Abstract

In the 1870s, Krausists and Catholics struggled for hegemony in Spanish educational institutions. In the midst of the fray, a group of neo-Kantian intellectuals, led by José del Perojo, set out to renew psychology in Spain by introducing Wundt's physiological psychology and Darwinian evolutionism. Neither Catholics nor Krausists welcomed the proposal. In the case of Catholics, the fundamentalist group led by professor of metaphysics Juan Manuel Ortí y Lara founded the journal La Ciencia Cristiana [Christian Science] to counter the neo-Kantian and Darwinian influences. In this article, I present a selection of texts from the journal to show how the editors tried to discredit the foundations of physiological psychology and evolutionism, as well as to promote a scholastic philosophy based on the literal interpretation of the texts of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Finally, I suggest that the identification of Catholic philosophy with fundamentalist scholasticism delayed the development of neo-scholastic psychology in Spain. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

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