Strategic Components of Psychotechnical Device and its Projections in the Field of School, Factory and Labor Market (1930-1967)

Authors

  • Jorge Esteban Benítez Saavedra Universidad de Santiago de Chile

Abstract

This article intends to reconstruct the strategic components of the psychotechnical device and the different social areas to which its applications were projected in Chile between 1940 and 1967. The notion of device constituted a pertinent theoretical tool as it invites to unravel the materiality of psychotechnical discourse, understanding it as a technology that participates directly in the production and management of social relations. In this case it is evident that the project of psychology, based on the concept of “aptitude”, sought to influence the labor market control to ensure maximum use of the available energy, displacing the old mechanisms of recruitment based on worker sociability. In order to achieve this, psychology should articulate different interests and spaces of social intervention, such as school, social security and factory. It is concluded that this project only was able to consolidate from the 50s, when the agents of the State, the businessmen and the international organizations converged on the need to promote the principles of the scientific management.

Keywords:

psychotechnical, device, aptitude, labor market