The foundational milestone of psychology as a profession in Colombia is located in 1947, with the creation of the Institute of Applied Psychology at the National University under the direction of Mercedes Rodrigo. However, this event was the result of a historical process initiated in the 1920s and consolidated in the 1930s, when the government of Alfonso López Pumarejo promoted a modernization project that placed education at the center of nation-building. Within this framework, pioneering institutions such as the Institute of Experimental Psychology at the Escuela Normal Superior (1937) and the Institute of Psychotechnics at the Faculty of Medicine of the National University (1939) introduced into the country psychological knowledge linked to psycho pedagogy, psychotechnics, and the psychology of individual differences. The reception of ideas from Walter Dearborn, Ovide Decroly, and Henri Piéron, along with the contributions of local academics -including among others Alejandro Cano, José Francisco Socarrás, Leo Walther, Luis López de Mesa, and Luis Alejandro Vargas- illustrate how psychology was configured as applied knowledge oriented toward education and social transformation. This study argues that the origins of psychology in Colombia did not emerge as an autonomous disciplinary development, but rather as a response to the demands of a liberal project of modernization and industrialization, in which psychology was mobilized as a tool for citizen formation and the consolidation of a modern social order. Critically revisiting this process allows us to understand the historicity of the discipline in the country and to problematize its constitutive ties to education, politics, and nation-building, which would eventually lead to the institutionalization of Colombian psychology in the second half of the twentieth century.