The Naked Science: Psychoanalysis in Spain, 1914–1948

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Abstract
The effort to implant secular science in Spain was stymied throughout the nineteenth century by a ruling conservative elite which held that “science without religion is blind” and viewed the practice of science divorced from an explicitly Catholic, Thomist philosophical framework as being the equivalent of civil subversion. Medical doctors, in particular, were held to be subversive; in the aftermath of the conservative overthrow of the liberal government in 1824 all professors of the Madrid Medical College were either imprisoned or removed from their chairs. The liberal revolution of 1868, which briefly overthrew the Bourbons and their conservative supporters and installed the short-lived First Republic, was universally regarded by Spanish scientists as having opened the door to new ideas. Chief among these was Darwinism, anathema to Catholic conservatives because of its challenge to Biblical dogma. There had been virtually no discussion of this heretical idea before the revolution, and it was freely discussed in its wake.

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