The Beginnings of Psychologist Profession in Argentina: Science, Institutional Context and Society

Abstract

AbstractThe chapter analyzes the first developments in psychology at the end of the nineteenth century and beginnings of the twentieth century. In those years, psychology appeared to be a knowledge usable for professions like medicine, pedagogy or legal profession. Moreover, the chapter exhibits a very import shift that happened in the middle of twentieth century when some undergraduate programs started in the field of psychology. Usually, such programs were not found in psychology, but in psychotechnics and professional guidance. The chapter analyzes the scientific orientation of such programs, based on French psychology, as well as the institutional and political factors promoting psychological programs. Last, the chapter will expose the re-orientation of psychology education at universities since the second half of the 1960s, when psychology became synonymous with psychoanalysis. On the one hand, it will analyze the institutional and political background for the constitution of the profession of psychologist. On the other hand, it will exhibit the main ways supporting psychologist psychoanalytically biased profession: epistemological and theoretical approaches within science and psychology education, clinical practices in public institutions, and a virtual repudiation of alternative models of knowing and practicing.