Fall issue of Revista de Historia de la Psicología

The Fall issue of Revista de Historia de la Psicología is now online. Full titles, authors, and English abstracts follow below:

1. Bernardo Houssay, Horacio Rimoldi y la formación de investigadores en Psicología: Una bisagra entre CONICET y las Universidades Argentinas. [Bernardo Houssay, Horacio Rimoldi and the training of researchers in psychology: A hinge between CONICET and Argentine universities] María Andrea Piñeda. (Article written in Spanish).

In Argentina, between the mid-1950s and 1970s, successive political and economic crises were accompanied by transformations in the university system and in science and technology policies. At the same time, the figure of the professional psychologist emerged with a clinical-psychoanalytic profile and competences with diffuse and controversial limits regarding the medical field. Management sectors of CONICET and of some universities argued that this profile was not very conducive to the scientific development of psychology and they came together on a researchers training project. A key figure in fostering this mission was the prestigious Argentine academic Horacio Rimoldi. He was a disciple of the Nobel Prize winner and first President of CONICET Bernardo Houssay, and he directed a psychometry laboratory at Loyola University (United States). The reconstruction of a web of relationships, strategies and resources used to achieve this goal is made from the analysis of a voluminous documentary corpus that includes more than 100 letters between academics.

2. Towards a History of Psychology in Portugal: The Contribution of Sílvio Lima’s A Psicología em Portugal (1949). [Para una Historia de la Psicología en Portugal: La contribución de La Psicología en Portugal (1949) de Sílvio Lima]. Manuel Viegas Abreu. (Article written in Englsih).

In the panorama of the portuguese scientific production in the area of psychology, there is a lack of a history of psychology in Portugal. The purpose of this article is to analyze the proposals that Sílvio Lima (1904-1993) presented in the 1949 synopsis entitled Psychology in Portugal as a contribution to fill this gap. Bearing in mind the validity of the proposals, the synopsis project deserves to be resumed and expanded. In order to contribute to this purpose, the present paper includes an “Addendum” with the main bibliographic references of the protagonists mentioned in the synopsis

3. Las Memorias de José Luis Pinillos. Un documento para la Historia de la Psicología en España. [The Memoirs of José Luis Pinillos. A document for the History of Psychology in Spain]. Enrique Lafuente. (Article written in Spanish).

The Memoirs is an unpublished and likely unfinished manuscript which was written by the renowned Spanish psychologist José Luis Pinillos (1919-2013) when he was over 90 years old. Composed with the help of one of his daughters, these autobiographical remembrances deal in particular detail with the years of childhood and youth of its author -what Pinillos himself once called his “first life”. Among the most remarkable aspects of its contents, the attention paid to Pinillos’s war experience is worth emphasizing. The aim of this paper is to go through the various issues dealt with in these Memoirs, as well as comment on their most salient features. The paper concludes by stressing the value of this unique document as a privileged observatory of its author’s life experience and personality.

4. El conductismo atravesando América. Un estudio sociobibliométrico de la Revista Interamericana de Psicología y la Revista Latinoamericana de Psicología en sus primeras cuatro décadas. [Behaviorism across America. A sociobibliometric study of Interamerican Journal of Psychology and the Revista Latinoamericana de Psicología in its first four decades]. Fernando Andres Polanco, Josiane Sueli Beria, Hugo Klappenbach, Rubén Ardila (Article written in Spanish).

Behaviorism was an influential psychological approach in the 20th century. This research investigates the circulation in two magazines of recognized trajectory in America, where the totality of their original articles published in their first four decades were analyzed sociobibliometrically. The most productive authors and institutions came from Latin America and the Caribbean (LAyC), with a significant number of invisible schools. Publications on verbal behavior, behavior modification and social behavior were highlighted in both journals. In the analysis of references, authors and productions of the experimental analysis of behavior, behavior modification and interbehavior stand out. In the RIP, Anglo-Saxon references dominated, while in the RLP an average level of bibliography from ALyC was found. It is concluded that there was a high and diverse circulation, production and promotion of behaviorism in both journals.

DOCUMENTS: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF INDOCTRINATION

5. Introducción: Philipp Lersch y la psicología del adoctrinamiento. [Philipp Lersch and the psychology of indoctrination]. Enric Novella. (Article written in Spanish).

This article presents the (first) translation into Spanish of the important conference on the psychology of indoctrination delivered on 5th June 1968 at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences by the German psychologist Philipp Lersch (1898-1972). After noting the current occurrence of different practices of ideological manipulation and indoctrination, the origins of the most elaborate versions of these practices in the decades following the Second World War are described, as well as the first systematic investigations into their complex psychological foundations. Subsequently, the great milestones of Lersch’s academic and intellectual career are reviewed along with his main contributions in areas such as the study of expression, personality theory, social psychology and cultural criticism. And, finally, the main lines of his “psychological-structural” analysis of the main phenomena and particularities of the human psyche that make subjects vulnerable to indoctrination are briefly otlined: the ability to doubt, the propensity to guilt feelings and the need to live in a certain sensory frame of reference.

6. The psychology of indoctrination. Philipp Lersch. (Translation into Spanish).

About Jacy Young

Jacy Young is a professor at Quest University Canada. A critical feminist psychologist and historian of psychology, she is committed to critical pedagogy and public engagement with feminist psychology and the history of the discipline.