4. A Chronicle of IAAP

Psychology as a formal discipline is now well over 100 years old, having been recognised officially with the establishment of Wundt's experimental laboratory in Leipzig in 1879. The centennial was celebrated in 1980 at the International Congress of Psychology in Leipzig in honor of this great event in the history of psychology. The international movements in psychology are not far behind in age. From these movements three major general international psychological associations have sprung up and are still flourishing. They are also still sponsoring quadrenniel congresses or annual conventions, although until 1976 when the International Congress of Psychology was held in Paris, this was not always de case. These three international organisations are:

The International Union of Psychological Science (IUPsyS)

The International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP)

The International Council of Psychologists (ICP)

The International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP) or Association Internationale de Psychologie Appliquee (AIPA) is the oldest international association of psychologists. It was founded in 1920 as the International Association of Psychotechnology or Association International de Psychotechnique. The association was known by this name until it was changed to the current name in 1955 during the tenure (1953-58) of Clifford Frisby, who was the first non-French speaking president. Frisby, incidentally, was also a nonpsychologist; he was a business man and is the only such president to have served in that office in IAAP. He was the head of the once-great National Institute for Industrial Psychology in Great Britain which, in the 1920s, led the world in industrial psychology and vocational guidance.

CONGRESS                CITY/COUNTRY            YEAR            ORGANIZER
--------                ------------            ----            ---------

I                       Geneva, Switzerland     1920            E. Claparède

II                      Barcelona, Spain        1921            E. Claparède

III                     Milan, Italy            1922            G. Ferrari

IV                      Paris, France           1927            E. Toulouse

V                       Utrecht, Holland        1928            N. Roels

VI                      Barcelona, Spain        1930            E.Mira

VII                     Moscow, USSR            1931            N. Spielrein

VIII                    Prague, Csechoslovakia  1934            R. Seracky

IX                      Bern, Switzerland       1949            H. Pieron

X                       Goteborg, Sweden        1951            J. Elmgren

XI                      Paris, France           1953            R. Bonnardel

XII                     London, UK              1955            C. Frisby

XIII                    Rome, Italy             1958            T. Cancstrelli

XIV                     Copenhagen, Denmark     1961            R. Tranekjaer

XV                      Ljubljana, Yugoslavia   1964            Z. Bujas

XVI                     Amsterdam, Holland      1968            N. Wijngaarden

XVII                    Liège, Belgium          1971            R. Piret

XVIII                   Montreal, Canada        1974            L. Dorais

XIX                     Munich, Germany         1978            R. Amthauer

XX                      Edinburgh, Scotland     1982            G. Randell

XXI                     Jerusalem, Israel       1986            Y. Amir

XXII                    Kyoto, Japan            1990            J. Misumi

XXIII                   Madrid, Spain           1994            J.M. Prieto

XXIV                   San Francisco, USA       1998            J. Matarazzo

If you want another one information about the 24ICAP CLICK HERE and will go to the conventions page of the APA or send E-Mail to the convention office at convention.office@apa.org

The IAAP was organised primarily to establish contact and communication among psychologists on an international scale. For the first 50 years of its existence, the Association, although international in nature and in scope, was dominated by European psychology and psychologists. This fact is emphasized by noting who its principal officers were, where its congresses were held, and the nationalities of the organizers of those international meetings. While many Americans and other non-Europeans were members of the Association in those early days, they did not assume major leadership roles. Perhaps much of this was due to the earlier emphasis in psychology outside of Europe (particularly U.K. and France) on experimental and theoretical psychology rather than clinical, counseling and industrial psychology.

All of this seems to have changed with the Montreal Congress, the first to be held outside of Europe, and the extension to the Far East with the XXII ICAP in Kyoto.

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