Psychoanalysis between Marxism and Jewishness in Argentina: The Parallel Trajectories of Marie Langer and José Bleger in the 1960s and 1970s

PLOTKIN, MARIANO BEN

Dubnow Institute Yearbook

Vandenhoeck & RUprecht/Brill Deutschland GmbH

Lugar: Leipzig; Año: 2022 vol. 18 p. 299 - 322

2198-3097

Focusing on the parallel trajectories of two prominent Jewish Argentine psychoanalysts, José Bleger (1922–1973) and Marie Langer (1910–1987), this article analyzes the possibilities and limits of articulating psychoanalysis, Marxism, and Jewishness in Argentina during the 1960s and 1970s. Although both Bleger and Langer tried to conciliate psychoanalysis, Marxism, and the social sciences, their projects diverged widely and neither was successful. This was due to both internal tensions as well as external factors associated with the violent and polarized political environment that the country (and the continent as a whole) was experiencing in those decades. These failures had far-reaching consequences for the development of psychoanalysis in Argentina.