also and mainly ideological. The preeminence that the figure of the state would begin to occupy in the nascent economies, replacing the Divine Providence, the growing defense by the freedom of conscience, and the general process of laicization of the institutions, constituted the political, doctrinal, and social factors that would have to be attended. In these circumstances the Pope convoked the first Vatican council in

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1868, which would also be the first since the Council of Trent that had been held since the middle of the sixteenth century. Although works would begin in December 1869, they  would be suspended indefinitely precisely because of the Franco-­ Prussian conflict and military pressure in favor of the unification of Italy. The causes of the convocation to the Council would also be those of its early closure (Laboa, 2002). In this context, conflicts with the clergy in Mexico would become more critical in recent years precisely with the enactment of some of the most radical liberal laws. The internal difficulties would begin right after the American intervention that began animated by the discussions around the territorial demarcation of Texas that had been annexed to the American union in 1845. Mexico faced the American invasion between 1846 and 1848 that would end with a decimated mexican government that was forced to sign the Tratado de Guadalupe-Hidalgo (Treaty of Guadalupe-­ Hidalgo). The treaty forced Mexico to deliver more than 50% of the national territory to the United States (the current states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah, and portions of Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming). The conflict also directly confronted the different political factions, which caused the conservatives, who governed most of the country’s states, to call back to power the General who had lost the war against the Americans, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, to govern a country that could hardly be governed given the economic crisis after the invasions. Lopez de Santa Anna assumed the presidency for the last time between 1853 and 1855. A year earlier, in 1854 the Liberals proclaimed the Plan de Ayutla headed by Juan Álvarez, who won the liberal sympathy and the adhesion of several states of the Republic to finally overthrow the dictatorship and install in its place the liberal government, which was inclined towards a federation, not centralized and not monarchical. The laws of reform would be issued in 1855 (Juárez law), 1856 (Lerdo law), and 1857 (Iglesias law), which again led to fundamental differences between the conservative groups of the country and the government. In short, the laws raised the new legal margin proposed by the liberals. The Juárez law suppressed the ecclesiastical and military courts and the suspension of the privileges that impeded the civil trial of such characters. The Lerdo law demanded for the government all the rural and urban lands and properties that the ecclesiastical institution had as assets of Manos muertas (dead hands), which is how they called those goods inherited by the old oligarchs who gave their lands to the institution. In the eyes of the liberals, the fair exploitation of the territory was a fundamental requisite for the provision of the treasury. Although it is not possible to estimate it accurately, in his text of 1822 Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain Alexander Von Humboldt was amazed not only by the inequality of the distribution of wealth—even when comparing the different religious orders among themselves—but also by the wealth of the Mexican clergy who, in their opinion, owned four-fifths of the territory. Finally, the Iglesias law regulated the collection of parish rights, preventing the collection of services, as well as the tithe, from the poorest.

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The Catholic Church set itself the objective, during the last 40 years of the century, to resist the adversary identified as liberal, positivist, freemason, and protestant. Characteristic of the Catholic Church in this period was its process of Romanization; it also became more controversial, and more aggressive. Excluded from a political power that, with some exceptions, was hostile, it became radicalized to become ultramontane (Martínez de Codes, 1992, p. 258).

What was at risk, however, was not only the loss of privileges, but also a series of challenges that had to be faced. According to Bautista García (2005), the project took into account three important axes: the renewal of the clergy and its institutions, the negotiation with emerging liberal governments that could lessen the impact of the new constitutions, and achievement of the increased support of the faithful, whose loyalty and resources began to be disputed by the State. For this reason, in the Consistory of December 15, 1856, the Pope publicly and openly criticized the Mexican Constitution project that was only a few months after being accepted (Martínez de Codes, 1992). Even in April of 1857, the then president of Mexico Ignacio Comonfort, sent Ezequiel Montes on a mission to Rome, to try to explain the indispensability of the proposed reforms, for the development of the country and the protection of its sovereignty. Pius IX neither received him nor heard him (González de Cossío, 1966). In order to comply with the axes of the reform of the church in 1858 Father Pius IX sponsored the foundation of the Latin American College, located in the Vatican, “whose purpose was to be part of the most outstanding students of the American episcopal seminars” (O’Dogherty, 1997 in Ramos Medina, 1998; p. 180), whether they were interested in the dioceses or willing to join the regular clergy. The institution would be entrusted to the Society of Jesus, due to its merits in the philosophical and educational aspects and despite its constant participation in the political issues of each country. But the clashes would escalate. At the end of 1864, a document previously published by the anticlerical press would be published: the encyclical Quanta cura and the Syllabus errorum. The latter was the result of a process that had begun years ago and consisted of a list of 85 theses that summarized several of the errors that were becoming popular knowledge. The work discredited every system of thought that it identified as pantheism or rationalism; it criticizes the assignment of an equal value for any religion, which resulted in freedom of worship; it also condemned the socialism that had so encouraged the states to concentrate their wealth. Of course it criticizes freemasonry, secular education, suppression or expulsion of the regular clergy, and naturalism, as well as the separation between church and state and finally, the total freedom of the press (Jedin, 1978). The same year of 1878 in which Gabino Barreda was sent to Germany marked the death of Pius IX and the assent to the papacy of Leo XIII, of great importance for the history of Catholic philosophy. In 1899, the Concilio Plenario Latinoamericano (Latin American Plenary Council) convened in Rome by Leo XIII was finally held, which would lay the foundations for the succession in 1903, 1906,

