The historiography of psychology of Italy.

Abstract

The article outlines the studies conducted in Italy on the history of psychology since the 1970s, with particular attention to those elaborated in the 1990s. Reference is made to the institutions, authors, congresses, and other initiatives that in the course of 3 decades have promoted the growth of the history of psychology, and a review is presented of the principal research themes undertaken by scholars. An attempt has been made to identify the principal historiographic tendencies and to illustrate the passage from a sort of "positivistic" historiography to an orientation that could be considered multifactorial or one of complexity, attentive to both the internal and the external components of the scientific enterprise, although with a propensity for the history of ideas.

Ten years of Italian historiography of psychology: A field in progress.

“…The principal threads of this kind, together with a reference (where the data consent it) to the contemporary Italian scholars who have dedicated the most attention to them, can be categorized as indicated in Tables 2, 3, and 4. A necessary observation at this point regards the absence-among the many authors of the past, including "minor" ones, who have been the subject of research (1889 -1948), and the reduced number of research studies dedicated to other illustrious protagonists, such as Antonio Aliotta, Cesare Colucci (1865-1942), and Federico Kiesow (1858-1940. It should however be recalled that the Italian historiography of psychology has in varying degrees concerned itself with many of these scholars in the three preceding decades, as attested by the previous appraisal of Cimino and Dazzi (2003). We must then highlight the fact that the quantitative classifications predisposed to conduct the present analysis permit not only to identify the above-mentioned threads, but also to perform a dual evaluation.…”

“…In the last 10 years, the increase in the number of history of psychology courses has fostered the emergence and affirmation of several new research groups, which have in part enriched the situation described by Cimino and Dazzi (2003). Especially at the "Sapienza" University of Rome, the University of Bari, the University of Milan-Bicocca, and the University of Urbino, these groups have undertaken interesting initiatives (among which the realization of electronic archives of published and unpublished texts of Italian psychology, as well as the organization of national and international conferences) and have developed research whose results have been published in international journals.…”

“…All in all, on the part of the most discerning historians, there has been an awareness also in Italy of what has been defined as the "critical history" of science and psychology (Lovett, 2006), that is, a historical research willing to examine critically all the explanatory factors, whether internal or external, contextual or selected in relation to the present and to the progress achieved. It is the sort of historical investigation that Cimino and Dazzi (2003) have called a historiography that is "multifactorial or one of complexity," inasmuch as it represents an attempt to take into account the multiplicity and complexity of all the significant components that enter into play in the scientific endeavor; a historiography capable of considering and evaluating all the intricate entanglement of technical-scientific, cultural-philosophical, and sociopolitical elements that enter into action in the research process and are opportunely identified also according to adequate presentist and progressist perspectives.…”

“…An article published in this same journal in 2003 traced the itinerary of the historiography of psychology in Italy from the 1970s up to the threshold of the 21st century (Cimino & Dazzi, 2003). In that essay the authors demonstrated how the Italian studies on the history of psychology had in the 1970s acquired a definite consistency along with a certain autonomy and continuity, impelled by the incipient degree courses in psychology activated in the universities of Rome and Padua, and thanks to the initiatives of the Domus Galilaeana of Pisa and to the contributions of several "pioneers" such as Paolo Bozzi (1930Bozzi ( -2003, Vincenzo Cappelletti, Nino Dazzi, Paolo Legrenzi, and Dario Romano. In the 1980s then-as the authors reconstruct-the historical research increased and became particularly prominent at the University of Bologna through the activity of Giuseppe Mucciarelli (1939Mucciarelli ( -2001, who organized various conferences, published volumes on the history of psychology, and founded the journal Teorie & Modelli [Theories and Models], which appeared alongside the discontinuous periodical Storia e critica della psicologia [History and criticism of psychology] directed by Luciano Mecacci.…”

The archive of the History of Psychology at the University of Rome, Sapienza.

“…The archive aspires to become an indispensable tool to (a) understand the currents, schools, and research traditions that have marked the path of Italian psychology, (b) focus on issues of general and applied psychology developed in each university, (c) identify experimental and clinical-differential methodologies specific to each lab, (d) reconstruct the genesis and consolidation of psychology institutions and, ultimately, (e) write a "story," set according to the most recent historiographical criteria. This story may be a multifactorial history (which draws a plot intertwining "internal" technical and scientific factors with "external" political-social factors; Cimino & Dazzi, 2003), or a histoire croisée (which takes into account the intersection of different research traditions, i.e., the mutual influence of the "human sciences"-psychology, anthropology, pedagogy, sociology, criminology, and psychiatry-which were born and developed simultaneously with psychology; Cimino & Lombardo, 2014), or a history of hybridizations (attending the way in which knowledge, research, and psychological applications developed in one country are transmitted to another country, where they influence research and give origin to something new and different that then can emigrate for further hybridization; Pickren, 2009Pickren, , 2010.…”