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·.----------------------CONTENTS

C'..ontributors vii

lntroduction: Psychoanalysis and Politics: Historical Peropectives ix Afilri(lno Ben Plotkin and Jo y Damou.>i

PART ONE Europe

l. Origin, Rioe, and Destruction of a Ps}chuanalytic Culture inl'ascistTtaly, 1922-1938 7 Mauro Pasqualini

J5

4. Elfect ofDktatorial Regimes on thc Psychoanalytic :\1ovement in Hungary before and after Worlrl War 11 7'J ]uditMészáros

PART TWO Latin America

5, Psychoanalysis in Brazil during Vargas' Time 113 C. Luda M. Vallildares de 0/iveira (tram;/ated ¡,y Christine Puko Reis)

6. Psychoanalysis in Argentina under Pemnism and Anti-Peronism(l943-1%3) 135 Alejandro Dagfal

7. The Social Diffusion ofPsychoanalysis during theBrazilian Military Regime: Psy¡;hological Awarenes; in an A¡,e of Political Repression 165 JaneA. Rusw

S.The Diffusion ofPsrchoanalysis under Conditions ofPolitical Authoritarianisrn: The Cao;e of Argentina, 1960s and 1 'l70s 185 AfarianoBe>lPlotkin

PART 'I'HREE Psychoanalysi• in the United S tates during thc Cold \Yarand the l960s

9. «Ha ve Yo u No Sharne"-American Redbaiting of Europe'sPsycho~nalyst.s 213 E/izabeth Ann Danta

SelectBibliography 261 Indcx 269

23J

AlejaudroDagfal School ofPsychology UniversityofBuenosAiTes National Council ofSdenUfic

and Technological Research (CONICET)

Bueuos Aires, Argentina

JoyDamousi School ofHistorkal and

Philosophkal Studies The Univcrsity ofMelbournc Parkville, Mdbourne, Australia

hlizabeth Ann Danta Hunter College School of

SocialWork

CityUniversityofNewYork NewY"rk,NY

Anne-C~dle Druct UnivcrsitvofParis·Est

Marne-la·Vallée Paris,France

JuditMészáros Psychology lnstitute Eólvi:is Lorálld Univcrsity and Hungarian Psyclwaualytkal

Sodety

Budapest, Hungary

CONTRIBUTORS

EdilhNkolas llrighton,Australia

Annick O hayan Centre Alexandre Koyré

Centre de Recherche; en Histoire des Sdences et des Teclmiques

EHESS, !'.flüiN, CNRS Paris,France

Manru Pasqualini

History Department Emory University Aúanta, GA

Mariano Ben Plotkin

Instituto de Desarrollo Ewnómico y Snciai/National Council of Scienllfic and Technnlogkal Research (CONICET)

National Universily ofTTes de Pebrcro

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Christine Pu1eo Reís S<l.oPanlo, Rralil

JaneA.Russo lnstituteofSocia!Medicine StateUniversityofRiodeJaneiro Rinde Jandro, Brazil

C. Lucia M. Valladares de Olivcira

Sao Paulo,Brazil

EllZaretsky The New Sehool for Social Research :t>.'ewYork,NY

... - - -.. 1

INTRODUCTION

Psychoanalysis and Politics:

Historical Perspectives

MARIANO BEN PLOTKIN ANO JOY DA'MOUSI

The ccmnecti'm between psyd1oanalysis and poli ti es has attracted the attcntion of sd1olaro and p~ycltoanalysts sinc_e lhe beginnings of the psychoanalytk mllve­ment: Thio volume approaches this topic frOm a particular perspective: it analyzes thc possibilities of survival and the fate of psychoanalrsis under conditions of political authoritarianism· and, more genera_ll)", of rcstrictcd political íreedom in Europc and the AmeriCas. Both psyd:toanalysis and authoritarianism, howcver, are complex concepts that require SOrne discussion.

'lhroughout its more than century-long exislence, psychoanalysis, \ike any other system of thoughts-or beliefs, has been the subject of transl<>rmations, appropriations, and reinterp:retation. Ifwe consider that the history of a system of ideas ls lnseparable from th¡; history ofits multiple receptions, thcn it ís impossi­ble to define a "true" psychoanalysls-as it 'II'Ouid be impossible, for instance, to define a "true Marxism» -as a yardstick against which all othcr versíons of it should be measured Although the establishment of a fairly rigid orthodoxr imposed by 'the Iniemational Fsychoanalytical Assoclation (IPA) standardized to so me e:xtent the practice and interpretation of psychoanalysis, local conditions introduced important nuances into the IPA standards. Moreover, the existence of dissidents withinthe lnternational psychoanalytk mO'Vement has challengcd the IPA-imposed orthodoxy generating alternative ones. A case in poinl is the emer­gence and dramatic expansion of the Lacanian movement in Francc ·and Latin Ame rica, a movement that al m suffered from fragmenta !ion and dissidence.

At times, psychoanalytic disagreements reilect larger political issues. Su eh VY<IS

the case in France where, as Annik Ohayon shows in her contribution to this volume ( Chapter 2), political events taking pla.;;e in the highly politicized inlenl'<lr

years had a strong impact in the still small psychoanalytic community. I'urther­more, the reception of psydloanalytk ideas has been, g~n~raUy speaking, in de­penden! from, and prior to, the lnstitutlonalization of the discipline, thus genernting parallel paths for the diffusion of psychoanalysis: an institutional path andan informal one. Even loday, in the United States !Or instance, the place in '''hich mo.1t discussion of psychoanalysis takes place is at departmenls of com­parative litera tu re. 1here are, therefore, spaces for the diffusion and discussion of psychoanaly'sis that are beyond the control ofpsychoanalytical associations.