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and 1909 of the national Catholic congresses of Puebla, Oaxaca, and Guadalajara, which would finally result in constituting, in 1911, the Catholic Party of Mexico. This period from 1878 to 1903 frames the papacy of Leo XIII, and highlights the contrast between this and his predecessor Pius IX, specifically for the conciliatory attitude of the latter to the rationalism and liberalism that would restore the scholastic discussion in the field of philosophy. On August 4, 1879, barely a year after his accession to the papacy, Leo XIII published the encyclical Aeterni Patris, which indicated, among other matters, new directions for philosophical studies and, in particular, for cultivation of neo-scholasticism. The success of the encyclical was that although it was dedicated to philosophy and philosophical method, with special recommendation of the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas, it was not ignorant of the new philosophy. From it, it would open the possibility of discussing, without the disqualification by means, the developments of the new science and even the new psychological science, almost simultaneously as it developed. It would still remain pending, however, how to deal with the lay state. Ceballos Ramírez (in Matute, Trejo and Connaughton, 1995) says that it gave rise to a series of institutions, associations, recreational groups, unions, mutualists, and others, all Catholic named. But one of the greatest difficulties in Mexico was the formation of new clerics, since the church had no property and even regular education had been banned in the reform laws. Bautista García (2001) explored the problem in the context of the state of Michoacán. She reviewed the simultaneous attempts at solution and identified at the beggining,  two outputs that were raised by the hierarchs of the Michoacan church, which shows a good example of what happened in the different dioceses. Although with special clarity thanks to the enthusiasm of the characters that pushed the process: on the one hand, the authorities of the archbishopric of Morelia, the main city, defended that the education of priests for the new challenges could be carried out in the schools that had remained in the state of Michoacán for their formation, paying respect to the traditions of the local clergy and not without certain mistrust towards the people and ideas arrived from Rome. On the other hand, the group of the bishopric of Zamora, a smaller city but with more enthusiastic projects and investments of individuals that were more present, considered that it would be a mistake not to take advantage of the circumstances to establish a profound reform and a clear reconfiguration in the diocesan clergy. The benefits of opening the doors to graduates or professors graduated from the Pio Latin College was that by having a different formation, they could do away with or dispense with several of the basic ideas of the previous clergy, which were so difficult to adapt to the new philosophical circumstances outside the church, which kept them  at a disadvantage to the development of modern science and philosophy. Now, what complicated things in the development of the double-formative strategy of the new clergy in Michoacán was not the difference of ideas regarding the contents of the formation, in spite of how much these were the center of the disputes between both corporations. The main reason was that the integration of the clergy formed in Rome meant allowing recently arrived foreigners, typically Jesuits, to

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occupy leading places of local institutions and members of the secular clergy. Jesuit teachers who perhaps had a remarkable intellectual stature, but that had not gone through the system of merits that supposed access to ecclesiastical status. Already the mere idea that it was the Jesuits who were in charge of the formation of the secular clergy was an affront to some of the bishops. In spite of this, in 1866, the Jesuits officially took charge of the conciliar seminary of Mexico (Bautista García, 2001). What both lines of solution had in common for the renewal of the clergy was a challenge: the introduction of neo-scholastic, as it had been prescribed in Aeterni Patris. The great difficulty was represented in that the notion of truth proposed by science was very different from the concept of truth as revelation. It did not bother in such a case what, for example, Darwin proposed in The Origin of Species, but the idea of descending from an ape and the enormous contradiction that this supposed for tradition. In the case of the colleges and seminars that were in the hands of the Society of Jesus, the recent formation of the Jesuits facilitated the question of the introduction of new scientific ideas and their adjustment to what was proposed by neothomism. On the other hand, what made a difference to the interior of the Zamora seminary were the recklessly encouraged reforms that Rector Canon Agustín Abarca made, who had traveled long time ago to Europe to study his PhD in Thomistic dogmatics, in the College of St. Thomas at the University of Minerva. Louvain would later become the center of scholastic renewal and the introduction of neothomism at the behest of Leo XIII himself and Cardinal Mercier, who would stablish a Higher Institute of Philosophy in 1894. But that makes greater the merit of Abarca, who guided the studies in the same direction even before Louvain became a destination for neo-scholastic thinking.

