The theme "Psychology towards the new century: professional identity and social commitment" was elaborated here from three foundations: 1. a short historical recovery of the links between Psychology and Brazilian society, aiming at the portrayal of its relationship with that society; 2. the development of a perspective of the profession committed to the social reality, including the presentation of criteria to evaluate the social engagement of practices and understandings of Psychology and the argument that Psychology, as knowledge and doings, should always act in dependence to the society that hosts it; 3. the prompting of the question of psychologist's professional identity, from the standpoint that identity should always be seen as metamorphosis and a permanent movement of transformation. The text intends to be a defense of an identity for psychologists that implies movement and transformation because it is consequence of the linkage Psychology should entertain with society, which is always moving, a linkage of commitment to the needs and demands of the majority of the Brazilian population.
Psychology; profession; social commitment; professional identity