'lhereforc, instead of slÚting from an a priori definitiori of what psychoanaly­sis is or should be, we prefcr-for the purposes of this volurrie and as a point of departure-, to ch~acterize itas broadly as possible, although we are aware of the prohlems implidt in a definition that can be too inclusive. However, sin ce we are not interested in defining what ~real" psychoanalysis is or has be en, nor in evalu­ating it, but rather in oopsidering itas a comp!eJL and .,,-olving cultural phenom­enon, we consider psydtoanalysis ro be all prnctices and discourses that legitimize themselves in the syslem created by Freud. In that sense; wc 'an say that, as anthropologists do, we take seriously the acton' {our "natives") categorics: for our purposes psychoanalysis is wlmtever our aaorn define as su eh, for une of lhe aims of lhis book is precise! y lo historidze and, therefore, dccssentialize it.1

Given the centrality ofpsychoanalysis in our culture-its categories are part of our everyday life and languagc and its conccpts have pervaded our fonnof under­otanding importan! segments of reality-, ils historization requires a complex methodologicaJ appmach. The tirst methodological step should consist in taking analytical distance frorn the object (psychoanalysis), mrning it into something less familiar to ns, and approaching it without a priori expectations. Only in a seoond tn<~ment, afier we have denatumlized it, can we approadt psychoanalysi; with an "ethnographic spirit;' entering in dialogue with it.

Sin ce lhis volume deals v.-ith the. fa te of psy(:hoamllysis under condilions of restricted political freedom, oonditiuns that include political regimes that have been characterized as authoritarian or totalitarian, we should, beforc going any further, briefly discuss politkal authoritarianism aod totalitarianism. Bothternis cover a wider raoge of political re gimes sorne ofwhich have litú~ in comrnon with each other. For the purposes of this volume, and following the Dic!ionr1r;: of Poli!iC5 edjtcd by Norberto Bobbio and collaborat""'· we bmadly define authori­tarian re gimes as those that privilcge coerdon over consensos while showing con­tempt for the latter. They concentrate political p~wer in the hands of one person or organ, ,ignoring representative institutions (although these institutions may exist)_ Authoritarian gov~nments lend. to deny human rights and equalit;' as political vaJues, and they emphasize rigid social hierarchies.' Totalitarianism, on the other hand, usually refcrs to a rq.ore specific political order. According to Hamm Arendt's da;sical study, totalitarianisrn)s a radically ne)''form of domi­natiou that ¡, oriented towanl the dcstruction ofthe groups and institutions that oonstitute the prívate spqere.' Terror and violence become crucial instruments for government and are part ofthe very essence oftotalitarianism. By_mobilizing the population, moreovcr, totalitariauis~ politicizes even those spaces of soda!

1 m""''""'"" ~ J

1 interaction that are usual! y considcred a; outofthe real m ofpolilics. Vnder total-1

itariJn regimes, the distinction hetwcen statc and society is erased.' Frorn the rnoment the tcrm totalitarianism was introduced into political science's vocabu-

1 laryit provokcd a discussion about thc cxtent to which it could cover both Fascist and Communist regimes. Let us remember thal the term "totalitariamsm" was introduced inlo the political language by Mussolini himself. In general, it is acceplcd that although there are essential ditferences ber-.•een both kinds of polit­ical regirnes, they sharc, nonctheless, so me crucial fea tu res such as the high levcl of political mobilizalion of the population and the use of terror and violence, features that can be described as totalitarian.' Authoritarian re gimes contras! with totalitarian ones b~· th~ir low levd of political mobilization and of penetralion

intosodcty.' ]t is obvi.ous that neither the latin American populist re gimes of the 1930s and

1941ls nor lhe military dictatorship• ofthe 1960s and.l970s can be compared-to the European totalitarian regimes. Although the populists adticvcd a high leve\ of political mobilization, and althoogh their practice was authoritanan, they;never implenlented a regime uf terror comparable lo the ones set in place by Fascists; :-Jazis, and Communists. Moreover, in sorne caseS (l'eronisrn, for instance), the represenlative institulions werc fully operation"al, although controlled by the government (eledions, however, were-as clean ~·they could he). On the other hand, the military rulers ofthe 1960s and 1970s did implerncnt systems based on terror-such as the "disappearance" ofpeople and the systematic use oftorture as a techniquc for. terrorizing the popul:ition-but in terms ofmobilizatioo of the population, their goal was exactly the opposile to that ofthe totalitarian regirnes in Eurupe. lf an)1hing, the military rulern ofBrazll and Argentina (with ver y few exceptions) wanted to demobilize society.

An analysis ofthe political dirrieo;ion of psychoanalysis can be carricd out at dif­fcrcnt levcls. Given Freud's ~entrality in the history ofpsychoanalysis, a firSt way oflooking at the relationship bctween psychoanalysis and politics is by examining Frcud's own political views and their inlluence on the origins and docvelopment of the discipline. Carl Schorskc and Williarn :\lcGrath havc focused on the political content ofFr.:ud's.lnlrrpretalion of-Dreams and oo the-interconnec­tion betwcen Freud's.own political coll)lnitments, the political environment of fin-de-sib:le Vienna, and thc early development of psydtoánalysis.' According tu

these authors Freud, who in his youth had been a proi;ressive politicaJ activist but who, sceing Iris possibilities to havin.g an active partidpation in politics limitcd by the increasingly anti-Scmitic and politically rarified enviromnent of Vienna at thc turn d the twentieth century, cli.ose to redirect his potentially subversive politirul ideas toan equally subversive theory ofthc self. In other words, as McGrath points out, Freud turned to "the inne:r world ofthe psydu:" to face his "deep political disil­lusionment:'' According to Schorske, T11e Intrrpretalion of f)rrums constiruted the starting point of an "epoch-makiog interpretation ofburuan cxperience m which politics could,beorednced lo an epiphcnomenal manifcstalion of psychic forces:'•

Both Schorske and M. a~~~~;~-;:;,-,~~~ thc cJrplkitly politkal -content of Fr~;.:¡. In ~~ lat.e !~SOs Jean-~aul Sartre dain.•ed that r_syc~-:au,~ysis could fill in one ofl dreams and to the con&t>tul][)ll of psychoanalpis as a form of countcrpolitkal Manmms blind spots: liS lack of a theory ofsubjeCllVlty. theory. Following th1s viewpoinr, it could be aJt,'lled that psychoamllysis hccame, : Nonetheless, the pulitical implicallons of P'ychoanalysis are far from clear, at leastfor ~reud, a metaphor for politics. To wme extent, psychoanalysis became 1 parti.cularly when we focus on Frcud's "social 1Nritings;' such as Totem an~.Tabo.' an Jdeologtcal syotem in which the interplay of power, culture, and the self ¡5 (1913), Group Psyc/¡0/og)' and the Analyoi.< of the Ego (1921), and Civthzation playeJ. out on the stage ofthe unconsciom. 11 and zts DiscoNtents (1930), in which a psychoanulylk thcoryofthe origins of socz-