The Ideas Introduced and Those Developed in Mexico The influence of the University of Louvain meant in Spain the introduction of the ideas of the new psychology that was developing almost parallel in Germany (Pérez-­ Delgado et al., 1987). In Mexico and thereafter, the introduction of psychology in the field of education in seminars through the translation of important manuals and the consequent edition of original introductory works, authored by the French Cardinal Desiré Mercier, draw attention. His translator, the Augustinian friar Marcelino Arnáiz, would say “If we do not enter to occupy a place in it, the psychology of the future will be done without us, and it could even be feared that against us” (1901, p. 18). In Mexico, those made by Arnáiz that included the translation of the very complete introductory and compilation work of Cardinal Mercier, Los orígenes de la psicología contemporánea (The Origins of Contemporary Psychology) (1901), were introduced especially in seminars, and from the authorship of the Augustinian Los fenómenos psicológicos. Cuestiones de psicología contemporánea (Psychological phenomena, questions of

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contemporary psychology) (1903) and Psicología basada en la experiencia. Volumen I. La vida sensible. Vol II La inteligencia (Psychology based on experience, Vol. I The sensitive life; Vol. II The intelligence) (1904). In addition, there are the work of the capuchin Francisco de Bárbens El cerebro, los nervios y el alma (The brain, the nerves and the soul) (1912) and the translation of the English of the work of the Jesuit Hubert Gruender (1917), by the Jesuit Dionisio Domínguez Psicología sin alma. Trabajo crítico (Psychology without soul, critical work) (sf), already in the second decade of the twentieth century. The texts were in the libraries of the seminars and those of the students of philosophy in Mexico, such as Emeterio Valverde Tellez, and introduced their readers to the precise knowledge of Wundt’s texts, both those of psychological physiology and later ones about Völkerpsychologie and even, without knowing it, they entered into the same disputes that the disciples would enter and somehow detractors of Wundt like Oswald Kulpe and the school of Würzburg: But how to properly interpret the objective symbols—language, mythology, religion, institutions, and customs—that express higher phenomena inaccessible to experimentation, by means of individual psychology that only understands the elementals, object of experimentation? It would be necessary to deprive the former of their essentially original character, and to suppose that they result from the associative synthesis of the elementals, unsustainable assumption, and today dead. On the other hand, the psychology of the peoples cannot solve the most important problems of individual psychology. “What is the symbolization from the psychological point of view, and how it makes abstract thinking possible, what is the nature of the concept, what are the logical relationships and what are the conditions of their appearance; in the volitional act how it is necessary to describe the course of feelings, of motives, of decision; What does conscience teach us about the activity of the subject and about free will? In these and other fundamental problems, collective psychology can not give us any solution; it is absolutely necessary to go to the direct testimony of the individual conscience” (Arnáiz, 1903, pp. V–XII).

One of the tangible advantages for the students of the seminars is that there was no American adjustment nor expurgate process. Contrary on what happens on the liberal side, the texts will not leave out what did not suit to US psychologists’ interests for the development of experimental psychology (Wozniak, 1999; Danziger, 1979) and it did appear in books such as Titchener’s translation that was adopted for use in the ENP for more than 25 years (Rodríguez Preciado, 2003).

Conclusions One of the first things that draws attention is the extent to which the process by which the study of psychology was introduced in Mexico generated disputes in the internal structures of the two institutions that disputed national education: the church and the State. For both, the modernization efforts were those that had encouraged their updating in the philosophical horizon of the third quarter of the nineteenth century.

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It is important, however, to also point out the differences: While in the seminars the study of psychology appears with the aim of updating the neothomism and preparing a philosophical support that could dialogue and no longer turn its back on the approaches of modern science. In the Mexican liberal institutions it appears as a shift of the positivist paradigm towards notions of science and philosophy more tolerant and less materialist in the ideological aspect. The referents of Mexican positivism have begun to be more English than French and it would not take long for it to give up positivist education, opening the door to the study of different philosophies, different psychologies, and different versions of the country, which would end up being present, sometimes bursting, during the years of the revolution. This frame of reference allows us to verify in the first instance if what is involved in these cases is the extent to which reception contexts, whether philosophical, epistemological, or otherwise, leave their mark on the elements they receive and integrate into another determined cultural and historical horizon. This because today, the study of psychology continues to occur between departments, schools, and approach disputes. Although, as Pablo Fernández Christlieb says (2016), “All history of Psychology, hides a project of future,” in that sense, the important lesson of this text is to understand that psychology does not arrive in Mexico already as a developed science but within a process where both groups are trying to justify their participation in an apparently ideological dispute. One that in the pragmatic was also political. As much as the processes in each context resemble each other, it is striking that both groups could not have congenially worked even if they had proposed it. Each one had an agenda in which the understanding and teaching of psychology occupied different places and nevertheless the sources that were studied would be getting closer and closer. The review of a process like this shows that the discipline was never a pure science, even when it was studied in a positivist curriculum, where it reception was co-opted for translations made to convenience and internal disputes. It appeared as an advance in the development of thought, but also as an interest in understanding the man who was closing the century: a nineteenth century that would define Mexico as none had done it, with new frontiers, new scars, new exiles, new interests, and new problems. For some followers of psychology already inhabitants of the twentieth century, it promised to serve to predict and give direction to behavior and to help parents raise their children and the employer to interact with their workers. More than 100 years after these events, we might ask ourselves if we understand better the discipline that we have in hand or if, like a century ago, it remains the pretext to discuss political, ideological, or doctrinal differences.

