[Early research in Italy on psycho-physical attitudes of workers]

Taking as its starting point Angelo Mosso's studies of muscular and mental work carried out in Turin at the end of the nineteenth century, this essay focuses on early Italian investigations of the psycho-physical attitudes of workers undertaken by Mosso's pupils Zaccaria Treves and Mariano Luigi Patrizi in the fields of medicine and psychophysiology between the end of the nineteenth century and the first ten years of the twentieth century. In particular, the author is interested in delineating the differences between the various methodological approaches of these studies and in indicating their different ideological meanings, whose origins lie in the various facets of the materialistic philosophy of Italian scientific and postivist culture.