Oihcraulhors, notab!y ElizabethAnn Danta, have emphasized lhat Freud con- ~ ety and ch~lization ís prcsenlo:d. In Rielf's view not only do these works show tin~ed t<J be a.politkal man throughout bis llfe. Danto's sludy on lhe psychoana- Freud's deep dislrmt for ITlllSS politics, hui they also pul into eVidence the dcar lytic free eh mes sh~ws Frcud and many memben;' of the early psrchoanalytic oonservative implH;:ations ofFreudian psych~logy. Freud's psyc~ologized vtsion of

movementasdceplycom~itted to social democratic ideas and, in general, to pro- social dev~opment is, in Rie.ff's view, e~en:iallyahistorkaL" ~1eff, hn":ever, goes gress:;·e pohllcs not only m Vtenna but also in Berlin and Budapest."' Federico beyond thiS ~n~ finds poss1ble autho?tru:= consequences tu be denved from Fmchelste_in, on the other hand, portrays Freud asan active'antí-Fascisl and psy- psyc~oanalytic rdeas: :'\Vhen sodalacllon 1s conceived as a precipitate ofpersonal choanalySis as a system of thought lhat was incompatible with Fascism.'' Danta' o 1"!110ttons, protestagamst sodety can be explained away as a neurotk symptom."'" and to sorne extcnl Finchelstein's analyscs contradíct more conventional views·, Although, according to Rieff, psychoanalysis can also prm~de elements for a gen-suc~ a~ thal of Peler Gay, that portray Freud as apoliticaLin his matu.rity. ~ral.crltiqueofaulhoritr-s~ceitquesti~nsth.e~npposedly"natural_character"of Inhis bmgraphyofFrend Gayclaims thatlikeman¡iemancípatedjewsofthetime, socral processes-, by c.onsrdErmg pubhc actr\'lty only as lhe mamfest content, ~Freud became a liberal because the liberal world view was oongenial lo him and thlit is tosa¡.-, as an epiphenomenon of psychological tnechanisms that constitule

beca use, as the sayin~ goes, itwasgood forthe Tew:'" In polilks; according to Gay, the lat~nt-and therefore deeper-cantent ofhuman condncl, psychoanalysis hás an "Freud was aman ot the centd'" Gay (as Philip Rietfhad done decades·earlier essentlally apohtical bias." Thetefore, according to Rieff, the polentffilly subver-in his class1c l'reud, lhe Lije oja Mom!i.>t)" emphasizes Freud's antintopian views. sive dimensiono~ psy,hoanalysis is limited to its ps¡rcholoS'cal conceptualization Ifh1s ideas were subversive it was only in the realm of sexuality; and not to its pohtical consequences.

'lhinking aboutpolilicshe [Freud] wasa prudentanti-utopian. Butlo qualify Freud simply as a conservative is to miss the tension in his thought and to slight his implkit radicalism ... 'Ihi:; did not make socialism any more appealing lo Freud, He thought hirnsdf a radicill social critic ... [butl in the domain of sexuality alone."

Thc di:;agreement shown by scholars about Freud's pOiitical indinalions, as wdl as about otheraspects ofhis life and personality, is extended tu the political potential of the system he created. What kind of political cons'equences and con­dusions, if any; can be derive(! from psychoanalysis? Should it be seen as a poten­tially subversive oras a c.onservative (or even reactionary) COfiCeptual apparatus? ¡;rom earlyon, leftlst analysts snch as Alfted ~er, Otto Fenichel, and, most nota'" bly, Wilhelm Reí eh made di~rent altc:mpts to combine nonorthodox psychoanal­y~is with (also nonorthodox) Marxism. Latcr, members oí the Frankfurt School and its heirs su eh as Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm would do the same.10

Duringlhe carly years of the Soviet Unlon, severa! powerful Soviet intellectu­als and politicians--'--Trotsky being the most prominent of them-showed an inler­estin psychoanalysis. ~e Soviet Union has probablybe~n the onlycountrywhose government officiall¡-' suppoited psychoanalytic practice and researdl. All this ended with Stalin's raise to powerP Other leftist inteliec:tuals, sudl as the Frendl­Hungarian philosopher Georges Politzer in lhe late !920s and bis Argentine foliower, the psyc:hoanalysl')osé Bleger, decades laler, ttied 10 construct a ~con­crete •psychology~ based on the dialectical elements present in psychoanal)iis.

A ditferent approach wus taken more recently by Michel Fou<:aull whose work has ha<! an enormous influence on both si des of the Atlanlic (and al so on both sides of the Equator). He ·places psychoanalyois among the mechanisms that

Western culhrre has developcd lo genera le a disc.ourse o u sexuality. For Foucault, ~ychoanalysis is part of the "confessional culture~ thal, sincc the nineteenth

ccntury, has developed a scitmtia sexualis that has articulated the ancienl confes­;ional forms with the requirements of scicntific discourse." ThC birth of psycho­analysis, according tu Foncault, thus marks a continuity 11'ith the-cenluries-long process of produclion oftruth about sex-lhat is lo say, a discourse on sexuality. However, it also rnarks an importaut rupture fmm previous discoursive for­mations becitu'se it detaches sexuality from the idea of degeneration thal was hegemonk dnfing the ninetccntli. century." Although Foucault recognizes in psy­choanalysis a ~tacikal displacemenC in lhe "great' mechanism of sexuality;' he still sees itas part ofit, as part oflhe largc disciplinary apparatus set in place

sincetheeighleenthcentury. In thc early 1970s' French sociolog!St Robert Castel, inlluenccd both by Pierre

