Cincuenta Años de la Psicología en Chile: Una Perspectiva Personal Fifty Years of Psychology in Chile: A Personal Account

Palabras clave: psicologia, ciencia, evolucion, experiencia, neurociencia This article describes some of the author’s experiences as a psychologist, upon reaching 50 years of practice, between 1961 and 2011. It is a personal and critical review of the evolution of psychology as a science and profession during the last 50 years in Chile, and the main challenges for psychologists in the future. At the beginning, psychology in Chile ranged from an applied pragmatic psychometric position to a clinical, psychoanalytic, and behaviorist orientation. This defined the corpus of his generation’s training. Afterward, new psychological trends appeared internationally, such as neuropsychology, cognitive psychology, social psychology and community psychology. At this time psychology in Chile was also affected by a new epistemological perspective of science.