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Index

A Academic and professional activities, 68 Academic projects, 65 Academic psychology programs, 170 Agency for Reincorporation and Normalization (ARN), 173 American Child Guidance Clinics, 238 American Jesuit enterprise, 17 Ancient Peruvian traits, 185 Anti-positivist reaction, 104 Applied psychoanalysis, 123, 126 Applied psychology, 112 Archives of Criminology, Legal Medicine and Psychiatry, 67 Argentina, 53–55, 66–68 Argentinean positivism, 105 Argentinean psychological culture, 120, 125 Argentinean psychology academic psychology, 101 autonomous intellectual exercise, 103 axiogenia, 106 challenges during the new millennium accreditation, 130–131 culture of mixture, 106 democratic transition and institutional normalization, 127–129 desperonization, 118, 119 development of psychology, 110 developments, 101 early development (see Early development of psychology) feminization, 124 general periodization, 96 historical periodization, 96

historical/cultural type, 103 history of psychology, 95 history of the late nineteenth century, 108 industrial culture, 121 Institute of Psychology, 108 positivism, 105 professionalization of philosophy, 104 psychological approaches, 105 psychological phenomena, 102 psychotechnics and professional guidance, 110–117 publication, 108 rationalization, 110 Spanish tradition, 104 undergraduate program, 124 University Reform, 102, 106 vital psychology, 106, 107 Aristotle’s postulates, 181 Association of Psychology Students, 76 Avalanche of psychoanalysis, 123 Avellaneda Law, 119 Average psychologist, 124 Axiogeny, 105, 106 B Basalla’s model, 141 Behavior of Peruvian indigenous man, 180, 187 Behavioural/eflexological procedure, 235 Biological difference, 145, 146 Biological knowledge, 144 Bolivia, 49, 50, 69, 70

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. C. Ossa et al. (eds.), History of Psychology in Latin America, Latin American Voices, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73682-8

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260 Bolivian Association for Behavioral Analysis, 69 Bolivian education system, 69 Bolivian Journal of Behavior Analysis, 69 Bolivian Society of Psychiatry in 1951, 69 Boring’s historiographical approach, 4 Brain plasticity, 159 Brazil, 50, 51, 70, 71 arrival of the Portuguese Court, 143 discovery, 142 impression of psychology, 159 in the nineteenth century, 142 in the twenty-first century, 158–159 outbreak of modernization, 144 public works, 143 Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), 142 Brazilian League of Mental Hygiene, 224 C Catholic Church, 226 Catholic education in Mexico, 249 Centennial of the May Revolution, 102, 103 Central Board of Charity, 227 Central Charity Board, 228 Chair of Psychology, 79 Child Guidance Clinics, 223, 228, 234 Child mental hygiene in Chile behaviour, 223 child protection policies, 237 clinical psychology, 238 complex and heterogeneous process, 221–222 conduct disorder aetiological factors, 234 affective personality emotions, 236 behaviour modification, 235 classical psychoanalytic tests, 235 cultural conditions, 233 DFL, 231 economic factors, 236 education, 236 EES, 231 emotional factor, 234 emotional repression, 234 environments, 233 foreign models, 236 genetic psychology, 234 institution, 230, 232, 236 journal publications, 232 juvenile psychopathies, 234

Index mental capacity, 236 mental disorder, 236 pedagogical-school environment, 235 problem-child, 233 psychiatric social service, 233 psychiatrists, 232 psychiatry, 230 psychoanalysis, 235 psychoanalytic inspiration, 235 psychotechnics, 235 psychotherapeutic/pedagogical interventions, 236 school-aged children, 233 school children, 234 school environment, 236 sense of inferiority, 234 social environment, 235 socio-economic status, 233 state of inhibition, 234 statistics, 236 detection and management tool, 237 economic model, 237 educational reforms, 237 etymology, 222 framework, 222, 238 global/international perspective, 221 heterogeneous, 222 homogeneity, 222 institutionalization AchHM members, 227 assimilative pedagogical capacity, 229 biotypological and biopsychological results, 229 characteristics, 229 child protection, 230 Chilean economic development, 225 Chilean educational policy, 226 curative assistance, 227 diversity, 225 infant mortality, 225 institutions, 226 intervention, 226 macroeconomic processes, 224 mental hygiene issue, 225 neurological and psychopathic disorders, 229 pedagogy field, 228 preventive assistance, 226 process of awareness, 225 social adaptation, 228 social environment, 229 social issue, 225 technical-scientific method, 226