Bourdieu and Michel Foucaull, wrole an- authorilil.tive'tcxt, Le psyclzanalysrrie, in which he criticized those who songht a revolutionarymódd in ¡isychminalysis."' Accordihg to Castel, psychoanalysis could never provide a model for politícal practice.'He collsiders thal the beliefthat·psychoanalysis could be a subversive theory is completely false. In fact, in Castel's view, there is an intrinsic complicity betwecn psyd¡oanalysis and certain constitutive·mechanisms of the dominan! ideology." Psychoanalysis makes an irnporta'nt sóciopolitical impact by rein­fordng the structures of po".,r_ However, its own 'poWeT resides precisely In its

'""~""'""-·['""'""'""" . . . . "1 capacity to dissimulat~ and hide thi;; impact. P>ychoanalysis open1tes in such a jacques Lacan's "psychoan,liytic French Revolution" has J.dded an important 1 way that it "induces hlli1dness W ~er."" "Psyclwanalysis is a pr-actke and . :;ocia! and political dimension to psychoanalysis. His IOcus on alienatton as the a theory o~ Lhc cffccts.·o:.the uncon.snous that plac.es between brackets the ques- ; constitutive process of subje<:tivity an. d on th~ productwn of the subJect as the tlon of theu sodo-pohtJCal purposes:'" UnHke others who conlrast the existence · reoult ofhi" or her insertiun-Lhrough language-into a preexi:;ting (patrlarchal) o fa true "sttbve'"ive" psyclwan~!ys¡s to the perverswns ofthe "rcally existing psy- svmbolic arder places the foundatwns of the construction nf the sclf wilhln choanal)'sis" as a med1cahud and inslilution~lized practice, Castel poinls out that the social realm. Lacan's structuralist perspective-originating in linguistics-the neutr~ization ofexternal reality (an~ therefor~ apolitici~m) lS inherentto pst 1 conceptualizes the relationship belween lhings as more important .than the dlings choanalysiS and th1s. leads to confDtllllt¡r lo soc,ally dommant_ ideas. As Cohn , themselves. His psychoanalysis, howcvcr, (as Freud's) admits different and con-Gordon daims, fur Castel "the relationship of neutrality does not merely presup- tradictory interpretatiuns. For sorne, Lacan laid the foundations for a general pose but :ilso produces a-politidsm:'" questioning of any form ofhuman essentialism and biological dctcrmination that

C~stel does not believe that the psyclloanalytic rccovery of.the word of the were present_in other forms of psychoanalysis. On the other hand, others ha ve subject has an inherent emandpatory dimension; for, according to him, although focused on the potentially consemtive dcrivations of Lacan's ideas. If the infant the subject (Le., the analy;;and} does speak ofhimself or herselfthrough analysis, beco mes human unly_as a resull ofhis or her entran ce in a predetermined urder she or he is able lo do so only through the ''double mediation of analytk d<Jctrine that structureshis or her unconscious, i:here isno incentive (andno possibility) Cor and the person ofthe analyzer:·•• Foliowing Bourdieu; Castel a.~ociates analytical changing that order. As Louis Althusser (who played an impcirtanl role in diffu.s-discourse with symbolic viole':'"' that is aiV>1l)'!i supported by power. Therefore, ing Lacan's thought not o,nly in Frunce but also in Latin America) pointed out: for·Castel, psychoanalysis, far from being an emancipatory doctrine, is part of a movement toward depoliticization existing in the V>'estern world that reinforces social domination. This dimension is constilutive to psychoanalysis

In The Po/itics rif P¡;yc/unmalysis, Stcphen Frosh also admits that conservative consequences can be derived from psychoanalysis.l0, In Freud's texts, society is always inherently oppressive and since "the only difference between ·societies líes in the exacl way in which those oppressions are distributed," the differences in politkal regimes seem accessmy!' Moreo1·er, Frosh al so emphasizes the antifemi­nist bias of dassical psychoaualysk How~;ver, Frosh al so acknowledges that one ofthe most radical aspects ofpsych()¡lnalysis is the insight it offers into the «mech­anisms bywhich individnality be comes constructed within a social conlexi:'"

More rccently, Eli Zarctsky focused on the emancipatory. dimension of ps:·choanalysis. He brings Schorske and Rieíf Ir> task for not capturing the "dual charact¡:rofpsychoanalysis."

By reducing Frcudianism lo a counterpolitical withdrawal &-om 'rcason and public life he [Schorske] failed lo grasp the emandpatory aspects ofits exploration of the humari psyche, especially those of special relcvance lo marginal and exploited dasses and tn women."

Zaretsky, nonethdcos, condudes that psyclloanalysis must be assessed by tilking in lo consideration bpth its repressive and its liberatory aspects; «The key is lo see it as the first great theory of the 'personal lije.'""' In his OWJl contribution to lhis volume, Zaretsky (Chapter 10) shows,how bctween lhe I950s and the 1970s psy· choanalysio was appropriated and reformulatedsuccessively in the United States lo legitimíze ''maturity ethici' through ego-psycholog¡rand later to react ~gairu;til. In othcr, words, both the repressinglnormalizing .and thc cmanclpatory dimensions of psychoanalysis were {'Ut in lo play for oppo~ite purposes in the United States during thc 20-year period frorn the beginning of the Cold War to the 1970s.

1Nhere a superficial or tendcntious rcading of Freud saw childhood only as happy and without laws, the paradi>e of "polymorphous perversity". Lacan shows thc effectiveness of the Ordcr, of the Law, lying in wait, from befure birth, forevery infant to be born and seizing onhim from his very firsl cry lo assign him to his place.and role and thus his forred desiinalion."

It is signiticant that. in Argentina, during the politically violen! decade of 1970, mauy analysts who had been radical political acti;ists substituted a newlydiscov­ercd Lacamsm for their prev10us militancy. For many in Argentw.a, Laamism was a form of"dcpoliticized" psychoanalysis."'

