Reception and forgetting of Henri Pieron and French experimental and applied psychology in the scientific culture of the psychology programs in Argentina

PIÑEDA, M. A.

Paris

Simposio; Colloque International La Contribution d´Henri Piéron a l'a edification de la psychologie scientifique et de l'orientation professionnelle; 2014

INETOP-CNAM

In this work, from a historical standpoint, it is analyzed thereception of Henri Pieron and French experimental and applied psychologyin Argentina. We describe its incidence in the development ofpsychometrics, specially, since the forties decade, and its contribution to thescientific basis of Psychology Programs in Argentina, in the early sixties.We make a comparison between two Psychology Programs where such anapproach was receptioned, and we analyze the differential effects ofmaintaining it within its scientific culture, or forgetting it by the replacementof a different approach.French Psychology produced within the period between the First and theSecond World War, has been brought to new light by historiographicalstudies which have highlighted its worth (Carroy, 2013; Eisenbruch,Eisenbruch & Kazdin, 2000a; Fruteau de Laclos, 2013). As we aim toanalyze, although the French approach to the study of behaviour (Dagfal,2002), or French behaviourism (Fraisse, 1970) was influent by Englishevolutionism (Plas, 2013), it is certainly not indebted to Americanfunctionalism and behaviourism approaches. Indeed, French behaviourism?sglobal approach of behaviour and personality, which stresses neurophysiologicalbasis, widely contrasts American behaviourism. Within anindustrial expansion context, it blossomed in France and French-speakingneighbour countries, a new experimental psychology approach devoted tothe study of behaviour, which was distant to the classic mental illnessproblems.