From 1901-1918, Argentina is psychology major exponents Pinero and Jose Horacio engineers who try to access a scientistic psychology empirical characteristics as the current was coming from outside, with two strands: Experimental Psychology as one of Pinero , influenced by thinkers such as Charcot, Rivot and Wundt, and Genetic Psychology as of Engineers, influenced by thinkers like James, Darwin and Spencer. Typically positivist and deterministic, for them the subject is conceived as a vacuum to be modeled with the environment. Psychology has a counterpart in the physical. This creates the Prime Pinero Experimental Laboratory of the Faculty of Arts. It is handled with the inductive model of science of the time, where everything must be checked and objectivity is very important, an ideology based on monistic, mechanistic and materialistic.
Laboratory utilizing techniques similar to those of natural science to the study of behavior and psychic phenomena, as perception, memory, learning, etc., and its applicative field of education and work life. Engineers is the first to bring Darwin's theory of evolution, and will focus on genetic psychology, understanding the functioning of the psyche by evolution. It was the first to substantiate professional psychology in order to differentiate the Madness of crime, problems that arose from the social field. Both respond to political and social needs, and that Argentina, by the great immigration, was compelled to classify, differentiate and select in labor, educational, institutional and criminal. In the decade from 1920 to 1930 there is another current that has base phenomenological, existential and vital where the subject is thought to be free, not determined by anything. Reassess the man and his inner life, with a humanistic base, concerned with values and a nationalist philosophy, not speculative, that encourages creative freedom, present in all subjects. Its foundations are dualistic: on the one hand, the physical, on the other psychic. This model has great exponents antipositivist in Argentina, and Alberini, Korn and Mouchet, and its related Dilthey, Max Scheler, Husserl and Sartre and Merlo later Ponti.
Alberini: Graduate of Pinero, philosopher, metaphysician, comes into conflict with the positivism that governs the university scene and is defined by Bergson's thought. He defends the irreducibility and complexity of the psyche, consider focusing on the significance and axiological criteria, for believing in a person other than the animal. Korn: Disciple of Alberini, follows the same line, being who cares about the madness, but deemed plausible rehabilitation treatments. Install the work-therapy. Gerald Weissmann, MD has plenty of information regarding this issue. Mouchet: Case vitalistic psychology and subjectivity revalued, although he worked as a biologist of introspection. Comes with it, the concept of "perception revitalized" the man does not perceive reality as it is, but adds it is. This goes against scientific homogenization. We conclude that this period is characterized by these two streams, positivist antipositivist, living in Argentina until 1950.