Quelques étapes de la Psychologie des peuples (de la fin du XIX e siècle aux années 1950). Esquisse pour une histoire de la psychologie interculturelle

Abstract

During the 19th century, the folk psychology (Völkerpsychologie), which claimed its scientificity while all psychology did, is the heiress of philosophy of mind and philosophy of the collective, historical or national character. The folk psychology is confronted with the point of relations between the individual level and the collective one according to the various points of view: heredity of race, of historical race, of ehtnic group, of culture, of mentality, of character, of personnality, of identity. This points of view are the reflection of different eras of knowledge the folk psychogy went through and of the political and ideological preoccupations at this different times. On the one hand this psychology did not succeed to avoid racial and racialist ideology, on the other hand it endeavoured to work out heuristic hypothesis about a new way of thinking the relation between the individual order and the collective order. This problems are always topical.