The Early Expansion of Psychoanalysis in Latin America. The Key Role of the Argentine Revista de Psicoanálisis

DAGFAL, ALEJANDRO

Psychoanalysis as Social and Political Discourse in Latin America and the Caribbean

Routledge

Lugar: Nueva York; Año: 2022; p. 159 - 176

Celebratory historical accounts about the expansion of psychoanalysis in Latin America tend to emphasize the atypical biographies, the outstanding personalities and the original ideas of certain psychoanalysts considered as “pioneers”. In this chapter, however, I focus on the deliberate strategies and thoughtful mechanisms used by the founders of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association (APA) in order to become a continental reference regarding Freudian discourse and practices. Born in 1942, the APA was not the first official analytic association to be created in Latin America. Nevertheless, I argue that it was the most successful one, considering its impact in the training of analysts, not only from neighboring countries (such as Brazil, Chile and Uruguay) but from other countries as well (such as Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Spain and even France). Thus, the APA became the “mother association” for many others. The reasons for the acquisition of this privileged position in the 1940s and 1950s were certainly multiple, but not aleatory. Every organizational step taken by the founding group was carefully calculated in terms of development, diffusion and self-legitimation. Even the financial aspects were evaluated in the light of those criteria. In that context, the Revista de Psicoanálisis –a house organ created in 1943, which implied a great editorial effort– was conceived from its very beginning as a tool for the diffusion of psychoanalysis in the medical circles on an international scale. The wide distribution of that journal –the first one in Spanish on the subject– also gave publicity to the socio-cultural and professional activities of the APA. Thus, in most Latin American capital cities the rumor was spread that, in Buenos Aires, it was possible for physicians to be trained as psychoanalysts recognized by the International Psychoanalytic Association founded by Sigmund Freud.In order to understand how the journal shaped the early life of the APA (and that of potential psychoanalysts in other cities and countries) I basically use the information given by the Revista itself, in miscellaneous anonymous notes. These sources, neglected by other historians, provide valuable data about a complex sociability network involving trips, conferences, seminars, fund-raising, celebrations, new candidates, visiting specialists, loans for training, etc. Moreover, the foreign authors who were translated, the topics chosen by the local contributors and the ads about upcoming books are helpful to understand the progressive establishment of a Kleinian hegemony, which was at the same time produced and reflected by the house organ. On the way, a new professional identity was forged and even exported. In that transnational circulation process, the Revista de psicoanálisis played a key role that we examine in this chapter.