Index urban infrastructure, 224 urban population, 224 internationalization, 224 interventions, 221 monitoring and control projects, 237 naturalistic perspective, 221 physical illness, 223 prevention, 223 prophylaxis, 223 psychiatrists, 223 psychiatry and mental hospitals, 223 psychopedagogy, 238 school mental hygiene, 222 scientific knowledge, 237 social and macroeconomic processes, 237 social crisis, 237 social intervention programme, 223 social service, 224 social work, 224 Child Protection Act, 227 Chile, 52, 71, 72 Chilean Association of Mental Hygiene, 238 Chilean Association of Psychoanalysis, 72 Chilean Network of Trainers and Researchers in Community Psychology, 72 Citizen Constitution, 157 Civilization, 144, 194, 201 Clinical bias, 101 Clinical psychology, 123 Coca consumption, 184 Coca degeneration, 185 Cognitive functions, 210 Collective demobilization, 172 Collective professional guidance, 113 Colombia, 73, 74 Colombian Association of Social Psychology (ACOPSI), 73 Colombian psychology, 73 development of psychology, 163 extreme wave of violence, 164–167 historical development, 164 identification process, 166 intellectual colonialism, 163, 164 intervention and research, 174 peace agreements, 171 political project, 175 post-conflict Colombia, 171–173 social and political history, 169–171 Colombian transformation, 168 Colonization, 194, 201 Commonwealth Fund (CF), 223 Community psychology, 70, 170 Conduct Disorder Clinic (CDC), 222

261 Connecticut Society for Mental Hygiene, 223 Creative destruction, 65 Cuba, 74, 75 Cuban Society of Psychology, 74 Cultural history of psychology in Argentina, 95 Cultural magazines, 202 Cultural quietism, 196 Culture of mixture, 106 Current Psychological Problems, 228 D Darwinian evolutionism, 208 Decree with Force of Law (DFL), 231 Department of Political and Social Order (DOPS), 46 Department of Public Service Administration (DASP), 149, 150 Depersonalization, 107 Desperonization, 118, 119 Developed economies, 121 Developmentalist policies, 120, 123 Discovery of Brazil, 142 Discreet revolution, 121 Dogmatism of colonial Christianity, 213 E Early development of psychology in Argentina clinical bias, 99, 101 clinical, experimental and social psychology, 101 denomination experimental psychology, 100 European psychology, channels, 97 experimental psychology, 97, 99 experimentation in teaching, 100 French bias, 98 Frenchization of the Argentinean cultural elite, 97 methods of psychology, 100 new psychology, 98 personalities, 98 personality disaggregations, 98, 101 scientific medicine, 100 teaching of psychology, 100 university laboratories, 99 Early development of psychology in Brazil, 142 Ecclesiastical institution, 250 Economic crisis, 69

Index

262 Economic modernization, 121 Education system, 128, 130 Educational processes, 66 Educational system, 146 Elements of Psychology, 82 Encomenderos, 194 Escuela Nacional Preparatoria (ENP) (National Preparatory School), 243–248, 254 Ethical-civic teaching, 245 European civilization, 193 Evangelicals, 159 Evangelization efforts, 193 Evolutionism, 145, 204 Experiential learning, 212 Experimental psychology, 100, 145, 146, 209 Experimental School of Development, 232, 234 Extensive Experimentation Schools (EES), 231 Extreme wave of violence, Colombian psychology, 164–167 F Faculty of Educational Sciences of the Normal School of Teachers, 66 Federal Council of Psychology, 157, 159 First Argentine Congress of Psychology, 114–116 First Chilean Conferences of Nipiology, 235 First Inter-American Conference on Mental Hygiene, 228–229 First International Congress on Mental Hygiene, 224 First Latin American Seminar on Social Psychology in 1975, 82 First Mexican Congress of Behavior Analysis in 1974, 77 Foreign capital, 97, 120, 121 French bias, 98, 99 French Revolution, 144 G General Direction of Prisons, 232 General Directorate of Elementary Education, 231 General Directorate of Minors, 227 General Elementary Education Law, 226 General Law of Universities, 72 Genetic markers, 193 Greek physician Hippocrates, 29 Guatemala, 75, 76 Guatemalan Association of Psychology, 75

