Psychology and Neo-scholasticism. Intellectual Migrations in the Institutionalization of Psychology as a Science and Profession in Argentina

Abstract

At the beginning of the 20th century, when modern psychology was taking its first steps of institutionalization in Argentina, in an increasingly secularized world, it seemed that science excluded any possibility of relationship with the religious field. However, a new program of scientific psychology was organized in the heart of Catholicism in Europe and spread in the Americas as far as Argentina. What did it contribute to the nascent local psychology? This paper describes intellectual migrations in the circulation of psychological knowledge and practices linked to the international Catholic movement known as Neo-Scholasticism. These migrations are recorded during the process of institutionalization of Argentine psychology as a science and profession between the 1900s and 1960s. Institutions and university training programs, as well as travels, disciple relationships, and reference publications are highlighted. The global view reveals that, beyond a common philosophical base, a heterogeneity of psychological knowledge and practices was disseminated, consistent with the breadth of academic trajectories, as well as political orientations. However, a uniform pattern seems to have been followed in the promotion of a scientific culture that would support an autonomous psychology as a science and profession, based on an integral vision of the object of study.