Lacanian theoriesalsoattracted feminists. Women'sliberationistshad dismisscd I'reudlan th~XJT)' in the l960s and 1970.< on lhc hasis oftheir rcjection ofthe theory ofpenis envy. Ho;<>ever, earlier aJJalyst>, such as Karen Horney and Melanie Klcin had also challenged the primacy of penis envy and Horney, in particular, q1,1es­tioned the extent to ;<>hirh .renil envy could represent women's experiencc cven mctaphorically. A h.reakthrough _in the feminist reading of psychoanalysis took place by the late I970s when-JJ.!liet; Mitchell argue<l that p~yd10analysis could in fact be used to critique patriarclly and focused the attention on the psychology of fernininity, a perspective that has a strongpolitical potential.

Lacan introduced importan! changes in the psychoanalytic thcorization of gendeT and sexuality. Although many French femini.<l theorists such as folia Kristeva and Luce Irig;aray have been critica! to manyofhis ideas, thcy ha ve found in Lacan's .conceptual framework, and particular! y in his rejection of any bi<>logkal dcterminatiiln in gender forrnation, the foundations fur a feminist theorization of the conslruction offeminine subjectivity. According lo Lacan; the sclf-perception of the subjcct as maJe or fcmale is nothing but illusory, the pruduct of one's in>ertion into the symbolic order that, as_ Frosh points out obscures the vcry fact of that insertion. "Masculinit¡r and feniinil,ljty are not a];¡¡;o]utc categories:'"

On the other hand, L~can deal5 with patriarchy without pretending that it does notexis(, which is imporlant for feminist;, sine e in ord~t to challcngc the patriar­chal order it is necessary to recogni:.>.e its existem:e in the first place. La,;;an pro­vides a conceptual apparatus for unJerstanding lhe nature of patriarchy.lf, as he daims, the phallus, that is to say the symbolic representation of the patriarchal authority, is abo fictitious, then the nature ofsexual division is as arbitrar¡.· as the relationship between signifier and &Jgllified

Although fe1ninisl theory has been one of the most fruitful critica! political eng'agemenls with psycboanalysis of the second half of the twentieth century,

the olher one has been postcolonial theory. If gender thoory has provided a rich and complex platform from which to oonsider the política! potential of psycho­analysis, recen! theorizations within postcolonial theory have also utilized l'reudian concepls tn politidze othemess. 1he work of Ashis Nandy, for instance, has focuscd on the cultural and psychologkal impact of colonlalism. In particular,

his u~c of Freudian analysis in understanding the "savage" world and c.ritiquing "imperial struc.tures of thought" has effecti\'ely highlighted the dehumanizing impact of wlonialism.'1 However, post~olonial thoorists have also made diverse (and sometimes contradktory) readings of psyc.hoanaly:;is. A different approach,

for instance, is taken by Ranjana Channa, whose "symptomatic" read.ing of psy­choana\ysis led her to wndude that it is a «masculiniot and colonialist discipline

that promoted thc idea ofWcstern subjectivity in opposition toa colonized, femi­nine and primit1ve other.»" In fact, as Frances Gouda and Christiane Hartnack have shown fur the cases of Indonesia and Colonial India, psychoanalysis has been historically used both lo justify and lo qucstion colonialis!IL"

Although different authors emphasize one or the other dimen:;ion of p>ycho­

analysis, the highly sel~ctiH and limited ourvey we have preoented here (the evú­expanding literamre on psychoanalysis is too large to even try to be exhaostive) sh.ows that most scholars, induding thc authors of thls >'Olume, acknowledge the presence ofboth a repressive andan em.andpat<JT}' dJmension in psy.::hoanalysis. 1he readings, interpretatinns, and approprlalions of psy.::hoanalysis that took place in different historical and cultural sdtings have alw led to q1lite dilferent and sometimes unexpected outcomes. Thus, in Spain, during last ycars of the Restoratlon, the subsequcnt Primo de Rivera Dictatorship anJ the Second Republic. for in:;tance, psychoanalysis was in general aswciated '~ith anticletical, progressive politi,;;al positions, to the point that a disappoinled José Ortega y Gasset was forced to admit in 1924 that althoogh by thcn he had doubts about psychoanalysis, he was not ready to admit it publidy since Lhat would place him among ''gente de mala catadura," that is to say clerical conservatives}' Verydiftú­ent wao the reading of psychoanalysis made by right wingers René laforgue, Edouard Pichon and others in France a~ Annick Ohayon shows in her chapter. More extreme, however, seems to have been the case of anti-Semile psychoana­lystfdemographer Georges Mauco, who explidtly used psychoanal}1ic concepts to explain the "Jewish neurosis.""

The discussion on the relationship between psy.::hoanalysis and politks takes os back to some bask questions that are al the heart ofthi.>J book: Under whkh

political oonditwns is the implantation and dilfusion of psychoanalysis possible! 1,\'b.at are the polilical conditions that makethe reception and diffusion ofpsycho­analysis possible in a given societ¡•? According to many authors psychoanal)·sis could not flonrish untler condltions ofpolitic¡¡] authoritarianism. A certain levd of political and social freedom would be a precondition fnr a successful implantation of psychoanalysis. "lhis wa.~ the point of;icw smtained by Princess :>faric Bonaparte as quoted by Annick Ohayon (in hex oontnbution to this volumc). A similar pc:>Ínt of view has been ;ustained recently by Elisabeth Roudinesco and others."

