In Spain the tradition of scientific psychology began in the last decades of the 19th century. Although it was a small movement, there was a certain continuity with the work of some Renaissance savants, when psychological ideas were developed for the first time. The most relevant names of the past are, undoubtedly, those of Juan Luis Vives (1492-1538), Gomez Pereira (1500-1552?), and Juan Huarte de San Juan (c. 1530-1589). They were educated within the classical tradition, dominated by aristotelianism and galenism and all showed a certain common interest in learning about the human psyche, separating it from that of beasts (G. Pereira) and in analyzing its abilities and skills (Vives, and, especially, Huarte) with a view to possible vocational appraisal and guidance.

Luis Vives, the "father of modern psychology", in Foster Watson's words (1916), began by establishing that, when studying soul and life ("De Anima et Vita", or Treatise of the Soul, 1538), he was not interested so much in the essence of soul but rather in its outward expression and development, as one who wishes to get to know, for example, craftsmen in order to see what "people differences" in behavior cause "work differences" in observed performance. Variations in effectiveness are due to differences in abilities and skills. He also strongly supported associationism as a basis for his educational views.

This attitude reappears in full in the work of Huarte de San Juan. Examen de ingenios para las ciencias (1575), translated into English as The Examinations of Men's Wits (1596), is a real treatise about individuals'skills and capabilities and how they are related to professions and particular courses of study. The book suffered from the rigours the of Spanish Inquisition, and an expurgated version in which human freedom was stressed as opposed to biological determinism, was printed in 1594 Huarte has sometimes been considered as the "father" of differential psychology, triying without success to promote the application of these ideas to younger people living under Philip II in the largest and richest empire of that era.

Pereira has sometimes been considered as a forerunner of Descartes, not least for having been an outstanding supporter of the animal body's mechanistic interpretation, (in his Antoniana Margarita) . According to him, animals are true machines, lacking sense as well as intelligence. His works were well-known in Europe. However, the development of his theses never bore, in our country, the fruits it might have. We must come a long way from these precedents of the Renaissance to arrive at the first expressions of scientific psychology, which appeared at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century.

Spain lived the modern age through the exploitation of the riches of the Americas, but such riches did nothing to promote industry and material progress. Spanish society distanced itself from almost all the European countries subject to the Lutheran reform movement, and played a very limited role in the development of the new science of nature and of modern philosophy from the Baroque period (Marias, 1991; Lain, 1971). The concern for psychology also ceased. We have to wait until the 19th century to find an initiative leading towards restoring a full place in the European and Western world, the technological and humanistic culture, and the liberalization of our society. That is when scientific psychology was made available.

                           JOSÉ RAMÓN CORREAS GONZALEZ
                      
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