This article examines the areas of research conducted at the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology of the University of Rome from 1907 to 1947, directed first by Sante De Sanctis (1862-1935), and then, from 1931 on, by Mario Ponzo (1882-1960). The method used to distinguish the topics and areas of research that characterized the Roman School during this period is the textual analysis of the titles of the journal in which studies completed at the laboratory were published, namely, [Psychological Contributions of the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology]. This empirical analysis, which complements and supports the historiographical interpretation, demonstrates the disciplines that emerged under a system managed by the directors over 2 periods of time in the pursuit of scientific psychology in Rome and in Italy. This analysis highlights the process of adjustment from a traditional, general approach to a more theoretical-technical application. This article is a new contribution to the Italian debate on the periodization of the "crisis" in Italian psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record

This article aims to reconstruct the elements of continuity and/or discontinuity in Sante De Sanctis' (1862-1935) contributions in the scientific understanding of sleep and dreaming as compared to the scientific research of his time. An Italian psychologist and psychiatrist, De Sanctis, in his work conducted between the 19th and 20th centuries, has framed the study of dreams using multi-methodology. In addition, De Sanctis experimentally established the correspondence between the deep and desynchronization phases of sleep with respect to dreaming. In this context, De Sanctis' subjects described the periodicity of sleep and consciousness, influencing the explanations of the themes that modern sleep research has, after decades, systematically studied. We demonstrate that De Sanctis' work has been underestimated, and in our opinion, deserves to be reconsidered as a source of the psychophysiological explanation of dreams and sleep. Finally, we present a graphical representation of De Sanctis' psycho- and neurophysiological model of dreaming.

The aim of this article is to describe the nosographical contribution of the Italian psychiatrist Sante De Sanctis (1862–1935) to early twentieth-century child psychiatry. De Sanctis first proposed the category of ‘dementia praecocissima’ in 1906, and it was recognized by Kraepelin. Dementia praecocissima has its roots in a theoretical and methodological conception of mental disorder based on ‘psycho-physical proportionalism’ and the ‘law of circle’. This article deals with De Sanctis’s model, which has so far been neglected by historiographers; it shows the pioneering role that this Italian psychiatrist played in child psychiatry in Italy.

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