1he fate of psychoanalysis in the countries ruled by diffi:rent kinds of authori· tarian regimes between thc two World Wars secms to confirm this perccption, Psychoanalysis "as al! but banned by Stalin in Soviet Russia after the short hon eymoon between the young soviet regime and the Freudian doctrine discmsed above, it never really took off in Fascist Italy, the active German P'Tchoanalytk community was dismantled by the 1\azis, while most psychoanalytic acthity ceased in nccupied Europeas well a< in China during the perind ofthe Culturnl Revolulion." On the other hand, did flourish very

The problem with this view io tw<Jfold. First, ifwe ¡,"'k at non-Eurnpean coun­tries, the picture is more complex. In Latin America, as the cnntribulions nf this book slww, psy.:hoanaly~is wao persecuted neither by the authoritarian-populist regimes of the 1930s and l940s nor bythe much more authoritarian military dk­

tatorships of the l960s and 1970s. More disturhingly, it was predsely under the latter regimes that psychoanalysis became popularizcd and disseminatcd to unprecedented levels. Iftoday, a c.ountry such as Argentina can be (and in fact is) considered as a world cil¡iital of psychoanalysis, this is the result of a historical process that started in the 1960s and l970swhen thecounll) wa> ruled by more or less murderous m!litary regimes, lis Mariano Ben Plotkin (Chapter 8) discusscs in his chapter. A similar argument c.ould be made for Braz.il, as Jane A. Rnsso (Chapter 7) illustrates. Second, as the dttl'crent conttibutions to this book and other works ,how, if we loo k more carefully at the historicil rocnnl, we find that

not even the European ,;;ases are as clear cut as sorne authors daim. It is true· that the Nazi.>J dismantled the German psychnanalytic movement by

subsuming it into Matthias Goering's Institute. However, Geolfrey Cocks, Stephen Frosh, and others have ,hown that not only did so me fmms of psythoanalysis survive within the institute, but also that prom.inent members of lhe psy<::hoana­lytic community such as Ernest J ones, Anna Freud, and even F reud himself found tolerable the idea that psychoanalysis "''ere practiced by non-]ewish analysts onder the rules set by the Nazis.'-' Eli Zaretsky points out that Freud continued commu­nkating with the ':AryanH members ofthe Berlín psychoanalytic gmup who were absorbed by the Goering In o ti tute "appar~ntly bellevingthat psythoanalysis could survive in a fascist context."46 Erncst Jones, on the other hand, went as far ao to

a<Sure Goering that psychoanalysb was not nec~ssarily unfriendly to thc Nazi We/tamchawmg}' After the v.car, at least one former mcmber uf lhe Goering Institute, very much involved with Nazi:;m, became a leading analyst in Brazil, as jane A. Rus>O shows. It seems that "Nazis were interested in sorne a:.peüs nf poychoanal)''tk pracüce because it had proven uscful tu lreat sorne fonns of v;ar neuro•es during 'World \\'ar l. Frosh daims (although without presenting any evidence} thatsume testimonies state that"when une looks outsideof the Goering lnstitule it is possiblc to find a great pen11siveness uf I'reudian thuught m the

German·military psychological .;:omplex.»"" 1he wmplex relationship between psychoanalysis and totalitarian regimes is

highlighted in Mauro Pasqualini's chapter onlto.lian Fa.1ci:im {Chapter l). In ltaly; thc \in e that divided I'ascists fmm anti·Fascists did not coincide with thc one that

Freudians from anti.freudians. 1hus, whilc anti·Fascisl philosopher ·ian Beneddto Croce and hi< assodates opposed psychoanalysis, an

early Fascist militan! such as Marco Levi-Bianchini (who was )ewish) became honorarypre,ident of the ltalian Psychoanalytic Sodety, which was incorporaterl

into the IPA in 1935. Psychoanalyst Edoardo V"'eiss was on good terms wilh prominent members of Mussolini's inner circlc, some of whom, or their immedi· ate relatives, were in analysis at sume point or the other. Moreover, sume of thc main Fasdst \deolugues, su.;:h a< Education /1.-tinisler and prestigious idealisl phi· losopher Giovanni Gcnri\e, were nol oppDSed lo psychoanalysis, quite the oppo· sitc. It was Gentile himsdf "hu asked Weiss to wrile sevcral enlries fur the E11cídopcdia Italiana di Scienzc, Lettere ed Arti, a ma;or Fascist editorial project. It seems that during Lhe 1930s the reception and diffusion of psychoanalysis fitted bettn into the moderniiing tendencies of Italian l'ascism than il did into anti·

Fasdst llberalism. lfFascists were worried about psychoanalysis, it was becanse of its international and )ewish components, those that were perceiveJ tu be at odds wilh ltalian n.1tionali'm and with the powerful Roman Catholic Church. IL was on!y after the implementation of !he anti·Semitic legislation of 1938 that the flourishing ltalian psychoanalytic culture e ame toan end.

Similarly, in Hungary, as Judit Mé~záros shows in her chaptcr (Chapter 4), although the reception aod early imlitutionalization of psychoanalysis were associated with the modernizing elements of cu!tl!re clase to the radical Jeft, Admira\ Horthy's semi-.Fascist re gime and even the German oecupalion were less detrimental to psychoanaly.~is than the Stallnist regime that took power after World War IL As in ltaly, huwever, the rada! anti·Semitic l:iws passcd after the fall ofthe short·livcd Soviet Republic of 1919 and in the late 1930s provoked a psy choanalytie diaspora that Mé<záros analyzes both from the Hungarian and the British·American perspectivcs. In the end, the Hungarian psrchmmalytic move­ment wou!d survive World War U only to be dismantl~d in the late 1940>, sus­pected ofheing a bourgeois and imperiahstic (i.e., American) fifth culunm.

In Spain, the situaünn was d!so wmplex as Anne-Céd!e Druet show; { C1lapter 3), since the IPA affiliated psychuanalytic associaliom were created during Franco's dictaturship. Moreover, as Dructalso points out, during 1he dictatorship ~analysts were not only ab\e to practKe, hul also lo parlicipate in ollicial meetings of the

to be more difli:ult \he newly created to obtain recognilion frum the IPA than legal status whkh even funded the analytic training ofSpanish candidales in other l:iuropean conntries.•• It seems thM in Franco's Spain, as in other similar Euwpean regim~s and even in Japan during 'World War II, psychoanalysls were pcrsecuk:d for theit política! views (or for their ethnic background} more than for their theoreti<;al vicws, C\'Cll lhough those theoretical views cunld go against the values promot.<::d by those regimes." In Spain under franco no offidal prohibition was enacted against the practice of psychoanalysis. Tt is inlcresling lo note, as Druet puts furward, that the only work by Freud that fdl victim of ccnsorship was M"seJ and Monotheism. In olher words, Franco's ccnsors focused more on the possible inwmpatibilities betweenl'reud's ideas and the Calholic dogma !han on hi; ideas aboutsexuality.

