Lucas Bori CollectionStudent identification card of Carolina Martuscelli (her maiden name), who studied pedagogy at the University of São Paulo in the 1940sLucas Bori Collection
Advances and setbacks marked the 1980s in Brazil. While in economic terms the country was struggling with sky-high inflation and a decline in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), from a political viewpoint it was entering a new phase of Brazilian history, marked by the end of the military dictatorship (1964–1985) and the establishment of the National Constituent Assembly in 1987. In this same year, the Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science (SBPC), founded in 1948, elected the first woman for its presidency, psychologist Carolina Martuscelli Bori (1924–2004). “We are expecting urgent, immediate action to ensure that our proposals are incorporated into the new Constitution as a contribution from the academic community for the creation of a modern country, a new country, a country that upholds the rights of the people who live in it,” said Bori in her speech at the opening session of the 39th Annual Meeting of the SBPC, held at the University of Brasília (UnB).
In charge of that organization until 1989, she was responsible for creating a committee that drafted the “SBPC Proposal for the Constituent Assembly,” tackling topics such as education, science and technology, health, environment, and Indigenous populations. One of the main results was the inclusion of Article 218 about science and technology in the 1988 Constitution, something unprecedented in Brazilian history. The text tasked the State with promoting and encouraging scientific and technological development. It also recommended opening research support foundations in each state, similar to FAPESP, which began operating in 1962. “The support of the SBPC in the battles for Indigenous rights in the Constitution increased the visibility and importance of this human rights topic. I found constant allies in the presidency of the SBPC,” wrote anthropologist Manuela Carneiro da Cunha, of the School of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences at the University of São Paulo (FFLCH-USP), in the book A SBPC e a Constituição brasileira (The SBPC and the Brazilian Constitution; SBPC, 2022). “The work of rebuilding the proposals after attempts to change the text drafted by the SBPC from the opposition was accompanied pari passu by Bori,” continues Cunha.
Activism guided Bori’s entire trajectory. “At the start of her career, she fought for the consolidation of psychology as a science in Brazil, and afterwards for scientific and technological development as a whole,” says Deisy de Souza, from the Department of Psychology of the Federal University of São Carlos (DPSI-UFSCar). “Carolina believed that science and education were the paths for the development of our country,” adds Dora Fix Ventura, senior professor of the Institute of Psychology at USP.
Bori was born 100 years ago, in January 1924, in São Paulo. She was the daughter of an Italian immigrant, an engineer, and a Brazilian house wife, who worked in a textiles store before getting married. The couple ensured all six of their children had a university education. Carolina, the eldest, graduated in pedagogy, in 1947, at what was then the School of Philosophy, Sciences, and Languages and Literature (current FFLCH) at USP. At the beginning of the 1950s, she married Italian merchant Giovanni Bori. They separated soon after the birth of the couple’s only child, Lucas. She remained single, but kept her married surname.
Rachel Nunes CollectionBori with US psychologist Fred Keller in the 1960s at UnB, where she created the Central Institute of Psychology, which included the laboratory for experimental analysis of behaviorRachel Nunes Collection
In her final year as an undergraduate at USP, she was invited by psychology professor Annita de Castilho e Marcondes Cabral (1911–1991) to be her assistant. Still in the 1940s, Cabral introduced the first discussions about experimental psychology at USP, an approach based on laboratory experiments to prove hypotheses. Excited about this possibility, Bori delved into the area during her master’s degree, defended in 1952 at the New School for Social Research, in New York, USA. In the study, she carried out a critical review of a series of studies about interrupted tasks, performed by Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik (1901–1988). Afterwards, in her PhD, which she completed in 1954 at the USP School of Education, she continued investigating task interruption experiments but in light of German psychologist Kurt Lewin’s (1890–1947) theory of motivation.
At the same time, and within the context of the university reform that resulted in the substitution of chairs with departments, Bori became involved in the movement for the creation of a psychology course at USP. Until then, psychology was taught on philosophy, pedagogy, and medical courses at the university. In May 1957, the new curriculum was approved by a state decree and the first class began in February the following year, with Bori among the teaching staff. The first higher education psychology course in the country had been created earlier, in 1953, at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-RIO).
Regulation on a national scope would take place in 1962, through Federal Law No. 4.119, which provides for psychology training courses and establishes the profession of psychologist. Bori helped write the bill, and after the regulation, joined the committee to recognize those professionals already working in the field as psychologists. “For her work on this committee, she received professional registration No. 001, meaning Carolina is officially the first Brazilian psychologist,” says psychologist Gabriel Cândido, who studied Bori’s career path for his PhD, which he completed in 2014 at the USP School of Philosophy, Sciences, and Languages and Literature, Ribeirão Preto campus. He continued his research on Bori during his postdoctoral fellowship at PUC São Paulo, which he completed in 2018.
Once the profession was regularized, Bori actively took part in producing the core curriculum for university psychology courses and the creation of courses such as those at UFSCar and the School of Philosophy, Sciences, and Literature and Languages (FFCL) of Rio Claro — today a unit of São Paulo State University (UNESP). “She was fundamental in changing the status of psychology in the country from a ‘nearly science’ to a science,” explains Souza, who is also one of the managers of the fields of human and social sciences of FAPESP’s Scientific Board. “Her work provided a new direction for undergraduate psychology courses in Brazil, including the requirement of classes and laboratories in experimental psychology.”
