Introduction: for a comparative history of the birth of "scientific" psychology.
This introduction to the Proceedings of the Beijing Symposium poses the problem of the birth of a "new psychology" that endeavors to become a science, considered within the cultural, scientific, social, and institutional context of each country. This problem can be subdivided into a series of other more specific questions, dealt with in part by the volume's contributions: the distinction between a "scientific" psychology and a "pre-scientific" one; the historical reconstruction of psychology as a "science," and of psychology as a "discipline" embedded in some institution; the time span in which the passage from the "old" to the "new" was achieved; the scientific-cultural and political-economic-social factors or conditions that influenced and favoured this birth. After a panoramic and "comparative" glance at the situation in different European countries (Germany, France, England, Italy, Spain, and Russia) and some extra-European ones (United States, Brazil, Japan, and China), as presented in the texts of these Proceedings, there follow some considerations of a general nature that attempt to highlight analogies and differences in the historical development of the origin of "scientific" psychology in the various countries.
Cimino
Guido
G
University of Rome "La Sapienza", Italy. guido.cimino@uniroma1.it
D001938:Brazil; D002681:China; D005060:Europe; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan; D011584:Psychology / Q000266:history*; D014481:United States