Lafora in Madrid and Mira-López in Barcelona, led small teams that played essential roles in a psychological approximation movement towards performance and efficiency in industries, rehabilitation programs for disabled employees and personnel selection. Interest in tests and instruments grew. Many of the fundamental works related to contemporary psychological schools were translated, from Freudian psychoanalysis to phenomenology, as well as the works of Pavlov, Binet, the Gestaltists, Piaget, Bühler and Spranger.
Juan Vicente Viqueira (1886-1924) is a special case. Besides being one of Simarro's students, he followed courses under Bergson, Husserl, and Cassirer. He also did lab research under George Elias Müller in Gottingen (Germany), and was able to publish a study on nonsense-syllable memory in the Zeitschrift für angewandte Psychologie. His posthumous book on the history of contemporary psychology, ( La Psicologia Contemporanea, 1930), published six years after his death, is an excellent overview of the psychological scene of his time. He focuses on Wundt, and provides an interesting prospect of post-Wundtian schools, while emphasizing the European contributions.
The "Madrid School", developed thanks to the efforts of some physicians, was mainly interested in psycho-therapeutical questions and issues. This may be considered as a distinctive trait of the Madrid group, headed by Lafora. Gonzalo R. Lafora (1886-1971), a student of Simarro and Cajal, was not a psychologist but a psychiatrist and neurologist (he also did pioneering work in Alzheimer's disease). He urged the development of psycho-educational therapy, and his driving force was the study and treatment of mentally impaired children. Among his other works were Los niños mentalmente anormales (1917) ("Mentally abnormal children"), the first significant and up-to-date Spanish textbook on that topic.
Together with some of his students, - Luis Valenciano, José Germain and Mercedes Rodrigo - Lafora worked to establish a series of institutions (National Patronage for the Mentally Impaired, Institute for Professional Retraining for Injured Workers), and to create others, such as the Medical-Educational Institute in Madrid, or the Spanish Society for Mental Hygiene. A series of educators and teachers interested in psycho-pedagogical disciplines, such as Domingo Barnés, Jacobo Orellana, A. Anselmo González and José Mallart, collaborated closely with them. All these efforts in favor of psycho-pedagogical therapy were obviously the echo of a generalized movement in Europe, Pedology, in whose awakening Binet, Stern, Decroly, Claparède, among others, had played an outstanding role.
The Barcelona school's main figure was Emilio Mira-López (1896-1964). One of Turró's and Pi Sunyer's students, a consultant psychiatrist, he can be undoubtedly considered as Spain's first psychologist. His teaching activity was interrupted by the Spanish Civil War and he went into exile for the rest of his life. Author of a personality test, the Myokinetic Test (PMK), a graphic, expressive and projective test of clinical value; he began to work on forensic psychology (Manual de Psicologia Juridica, 1932), and on psychotechnics. The role of vocational guidance and personnel selection, especially of tramway, bus and taxi drivers, was entrusted to him by the Municipal Government of Barcelona. His efforts brought to the Centre a high reputation and social prestige, and so promoting his subsequent works.
During the years before the Spanish Civil War, the figure of Emilio Mira y López appears as one outstanding personality who positioned psychological research and who should have become one of the future leaders in the field.
As a consequence of the prevailing social movement in Catalonia, a Social Museum was created in Barcelona, in order to collect information about labour and social problems, in addition, a centre for Education (Secretariat d'Aprenentatge - 1914) for young people's guidance was founded, which in due course was to become the Institute of Professional Guidance (Institut d'Orientación Professional - 1918), this included a Psychometric Laboratory where Mira began to work. The history of this initial phase in psychotechnics is well-known (Kirchner, 1980; Siguan 1982; Soler and Tortosa, 1987). The Institute was entrusted with the application of psychological principles to personnel selection, and was on good terms with other research groups in Germany (Moede), Switzerland (Claparède) and France (Lahy). Mira produced some technological innovations, designed some new instruments for psychological diagnosis and created his myokinetic test (or PMK), which was extensively disseminated internationally.
Mira organized two international meetings for applied psychology in Barcelona, in 1921 and in 1930. He also founded two psychological journals in Catalonia, and promoted psychological training at the University of Barcelona, where he was to become the first psychiatry professor in Spain. However, all these initial efforts had to be continued later outside Spain, mainly in Brazil, which became his new country after his exile in 1939 (ARDILA, 1971).
So, as we can see, in the first decades of the 20th century there was an applied psychology tradition in Spain while in those years only eclectic and tentative approaches were made towards theory (PEIRO, 1984). Though without continuity, it is still significant that interest in psychological matters, should appear here over and over again strongly connected to its possible applications.
