History

The origin of Slovenian psychology goes back the Renaissance when David Verbec from Ljubljana wrote the book Diputatio de temperamentis (A debate about temperament, 1589). The next psychology book written, in Croatian, by a Slovenian author was Nauk o custvima (Teachings about emotions, 1885). The author was a high school teacher, Josip Krizan, from a small Slovenian town named Ljutomer. Soon afterwards Janko Pajk published in Brno, where he was a high school teacher, a book entitled Zur Theorie der menschlichen Nachahmungen (Theory of human imitation, 1887). The first psychological books written in the Slovenian language appeared two years later: Iskustveno duseslovje (Experiential psychology, 1889), written by a teacher Fran Gabrsek, and Duseslovje (Psychology, 1890) by a priest France Lampe. These early authors were influenced mostly by the associationism of the nineteenth century (especially by E. Herbart).

At the beginning of the twentieth century, some Slovenian scholars studied with famous European psychologists, for example, Mihajlo Rostohar with Alexius Meinong in Graz, Wilhelm Wundt in Leipzig, and Oswald Kulpe in Wurzburg; Franz Veber with Alexius Meinong in Graz; Anton Trstenjak with E. Gemelli in Milan. Later they became the founders of Slovenian psychology.

Before World War II about twenty psychological books in the Slovenian language were published, most of them were about general and school psychology. Courses in psychology were taught at some colleges, e.g., general psychology at the Department of Philosophy and educational psychology at the Department of Education, both at the University of Ljubljana.

The development of academic psychology was accompanied by the gradual growth of applied psychology. A center for professional orientation and employment agency was founded in Ljubljana in 1938. Several ability tests were constructed or adapted.

In 1950 the Department of Psychology was founded at the University of Ljubljana. This is the only department of psychology in Slovenia. The first professor of psychology was Mihajlo Rostohar; he lectured on general, child and social psychology. One of his research fields was psycholinguistics.

Research

Contemporary scientific and applied research in Slovenia is substantially oriented to the problems of decision-making, psychological health / well-being, and the role of value systems. These issues are approached by means of cognitive, personality-social, developmental, organizational, methodological, and applied psychology perspectives.

Major research projects in psychology in Slovenia include:

• Theory of values (psychometric, structural, developmental, cross-cultural speacts and applications)
• Personality and cognition as determinants of decision-making processes
• The role of personality and self-concept in the framework of positive psychology

Education

The undergraduate study of psychology is available in Slovenia, as is graduate study for the M.A. and Ph.D. and specialization in clinical psychology (four years), specialization in counseling psychology, and various training programs in psychotherapy (three to seven years).

Graduate study takes place in the Department of Psychology, while specialization takes place in hospitals, medical faculty (clinical psychology, psychotherapy) or counseling centers, plus the Department of Psychology (counseling psychology, psychotherapy).

The University of Maribor opened a new Department of Psychology in September 2007 within the Faculty of Arts (http://www.ff.uni-mb.si/).

There are no special government regulations for psychologists in Slovenia, just general regulations for school, health system, data protection, human rights, etc. These apply to all psychologists.

Slovenian psychologists do have a formal code of ethics.

Publications

Psiholoska obzorja, 1992- , 4/year
Horizons of Psychology
Anthropos (review)
Information for Slovene Psychologists (review)

Updated June 2007