Umberto Saffiotti tra filosofia e psicologia sperimentale

Umberto Saffiotti is one of a number of authors who contributed to the rise of experimental psychology in Italy in the early twentieth century. After graduating in philosophy in Messina in 1908 with a dissertation on the social psychology of Carlo Cattaneo, supervised by Giovanni Dandolo, young Saffiotti moved to Milan to study with Zaccaria Treves. In 1912, he became an assistant of Giuseppe Sergi in Rome, honing his expertise in the field of experimental psychology and human physiology. At the end of World War I, having obtained a teaching qualification in experimental psychology, he moved to Palermo to teach this subject in the wake of Simone Corleo, who in 1889 had opened one of the first laboratories of psychology. In Saffiotti, the new psychology always displays a close relationship with philosophy and the human sciences, while retaining its epistemological autonomy.[Publisher's text]