A comparative history of the birth of "scientific" psychology

This introduction to the Proceedings of the Beijing Symposium poses the problem of the birth of a ‘‘new psychology’’ that endeavors to become a science, considered within the cultural, scientific, social, and institutional context of each country. This problem can be subdivided into a series of other more specific questions, dealt with in part by the volume’s contributions: the distinction between a ‘‘scientific’’ psychology and a ‘‘pre-scientific’’ one; the historical reconstruction of psychology as a ‘‘science,’’ and of psychology as a ‘‘discipline’’ embedded in some institution; the time span in which the passage from the ‘‘old’’ to the ‘‘new’’ was achieved; the scientific-cultural and political-economic-social factors or conditions that influenced and favored this birth. After a panoramic and ‘‘comparative’’ glance at the situation in different European countries (Germany, France, England, Italy, Spain, and Russia) and some extra-European ones (United States, Brazil, Japan, and China), as presented in the texts of these Proceedings, there follow some considerations of a general nature that attempt to highlight analogies and differences in the historical development of the origin of ‘‘scientific’’ psychology in the various countries.