The Argentine ethnopsychology (character), and recent major difficulties are discussed in
Therivel's GAM/DP Theory of Personality and Creativity.

Argentine Ethnopsychology

An Ethnopsychological Explanation of Argentina's Difficulties

The above is the title of chapter 16 of volume 4 of William A. Therivel's The GAM/DP Theory of Personality and Creativity (G stands for genetic endowment, A for assistances of youth, M for misfortunes of youth, DP for division of power, UP for unity of power). For an introduction to the GAM part of the theory click "Introduction to GAM"; for an introduction to the DP part click on "Introduction to DP".
In this website, the reader is also offered a shortcut: The GAM/DP Synopsis and an expanded version, The GAM/DP Summary of volumes 1 through 4.

Hereafter I report the table of contents and a few pages of the introduction of this chapter:

This chapter is divided into the following sections:

I. Introduction
II. Mindbinding by the Inquisition
     1. A first set of key judgments
     2. Sarmiento's judgment
     3. Montesquieu's and Voltaire's judgments
     4. In Sicily under the Spaniards
     5. The Anaconda effect
     6. Véliz's and Salvador de Madariaga's whitewashing
III. The vertical component of the Hispanic character
     1. As seen by Madariaga
     2. As seen by José Antonio Primo de Rivera
     3. As seen by López Ibor
     4. As seen by Bunkley
     5. Vertical/essential people are intransigent
     6. The Inquisition, and the emphasis on dying well
     7. In answer to Sarmiento: The great vertical men of Unamuno and Salvador
de Madariaga
     8. The vertical component as medieval thinking
     9. Is this uniquely Spanish?
IV. Key terms: Ser entero, hombre total, hombre integral, método de la pasión,
arbitrariedad, complejo de inferioridad ante la ciencia y la técnica pero de
superioridad como estilo de vida
V. The Spaniards as the last of the pre-DP Medievals
     1. The many kinds of individualism
     2. Not inclined to solidarity with the community
     3. A violent passion for honor
     4. Is the hombre integro y total more prone to being envious?
     5. The aristocratic soy quien soy's contribution to intransigence
VI. No Gálvez
     1. On the arts
     2. On social sense and religion
     3. On Switzerland
VII. No Sánchez-Albornoz
     1. On the arts
     2. On mysticism
VIII. So much violence and torture, and so few great thinkers?
     1. Violence and torture
     2. So few great thinkers
IX. No, Shumway
     1. Wrongly faulting the founding fathers of Argentina
     2. But the Inquisition of Rosas (1829-1852) took place
     3. But there were farmers instead of gauchos
     4. But Spain was disliked
X. A divided nation
XI. The natural but incomplete solution: Learn from Europe
     1. European books
     2. The initial Euro-Argentine political solution
     3. Travel to Europe
     4. Claraval's mal de Europa
     5. As seen by Véliz
XII. Was Hispanidad the answer?
XIII. Conclusion
XIV. Recommendations
     Recommendation N. 1
     Recommendation N. 2
     Recommendation N. 3

I. Introduction

     Few countries seemed to have a more assured future than Argentina. Yet things went so wrong so quickly:

     There have been many answers to that central question, but few that have gone back far enough in history as demanded by the GAM/DP theory of personality and creativity. There is no valid explanation of what went right or wrong with a nation without a clear understanding of its distant past. For instance, in any discussion of the origins of the West, there is no way that we can say something meaningful without dealing first with what happened at Canossa in 1077, Legnano/Venice in 1176/1177, Runnymede in 1215. It is not that later positive DP events are not important, but that their importance was prepared by the DP ideas and agreements of those key events.
     In the case of Argentina, it is less a question of key events and agreements, than, at first, of a UP institution, the Inquisition, that many scholars have decided to forget or minimize, and which in my mind must be faced squarely. Because of this, Part II of this chapter is devoted to the evil perpetrated by the UP of the Inquisition in Latin America, Spain, Sicily, and the Papal States. Accordingly, my discussion will move from Argentina, to Spain and back to Argentina, stressing how Latin America, but especially Argentina, suffered much more of royal/inquisitorial UP, than Spain itself, because its distance from Europe prevented the many liberalizing contacts that Spain had with France, England, Italy, and Flanders, including the contacts of war, as for instance the Peninsular War of 1807-1814 which so strongly affected both Spain and Portugal.
     Part III, on the vertical component of the Hispanic character is equally Spanish at first, yet various key aspects of that vertical component have sadly become stronger in Argentina than in Spain itself.
     Before leaving the preliminaries of this introduction, something more must be said first on what went wrong, and then on the aims and methods of this chapter.

2. What Went Wrong?