H Heredity of intelligence, 144 Hispanic American, 104 History of Catholic philosophy, 251 History of mentalities, 95 History of psychology, 191 in Argentinean, 95 personalities, 95 personalities/institutions, 96 perspectives of analysis, 96 psychological institutions, 96 psychological practices, 96 psychological techniques, 95 science, 97 scientific theories, 95 in Mexico, 243 History of psychology in Brazil, 141 History of psychology in Colombia, 163 History of psychology in Paraguay, 191, 192 History of psychology in Peru, 179, 180 History of the ecclesiastical institution, 243 Human migration, 193 Humanistic positivism, 245 Humanization, 193 I Indigenous psychology, 193, 201 Indigenous race, 183 Individual professional guidance, 113 Individual psychology, 254 Industrial culture, 121 Industrialization, 143, 144, 149, 150 Information of the Province of Brazil, 26 Innovation technology, 121 Institute of criminology, 67 Institute of Psychology, 238 Institutional structures, 65 Intellectual colonialism, 163 International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10), 159 International Committee for Mental Hygiene, 224 International Psychotechnical Conferences, 112 Internships, 151, 157 Invention of the native psyche, 192 J Jesuit mission in Latin America activities, 16 analysis, 19 appetitive power, 19

Index Aristotelian psychology, 19 Aristotelian-Thomist definition, 19 Aristotelian-Thomist psychological knowledge, 36 Aristotle a dianoetic virtue, 39 Brazil, 16, 37 building knowledge anthropological diversity, 24 anthropophagic conduct, 23 autobiography, 21 Aymaran language, 23 barbarians, 23 Brazilian ethnic groups, 25 characteristics, 24 Christian Republic, 25 cognitive powers, 26 cognitive processes, 25 communication, 21 complex process, 21 Council of Trent, 24 cultural categories, 22 demand for learning, 26 diabolical imagination, 22 educational process, 23 external and internal senses, 22 historical and cultural demands, 21 internal and external senses, 22 knowledge, 22 languages, 26 monstrous deviations, 23 political and social organization, 25 psychic dynamism, 22 psychological characteristics, 24 psychological knowledge, 21, 22 relations, 24 sensitive powers, 25 Society of Jesus, 21 supernatural influences, 25 Universal Relations, 23 catechetical and pedagogical purposes, 38 celebrations, 40 celebrative events, 39 Christian colonizers, 15 Christian community, 40 colonization, 15, 18, 37 communication, 39 communicative and persuasive processes, 38 components, 35 Conimbrica, 18 constructive factors, 20 cultural practices, 35 decisive psychic and cultural process, 40

263 dynamisms, 39 education activity of senses, 35 Christian social body, 32 composition, 33 conversation, 32 corporal and spiritual dimension, 35 cultural inferiority, 32 development process, 33 emphasis, 31 European society, 31 humanist philosophy and pedagogy, 34 humanistic and scientific instruction, 32 institution of children, 33 method of argument, 33 pedagogical experience, 33 pedagogical level, 35 process, 32, 34 reductions, 31 social environment, 34 Society of Jesus, 33 teaching catechism and literacy, 32 training task, 35 transmission of values, 33 urban structure, 32 welfare of humanity, 31 working method, 32 education and social integration, 18 elements, 20 emotional involvement, 39 environment, 16 ethnic groups, 16 external senses, 39 general languages, 18 indigenous community, 36 indigenous nations, 15 indigenous population, 37 Instructions, 17 instruments, 39 intellectual inequality, 20 internal senses, 19 knowledge and practices, 16 Medicine of the Soul, 20 missionaries, 38 mobilization, 36 natural complexion, 20 natural philosophy, 19 Ordinances, 17 parties and celebration, 37 parties and games, 35 Portugal, 15 powers, 19 process, 18

Index

264 Jesuit mission in Latin America (cont.) process of modernity, 15 procession, 37 productive system, 16 psychic powers, 20, 40 psychic states, 20 psychism, 40 psychological knowledge, 15, 18, 20, 21, 39 quality and quantity, 19 Reduções, 16 reductions, 15–17, 38 rural environment, 17 social conduct, 17 social life, 36 Society of Jesus, 16 Spain, 15 therapeutic power of words anthropological vision, 29 community, 27 cultural practice, 28 cultural transmission, 28 doctors of the soul, 31 European culture, 28 field of emotions, 29 Guarani populations, 28 Hippocratic-Galenic matrix, 30 human building, 30 human organism, 30 humoral doctrine, 31 Indians, 28 indigenous cultural tradition, 27 integrity, 29 pathological somatic effects, 30 physical and psychological effects, 30 physician of souls, 29 political authorities, 27 psychic dynamism, 30 psychosomatic complexion, 29 psychosomatic deviations, 31 soul-corporal complexity, 31 transformation process, 19 transmission, 21 urban and rural areas, 17 visitors, 36 L Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, 226 Latin America Bolivia, 69, 70 Brazil, 70, 71 characteristics, 83 Chile, 71, 72