In an article published this year, in the Bori centenary special edition of the Jornal da Ciência, of the SBPC, the director of the institution and professor at UnB, Fernanda Sobral, stated that Bori was a “builder of institutions” in the field of psychology. Among other initiatives, she led the creation of the graduate course in psychology at USP (1970) and the National Association of Research and Graduate Studies in Psychology (ANPEPP), in 1983.
SBPC CollectionAt the Annual Meeting of the SBPC in Curitiba in 1986, and the year before at the same event in Belo Horizonte, with geneticist Crodowaldo Pavan, then president of the entity, and Minister of Education Marco MacielSBPC Collection
In the early 1960s, upon the invitation of anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro (1922-1997), Bori went to Brasília to set up the Department of Psychology at UnB, which had been conceived by Ribeiro and educator Anísio Teixeira (1900-1971). Aligned with the innovative spirit that Ribeiro and Teixeira wished to instill in the new university, “Bori had total freedom to structure the course,” says Souza. She headed to the federal capital with psychologist Fred Simmons Keller (1899-1996), of Colombia University (USA) — already renowned among the researchers on experimental analysis of behavior — and John Gilmour Sherman (1931-2006), a postdoctoral fellowship researcher at the time under the supervision of Keller. Brazilian Rodolpho Azzi (1927-2006) also contributed towards the planning and structuring of the new course. A graduate in philosophy from USP, he met Bori when they were both assistants of Keller in the first behavior analysis course in Brazil, which took place at the university in São Paulo in 1961.
At UnB, Bori created and took charge of the Central Institute of Psychology, today the Institute of Psychology. Among the innovations introduced by her and her colleagues were the teaching of psychology in the core curriculum of all undergraduate students and the application of the principles that gave rise to the Personalized System of Instruction (PSI) and Instructional Programming. “Designed in 1963 by Bori, Keller, Sherman, and Azzi, the teaching method used in Brasília sought to offer an alternative to the traditional teaching model, which at the time was strongly rooted in teacher authority and the use of punitive techniques,” says Cândido. Some of the key characteristics include the sequential presentation of the content by the student, emphasis on the written word, and respect for each student’s learning pace.
Like the majority of the activities of the new university, the experimental analysis of behavior course was suspended in 1965 due to intervention by the military dictatorship on the campus. Over 200 professors and technicians collectively handed in their notices in protest against the invasion. Bori remained for a period and returned to USP in 1966. “The course at UnB bears Carolina’s mark to this day, and remains a benchmark in Brazil in the field of experimental psychology,” says psychologist Antonio Virgílio Bastos, from the Graduate Program at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA).
According to Cândido, Bori supervised over 100 master’s and PhD students in different areas of knowledge, such as physics, chemistry, and physiotherapy. “What brought these people closer to Carolina was the teaching from experimental psychology point of view. Her concern was to train people and, out of choice, she did not appear as a coauthor on her student’s articles,” states the psychologist, who is currently finishing Bori’s biography, which should be released this year. “This is one of the reasons that Carolina’s bibliography is not so extensive.” Additionally, Bori’s Lattes curriculum is incomplete, according to the researcher. In his research, he has so far found 70 works, including 25 articles published in journals, especially in the 1950s and 1960s. In these works, Bori discusses, for example, drawing from a psychology viewpoint, and the importance of statistics in her field of work, as well as school dropouts.
Another one of her articles is about the episode known as “O demônio do Catulé,” meaning the devil of Catulé in English, about when four children were murdered by followers of the Adventist Church of Promise, in 1955, in the municipality of Malacacheta, Minas Gerais State. At the time, the rumor circulated that the victims were possessed by an evil entity. “Paulo Duarte [1899–1984], then director of Revista Anhembi, organized a study to examine the phenomenon on-site, contracting an anthropologist, Carlo Castaldi [1924–2002], and a psychologist, Carolina Bori, for the task. I went as a research assistant,” anthropologist Eunice Durham [1932–2022] told the journal Ponto Urbe, of USP, in 2009. According to Cândido, Bori lived among the members of the group for around four months to write the article, which was published in Anhembi in 1957.
In the 1990s, she resumed the partnership with Durham, who was also a professor at USP, in the Center for Research on Higher Education (NUPES) at that institution. Together, they coordinated, for example, “Equidade e heterogeneidade no ensino superior brasileiro” (Equity and heterogeneity in Brazilian higher education; 2000), a study commissioned by the National Institute for Educational Studies and Research (INEP). The study dealt with topics such as the role of skin color in the educational level of young people.
Bori remained active until the end of her life. In 2004, upon leaving the annual SBPC meeting, she suffered a fall and died months later as a result of complications from the accident. She was 80 years old. At the beginning of 2024, the SBPC launched the Carolina Bori Memorial, dedicated to the psychologist, which makes items, such as photographs, interviews, and articles available online. Additionally, to encourage the work of researchers, since 2019 the entity has granted the Carolina Bori Science & Woman award. “Carolina faced many battles at a time in which science was a place, above all, for men,” completed Souza, of UFSCar.
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