For the Spanish world, the twenties and thirties were a period of great change, large social movements and cultural splendour. Together with an in-depth social and political transformation, an enormously creative literature developed, thanks to men of the so-called Generation of 98 (Antonio Machado, Miguel de Unamuno, Azorin, Pio Baroja...) and other groups that followed (with names such as Nobel-prize winners Juan Ramón Jimenez and Vicente Aleixandre, and famous poets such as Federico Garcia Lorca and Rafael Alberti, among others). There was also a creative movement in philosophy, with Jose Ortega y Gasset; and in sciences, with physicists such as Blas Cabrera, Julio Palacios, Miguel Catalán, Eduardo Torroja; neurologists like Pio del Rio Hortega and Rafael Lorente de No, and many other names which managed to play an active and creative role in research.
Whithin this framework, other valuable contributions in the field of psychology, should also be studied. Archivos de Neurobiologia, the first scientific journal partially dedicated to psychology, was founded by psychiatrist Lafora and J.M.Sacristán, together with the philosopher Ortega. This was an important publication that gathered men and women interested in psycho-neuro-biological questions. Ortega's support for this enterprise was meaningful. Ortega, (1883-1955), who was perhaps the most prominent intellectual figure in the pre-war period developed a philosophical system centred around the analysis of the existential structure including both the person and his world, that he called "my life"; a structure very close to the concept of "Existence" in existentialist philosophy, strongly influenced by phenomenology (Husserl, Scheler), by von Uexkëll's objective biology and by some holistic psychological views such as Dilthey's comprehensive approach and the Gestalt school. His vision of human being as an historical one offers interesting possibilities for psychology (MARIAS, 1967).
Close to Ortega and Lafora is the endocrinologist Gregorio Marañón (1887-1960), who, besides publishing important works on the evolution of sexuality, development and endocrine functions, also carried out very well-known studies on emotion, proving in 1924, the dual dimensions, somatic and cognitive, which are the very essence of this phenomenon (a real antecedent of the cognitive theory of emotion, elaborated several decades later). He considered the endocrine system as the "guardian of personality", the key to integration and regulation of somatic constitution processes and of temperament development. Deeply interested in history, he carried out studies on some important figures of the past using analyses and reflections of a psycho-somatic, and of a "psycho-historical" nature.
Psychology was present in this far-reaching cultural movement. The thoughts of Piaget, Claparède, Montessori and Adler were disseminated among educators and highbrows interested in social science. Nearly all of Freud's works were translated, as well as those of Pavlov, Ribot, Jung, Bühler, Kretschmer, Koffka, Spranger and many others we will not quote here.
In 1928, a series of laboratory-offices were set up in several provinces. Two Institutes, one in Madrid, (with José Germain), and another in Barcelona, (with Emilio Mira), were also established for the study of traffic safety problems, vocational guidance and industrial psychology and physiology as well as the elaboration of complementary psychotechnic tests. (PEIRO,1984).
The 11th International Congress of Psychology was scheduled for Madrid in 1936, with Mira and Germain as executive organizers. However, it had to be held in 1937, in Paris, due to the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), with the terrible consequences it entailed for the country at all levels.
This International Congress had the official support of the Government of the Spanish Republic. Changing its seat to Paris possibly helped to remobilize many scientists and scholars in support of the Republican Government, which among other things, organized in the U.S. a Medical Bureau to Aid Spanish Democracy, this was directed by W.B. Cannon, with a subcommittee of psychologists, led by C.L. Hull, and including figures like E.C.Tolman, G.W. Allport, T.Schneirla, K.Lewin and G.Razran (Finison, 1977). The master lines of its celebration had been drafted in the summer of 1935, in Santander, with the help of Spanish and foreign psychologists such as Janet, Myers, Lahy, Michotte, Ponzo, Langfeld and Claparède . At this meeting, the intention was to establish common ground for the final institutionalization of a psychologist's training, curriculum and professional practice in those countries that lacked the adequate infraestructure . Many of these decisions were simply dropped (MONTORO & QUINTANILLA, 1982).
In my opinion, at this early stage a very important element was missing in our country - the behavioral analysis of normal people at work, i.e., greater emphasis on individual differences in behavior and job performance and on methods of measuring and predicting such differences in industrial or military settings.
The military setting was extremely decisive in countries like the U.S.A. in promoting personnel psychology as an applied subdiscipline and in creating a specific awareness of the social usefulness of psychology. Trying to convince Spanish commanding officers was an exercise in futility. It is very likely that this situation has deeply affected the development of Spanish applied psychology, delaying its professional launching.
One could say that the great interest in applied psychology was accompanied by the poor attention given to theory and to basic research. This situation could be described by saying that, in the second half of the 19th century there were psychological ideas and armchair psychologists, but no applied psychologists at all while in the early decades of the 20th century there were a few applied psychologists, but no careful research in psychology. Progress was made keeping in touch with social demands. But was dramatically cut short by the Spanish Civil War.
JOSÉ RAMÓN CORREAS GONZALEZ
Please sent comments and suggestions to:
psdife4@sis.ucm.es
LAST UPDATED Sunday 6 de August de 1995 - -