Colombia, 73, 74 Cuba, 74, 75 development, 84 economic growth, 83 epistemology, 63 ethnic and social diversity, 84 factor, 83 geopolitical contexts, 64–66 Guatemala, 75, 76 institutionalization, 84 Mexico, 76, 77 Paraguay, 78, 79 Peru, 79–81 political and economic context, 83 political psychology, 84 professionalization, 84 psychological science, 85 psychology, 63, 64 psychosocial processes, 64–66 public institutions, 83 raw material, 84 regulatory legal systems, 83 rgentina, 66–68 social psychology, 84 socio-critical approaches, 64 socioeconomic context, 83 socioeconomic problems, 84 sociology of science, 63 transcultural psychology, 83 Venezuela, 81, 82 vulnerable communities, 85 Latin American psychology academic manuals, 5 academic production, 7 characteristics, 10 Chile, 8 coexistence and particularism, 4 development, 3 diverse cultures, 8 doctoral training program, 6 historical work, 8 historiographic concepts, 11 historiographic research, 3, 8, 10 history, 3, 4, 6, 9 multicultural richness, 10 in Peru, 8 planetary scale, 9 polycentric history, 6 publication, 4 regional and local psychology, 9 research framework, 7 traditional history, 4, 6 undergraduate level, 6 League of Red Cross Societies, 227

Index Leibniz-Wolffianism, 181 Liberal profession, 122 Life psychology, 107 Life sciences, 144 Limited Experimentation Schools (LES), 231 M Macrocultural changes, 128 Mandatory Elementary Education Act, 226, 231 Materialism, 145 Medical psychology, 100 Mental disorders, 159 Mental health promotion, 78 Mental Hygiene League, 228, 229 Mexican Association of Social Psychology (AMEPSO), 77 Mexican Journal of Behavior Analysis in 1975, 77 Mexican positivism, 245, 255 Mexican psychology authorship, 253 church conflicts, 249–253 in diocesan and religious seminaries, 248–249 education in seminars, 253 in the ENP in 1896, 244, 247–248 experimental psychology, 254 first proposal for a psychology class, 246–247 historical course of the ENP, 245 individual psychology, 254 laws of reform, 244, 249, 250 libraries of seminars, 254 philosophical method, 252 philosophical support, 255 psychological physiology, 254 Mexico, 76, 77 Ministry of Public Education, 231 Modern psychology, 184 Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario (MNR), 49 Multicultural reality, 192 Multidimensional Care Model, 172 N National Assembly, 75 National Commission for University Evaluation and Accreditation (CONEAU), 128 National Committee for Mental Hygiene (NCMH), 223

265 National Department of Hygiene and Health, 69 National identity, 70 National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), 46 National League of Mental Hygiene, 228 National Pacheco Manicomio, 69 National Reorganization Process, 126 National Research and Postgraduate Association (ANPEPP), 157 National Society for the Improvement of Conditions Among the Insane, 223 National University of San Marcos (UNMSM), 80 Natural selection, 145 Neo-Aristotelianism, 181 Neo-Cartesianism, 181 Neo-Kantianism, 103 Neothomism, 253 Neurology, 109 Newtonianism, 181 Nursing/social work, 124 O Organic Law of Public Instruction, 246 Organization of school mental hygiene, 229 Original Peruvian man, 180, 187 P Paraguay, 47, 48, 78, 79 Paraguayan adaptation, 208 Paraguayan intelligentsia, 203 Paraguayan psychology Catholicism, 194, 195 culture factor, 192 feature of research, 212 historical evolution, 214 history of psychology, 191, 192 irradiation, 196 Liberal Party, 209 maternal imprint, 199 mestizaje, 198 mutual defense agreements, 197 native inhabitants, 199 political centralization project, 197 pre-Columbian culture, 213 pre-university period, 196 psychological observation, 199 racial differentiation, 195 scientific purpose, 214 Spanish colonial possessions, 198 Spanish colonizers, 193 substantive discussion, 192

266 Paraguayan Society of Psychology, 78 Paraguayan territory, 193 Pathological/morbid psychology, 100 Peace agreements, 171 Peronism, 112, 117–121 Peronist party, 112, 118 Peru, 79–81 Peruvian indigenous people, 181, 183–185 Peruvian natives, 181, 182 Peruvian psychology ancient traits, 185 Aristotle’s postulates, 181 beginnings of psychology, 180, 183 degeneracy, the Peruvian Indian, 183, 184 drinking water, 181 empirical observation, 183 enlightened movements, 181 historical research, 180 history of psychology, 179, 180 indigenous race, 186 organs of digestion, 182 Peruvian Indian in the colonial period, 180 psychoanalysis, 184, 185 psychopathological research, 185 races, 182 Philosophical anthropology, 102, 110 Physical and psychological coercion, 46 Physiological psychology, 100, 102 Political and socioeconomic characteristics, 65 Political context, 74 Political psychology Colombian, 170, 171 Political reform processes, 65 Positivist spirit, 210 Positivist teaching, 243, 244 Post-schoolchildren, 235 Post-traumatic stress, 212 Pre-Columbian culture, 213 Private merchant ships, 143 Professional bias, 127 Professional guidance, 67, 112–115, 120, 122, 123 Professional orientation, 109, 112, 114, 116 Program for Reincorporation to Civilian Life (PRVC), 172 Program for the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency, 223 Prohibition of worship activities, 244 Prosocial behavior, 70 Protection of Disabled Children Law (1912), 227 Protestant Reformation, 141 Psychiatry, 66, 109

