Acaba de aparecer el tercer número de este año de la Revista de Historia de la Psicología, publicación auspiciada por la Sociedad Española de Historia de la Psicología. A continuación presentamos los resúmenes en inglés de los cinco artículos que componen esta entrega y a cuya descarga puede accederse por medio de este enlace.

1. Psychology and Torture: Enhanced Interrogation Techniques in the Aftermath of the 9/11 Attacks

Antonio Álvarez-Cruz

In the aftermath of the September 2001 attacks in the USA, many suspects were arrested, kept in custody and interrogated by several US government agencies in order to obtain information about terrorist groups. Significant evidence indicates that some of the methods used, so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques”, included torture, and points to psychologists being involved in these practices. This article looks into this involvement as follows: firstly, the creation of the Behavioral Science Consultation Teams in detention centers such as Guantanamo; secondly, the variety of techniques employed to “enhance” interrogation, many of which had been designed, and even implemented by psychologists; thirdly, the successive efforts carried out by the American Psychological Association (APA) to respond to the public outcry provoked by their involvement in these practices; finally, motives for the widespread acceptability of torture, and motives that deny its effectiveness for obtaining relevant information.

2. Recuperando pioneras en la psicología española: El trabajo de atención a la infancia de Dolors Canals y Julia Coromines durante la guerra civil española. [Recovering female pioneers in Spanish psychology: Childcare work by Dolors Canals and Julia Coromines during the Spanish civil war]

Carmen García-Colmenares, María J. Monteagudo y Mauricio Chisvert

During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), the Republican government launched childcare programs in emergency nurseries or shelters. Female authors such as Julia Coromines and Dolors Canals who assumed the management of these catalan war nurseries. For historiographical purposes, we have recovered their original publications on the subject, which have not yet been analyzed. Aspects regarding the organization of nurseries and early childhood tests used is studied. The distance from the conflict zone produced less emotional impact and in children under the age of two, the principal stressor was the situation of estrangement from the mother figure, which decreased as they could be cared for their mothers in war nurseries. We intend to position their studies within the international research that was developed between the First and Second World War regarding childcare during war, as well as to contribute to reconstructing the genealogy of female pioneers in Spanish psychology.

3. Didascalia (1970-1975) y su aportación a la investigación psicoeducativa española del tardofranquismo [Didascalia (1970-1975) and its contribution to Spanish psychoeducational research on late Francoism].

Francisco Pérez-Fernández, Francisco López-Muñoz y Miguel Ángel Pérez-Nieto

This work analyzes the editorial line of the education and psychopedagogy magazine Didascalia, published between 1970 and 1975, founded by Felipe Segovia Olmo. Possibly the first magazine in Spain with far-reaching training within the teaching profession. The publication, born at the same time as the educational reform of 1970, made a great effort to become a resource for the professionalization and modernization of teaching practice. Interested in the psychological and psychoeducational contributions of the moment, Didascalia becomes as a catalyst of the critical voices around the successive vicissitudes in the application of the legislative text. Methodologically, the article adheres to historical and bibliographic research techniques, following a documentary analysis approach. It concludes with a weighted assessment of the importance that Didascalia’s dissemination and critical task had at the time.

4. La Mente Infantil en la Colombia Teocrática (1881-1887) [The Child´s Mind in the Theocratic Colombia (1881-1887)] 

Gilberto Oviedo Palomá y Jacqueline Benavides Delgado

Colombia consolidated in 1886 a theocratic regime that gave power to the Catholic Church in the mental formation of childhood. The clergy spoke critically about the ideas of evolutionary psychology. He opposed the consideration of childhood as an evolutionary phenomenon, comparable with other biological beings, and defended its spiritual dimension. Religious morality became the ideal formative way to develop personal conscience and the thinking faculty. This article advanced a documentary review of primary state, ecclesiastical and journalistic sources, on the Catholic formation of the infantile soul in social institutions such as the family, the parish and education. The conclusions highlight the importance of the science-religion debate that surrounds the concept of psychological development and the social resistance that the theocratic country had to the secular and materialistic views of development psychology.

5. Walter Blumenfeld y la Sociedad Interamericana de Psicología [Walter Blumenfeld and the Interamerican Society of Psychology]

Ramón León

Walter Blumenfeld (1882-1967), a figure of great importance in the history of psychology in Peru in the 20th century, maintained an active epistolary work. His letters have been preserved in the personal file. In the present communication, the correspondence between him and the various directors of the Interamerican Society of Psychology (SIP), of which he was a member, is commented. In the conserved correspondence there is valuable information about the activities of Blumenfeld in Peru, psychology in that country, and the directors, projects and activities of the SIP.