Thc case of Fran~e nnder the Gcnnan o.;;cupation was different. There, as Ohayon points out (chapter 2), although htu~J's worb were banncd, the pri­vate practicc of psychoanalysis did not seem lo have been affected, The relation· ship between psychoanalysis (and psychoanalysts) and the regimc both under the occupalion and under Vichy was linked lo the atlttudes ofpartinllar anal¡•sts, and we find them on both sides: as open collaborators and as rcsisters. The majority, howeva, remained attached to their prívate practice wilhout gelling invoked in politics. Annik Ohayun follows the lrajectory of a group of analysts that included those who, like Sadta Nacht or Paul Schilf (both jewish), joined the Resi1tance, or Princess Marie llonapartc, who chose to el ose the Société Psychanalytiqne de Paris and lo go lo exile inslead ofaccommodating ps¡'choanalysis lo the new con· dilions. Nonetheless, there were also those who like René l.aforgue or Georges Manco sought active collaburation with th~ Gcrmans. I.afurguc wuuld conlinue lo express his anti-Semitism a decade after the end ofthe war. In the politkally polarized French environment of lhose year' !he atliludc of each analyst had more todo with his or her commitments as a citizen thanváth his or her statu..1 asan analyst. Although many analysts worked in publk instirutions under the Vichy regime, Ohayon reminds us that doing so does not turn them automatically into collaborators, and this a\so applies to uthcr nationa! and hi,lorical conteKLs such as the Argentine or the Brazilian ones under military dictatorships.

In spite of a!l this, nonetheless, mud1 can sUJI be said about the possibilities of the dissemination of psychoanalysis under totalitaria o regimes. Although it m ay secm that the right·winginterwar Eumpean regimes were less worried about psy­ehoanalysis as a system of thought than they werc aboul psychoanalysts (or any otherprofessionals) becauseof racial or ideologic.il reason:;, the fact is that neither in Mussolini's ltaly, nor in Hitler's Gcrmany, nor in occllpied Hungary, nor in I'ranco's Spain, nor in occllpied France, mnch less in Stalin's Smict Un ion psycho· analysis was succe•sfully implanted. 1,.\'hat is slriking in !hes~ ca;es, however, is the fact that psychoanaly:;is as a pract¡ce .;:ould surv:ive in more or less modificd

forros. The Nazis merged psychoanalysis in lo other forms ofpsychother~pydcny­ing, al the same time, agood part ofits conceptual apparatus; after the impkmen­tation ofthe raáallaws p>ychoanalys¡s all bllt disappeared from Ita! y until the fall of ~asdsm; and it was neverpopular in Spain until democracywa:; reslur~d in the 1970s, when it was reintroduced lo a large extent by Argentine política\ exilcs. In f..1ct, as Druet <hows, ifpsychoanalysis was tolerated in Spa.in during the Franco dictaturship it was in part bemnse the lcading psychoanalysts followed a con­scious policy of silence and low profile; they even refrainerl from publi;hing thdr wurks in Spa.in. lt was a kind of domesticaled version of psychoanalysis againsl which die Lacanian movement emerged in thc J970s. Something similar can be ~aid about psychoanalysis under ltalian Fascism. Although the ltalians did nol need lo rema in silent, they made efforts to show the compatibility betwcen psy­choanalysi~ and Fasci~m. Some of those re gimes conld find something llseful in the pmcticc of psychoanalyois (such as its potential military use in German)'), but did not prm-iJe the conditions for a dissemination ofthe discipline.

If it is true, ao Slephen Fosh, Blisabelh Roudincsco, Yosef Yerushaimi, J.nd others daim, thal lhere is a constitutive jewish component in psychoanalrsis, then the kind ofpsychoanalys.is dmtlhose rcgimes tolerated was a de-)udaized version, which would be a contradktion in terms." Le¡l.'ri.ng aside Freud's, Iones: and Anna Freud's dubions stalements and altitudes, it should he recognized that they were worried about the possibililies of thc survtval o( psychoanalysis iñ a world thal was becoming less and less hospitable for altemative forms of social and psychologkal theorizing. It may be true that they privilegcd the survival of thc movemenl over lhe fak of sorne analysts or cven over the purity ofthe system, bnt il is still clear that if they did so it was bemnse theywere ]eSj than convinced that psychoanalysis could exist cmder those conditions in the first place.

Konetheless, the European experiences only kll us that tmder those specific historkal and political wnditíom psychoanalysts (and lo a much lesser extent psychoanalysis as a form of thought) were persecuted for d.ifferent (political, racial) reasons. As mentioned before, th~ LalinAmeriom caoes show not onlythat psychoanalysis could exist, but thal ít could flourish under other fonns of politkal authoritaríanism. A true "psychoanalytic culture" was se! in place in !hose years." Al so, a> Plotkin shows in his chapter, the military dktators appropriated portions of psychoanalytic discoUl"se for their own purposes. We will come back lo these pointsshortly.

The chapters on lhe 'ituation of psychoanalysis in the United S tates approach the relation;hip betv;een psychoanalyoU and restricted political freedom from a completely different perspeclive. Obviollsly, the United States never sulfered the kind of authoritarian regimes discussed in the other sections of thls vol u me. In Eli Zaretsky's formulation, the main question i.s about the role o( ps)'('hoanaly­sis in nominally democratic societies, particularly when issues assodated with authoritariani:;m and human rights in general are at slake. Js the qui:>tion of authoritarianism and repression relevant in such a context? The answer provided by Danta and Zaretsky is a resounding yes. Zaretsky traces three "moments" in recent U. S. history. The first momenl is defined by what Philip Rieff conceptualized

as postwar "maturit;~' defined as ~an attitude of ironic insight on the par! of the selftoward all that is not self.' Ego psychology, the dominant vers.ion of psyclw­anal¡"Sis in the United States at that time, lheorized and provided legitimacy to "maturitf.' The second moment is characterized by the emergence of the "New Left." It turned psychoanalysis into a revolutionary theory that eroded ideas of pluralism promoting a new society "infused with emotional pllwers." This led to the emergence of the ''theory of the two Frcud.!;:' According lo new leftists there was a repressive Freud linked to Ego psychology and an emancipalory one to whom they assodated themselves and whosc ideas were recovered by thinkers such as Herbert .\1arcnse. Fmally, according lo a third moment was charackrized by the subordination of psychoanalysis a new '"politically corred, feminist and gay worldview emerging from the neoliberal sociel)·ofthei970s."