Index Psychiatry and childhood mental hygiene, 232 Psychoanalysis, 121–123, 126, 184, 185 Psychoanalysis burst, 121, 122 Psychoanalysts, 124, 126 Psychoanalytic predominance, 125 Psychodiagnostic process, 122 Psychogeny, 106 Psychological evaluation, 67 Psychological knowledge, 155 Psychological phenomena, 102 Psychological science, 191, 213 Psychology MA programs, 157 master’s degree, 157 Psychology and religious education in Mexico, 244, 248 Psychology and social history of Brazil, 158 Psychology and violence in Colombia, 164–167 Psychology in South American academic development, 47 academic disciplines, 44 analysis, 58 Anglo-Saxon countries, 43 Argentina, 53–55, 57 Bolivia, 49, 50 Brazil, 50, 51, 55 characteristics, 44–46 Chile, 52, 55 colonization and land expropriation, 43 critical history, 45 development, 57 dictatorial governments, 45 dictatorial regimes, 56 field of behavioral psychology, 56 geographical perspective, 43 higher educational institutions, 58 historical and political context, 44 homogeneity, 43 humanity, 59 Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, 55 limitations, 59 Operation Condor, 45 Paraguay, 47, 48, 55 politicization and subjectivity, 44 Portuguese, 43 process, 43, 44 psychological techniques, 56 public universities, 58 reconstruction, 45 refuge and exile, 55, 56 region, 43

Index

267

research, 47 social and political commitments, 44 social reintegration, 57 Spanish, 43 subversion, 45 survivor syndrome, 56 torture and disappearance of psychologists, 46, 56, 57 training, 47, 50 United Nations (UN), 55 United States, 43, 58 universalist and positivist epistemology, 44 Uruguay, 52, 53 vehicle of communication, 58 Psychology programs, 114, 122, 124, 125 Psychometric tests, 212 Psychophysical proportionalism, 184 Psychosocial and Integral Health Care Program for Victims (PAPSIVI), 173 Psychosocial Attention for Peace Program, 172 Psychosocial Care for Peace model, 172 Psychosocial intervention, 173 Psychosocial practices, 173 Psychosocial processes, 65, 66 Psychotechnics, 67, 112, 113, 121, 122 Public education, 66 Public policy, 173

Social and community psychology, 75 Social and political history of psychology, 169–171 Social arrangements, 65 Social change, 70 Social crisis, 72 Social history of psychology in Argentina, 95 Social level, 65 Social protection of the abnormal and delinquent child, 227 Social psychology, 66, 68, 73, 77, 158, 211 Social reality, 82, 210 Social Service, 228 Social theory, 120 Social transformation, 174 Socialization, 192 Society of Jesus, 17, 18 Society of Neurology, Psychiatry and Legal Medicine, 229 Sociocultural structures, 45 Sociology, 210 Spanish colonizers, 193, 214 Special Course of Psychology, 238 Stanford-Binet test application, 208 Superior race, 201, 203 Superior School of Medical Clinical Psychology, 75 Symbolization, 254

R Race, 145, 158 Rational spirit, 183 Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), 73, 167, 171–173 Rockefeller Funds (RF), 223 Rorschach projective test, 212 Royal Chapel of Lisbon, 29 Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), 222

T Teaching psychology in Mexico, 243, 248, 255 Teaching State, 226 Toxic factors, 184 Training of psychologists in Argentina, 114, 115, 123, 126

S School of Social Service, 227, 228 Science Basalla’s model, 141 emergence, 141 Scientific culture, 97 Scientific racism, 145, 149 Scientific theories, 95 Second Peronist Five-Year Plan, 113 Self-consciousness, 106 Shared nationality, 197

U Underdeveloped economies, 121 Unesco Project, 158 Universal Relations, 24 Universidad Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), 55 Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (UAP), 55 Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM), 56 Universidad Mayor de San Andrés (UMSA), 50 Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), 57

Index

268 University disorganization, 118 University-CONICET system, 120 Uruguay, 52, 53

Victims Law, 173 Vital psychology, 106, 107 Vocational guidance, 113, 122

V Venezuela, 81, 82 Venezuelan Association of Social Psychology (AVEPSO), 82

W Wolffian-Kantian tradition, 111