Origins and development of psychology in Latin America
Titel:
Origins and development of psychology in Latin America
Auteur:
Diaz-guerrero, R.
Verschenen in:
International journal of psychology
Paginering:
Jaargang 29 (1994) nr. 6 pagina's 717-727
Jaar:
1994
Inhoud:
To probe into the history and to try to evaluate the present and the future of a discipline is not a perspective that appears early in its development. It is more a sign that infancy has passed and that the search is for identity and aspiration. As we peruse the roots, the state and status, and the prospects for psychology in Latin America, we are overwhelmed by the amount of information, by its geographical and content asymmetry, but most of all by the phenomenal growth of institutions training in psychology and the even greater, mushrooming, number of individuals presently studying the science and intending to become professional psychologists. Early origins for psychology in this area, as in any other of the world, are inextricably embedded with the development of language, magic, religion, and philosophy. By the time the discipline could be the subject of articles and books (around 1900), after the diffusion of Comptian positivism, the first psychologists not trained in psychology, like Wundt, appeared in several countries as did rather early development of psychological laboratories. Only a few decades later systematic instruction began, that is, training to award formal degrees (from the earliest, 1938, in Mexico to the latest, 1972, in Paraguay) and the utilization of laboratories for teaching rather than for research. Almost two decades passed before the first more or less permanent national associations of psychologists were created (from the earliest, 1951, in Mexico to the latest, 1978, in Venezuela).
Tijdschrift beschrijving