Renzo Canestrari and the History of Psychology [Renzo Canestrari e la Storia della psicologia]

Renzo Canestrari prompted the studies of history of psychology at the University of Bologna in order to understand both the multiple roots of scientific psychology and the complex transition from its early development to later ones in Italy in the 1950s and 1960s. He entrusted Giuseppe Mucciarelli, who had a philosophical and epistemological background, with the task of detailing the knowledge of the historical and epistemological bases of psychological sciences. In the 1980s and 1990s, Bologna became one of the most important Italian centers for the history of psychology. Mucciarelli carried out many studies on how the positivistic, psychophysical and phenomenological trends in Europe influenced the early development of psychology. In the same period Nicoletta Caramelli, by analyzing the relationships between the history of psychology and that of human sciences cast new light on the origin of cognitivism and the transition from Gestalt psychology to cognitive psychology in Italy.