JfZaretsl..l' shoV.·s howpsychoanalyoi.& could be unrler1tood and utilized bothas a "normalizing;' disciplinary theory and as an emancipatory one in a demncratic snciety, ElizabethAnnDanto (Chapter9) focuses on the fateof psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts during one of the darkest periods of American democracy: .\1cCarthyism. l;nlike Zaretsky, Danto does no! discuss the receplion or appro­priation of psychoanalysis as a theoretical body or system ofbeliefs.; her focus is on the persecution :;uffered by psychoanalysts as a result of their triple burden ofbeing foreigners, leftists (real or allegerl), and )ews during the period when ). Edgar Hoover was director ofthe FBI. The strong sirnilarities betv.·een the language used by Iloo~er and :\icCarthy to refer to "subversivcs" and how lo deal with them induding the heavy llSe of medica! metaphors, and the language used by the Argentine militarydicMors ofthe l970s as discussed by Plotkin are striking.

Danto concentrates on an American contradiction: "the land of the free, the land of oppression~ showing the Effect; that this tension had on the psycho· anal)1ic commnnity. The environment Danta analyzes, however, cannot be described in blackand white. The American psychoanalyticcommunity, like most cummunities was (and is) a complex phenomenon. The same American Psychoanalylic A''iociation that opcnly opposed the >pedal loyalty oath that California tried to impose on its fmployees (induding university professors) was less cuurageous when confronted with pressure from the FBI.

"lhe main issue, discussed by Danlo, and al~o by Mésdros, is exile. Ifthere i~ somdhing that has dcfincd the experience of European psychoanalysis in the interwar period {and we would dare lO say, pHychoanalysU in general), it has be en the expcricnce of pohtícal exile, whkh, gil· en ih~ number of analyots going to the United States, was closelr linkcd lo thc «American ex.perience." The Europeans who went to thc Uniterl Stales escaping the horrors ofNazism often found their new homela.nd to b"e less hospitable lhan they had expected. The rejcction they suffered was caused bymany fuctors, induding professional jealousy and unbridge­able cultural gaps (as well as political suspidon and anti-Semitism). HO"I\'eVer, thc analysts, as well as other exiles, kne•v very wdl the dilference between rhetorical anti-Scmitism and the possiblc riskoflosing a state job on theone hand, and what they would have risked had they sla)•ed in Europe, on the other hand.

'lhe experience of exile was nollimited to Europe ~nd the ünited Sta tes." There was also migration of psychoanalysls from Furo pe lo South America, from one part <lf South America to another, and from South America to ~urth Amcrica, Au,tralia, and Europe, most notoriously to Spain." Thus, Lucia Valladares and Jaue.Ru~so show the impact of Europea u cxiles {bolh Jewish and Nazi col­laborators) as wdl as Argentinians on thc development of the Bra7.llian psycho­analytk community. Similar!y, Anne-Cécile Druehliscuoscs the importancc of thc presence of Argenline political exiles in the rcception uf Lacanian psycho­analysi> in Spain in the 1970s. In fact, the relationship between the Argentine and the Spanish p~ychoanalytic movements has been wry fluid sin ce it was a Spaniard, Angel Garma,_ who was the organizer anda long-time leader ofthe Argentinc l'sychoanalyticAssociation.

A look al !he process of reception and diifusion of psychoanalysis in Latin America opens a completely diflierent universe of problems that defies rnost cale­gories nsed su far. As )acqnes Derrida pointed out in 1981:

This that we would call from now on the Latin America of psychoanalysis i~ the only zone of the world where, confronting each other or not, 3 strong psychoanalytic sodcty anda soclety ... that practices torture ata large scale, torture that is'not limiled any longer to the easily identifiable classically brutal forms, coexist. lhis torture ... sometimes ntilizes psycho-symbo!ic techniqnes."

The four chapters dealingwithLatin America inclu<kd in this volume discuss the r~ception and diffusion of psychoanalysis in the two countries that, because of Lhe largc presence of psychoanalysis, best .exemplifics Derrida's poim: A~errtina and Rrazil. Both countrics (Argentina in particular) are Loday recognizedas inler­n3tional centcrs of consumpli<m and dilfusion of psychoanalysis. For instance, nol only does Argentina lmve the largest number of practicing psj•choanalysts in terms of its population (one out o( less than 200 people lhing in the city of Buenos Aires is a psychologist practicing someJorm 1ofpsychoanaJy¡,io), but in both cuuntries there is a true psychoanalytic culture in place. Moreover, today both countri€s boas! a Lacanian community that is rankcd among the largcst in the world, while psydwanalysts from both countries have achicved international recognition. In the.1990o; Horacio Etchegoyen from Argeutina became the first Lalin American to be clected president ofthc il'A

Vvbat is pu7Jling, however, is that the institutionalization and the ma..sive diffu­sion of psychoanalysis in Argentina and Brazil took place )''hen both counlrie~ \''ere living undcr either aulhoritarian -populist types of govcrnment or more mur­derous forms of mililary dict.ltorship. In bis contribulion on Argentine under Perón, Alejandm Dagfal (Chapter 6) shows the complexity of this problem. In his view it is impossible to clcarly conceptnaliz.e thc nature ofboth the Peronist regime and the anti-Peronist rcvolution tbat ousted lt. Juan Perón wa' "rtainly inspired (he never denicd it) !Jy the European regunes that he had seen during bis trip to Europe in the late 1930s; he was particularly impressed by MUS.Iolini's techniques

'1 '""""""'"" ~ ... 1 of popular mohilization and he tned tu implemenl somethmg rumilar 111 Argentwa. Itis also true. as Dagfal pointo out, that particularlyduringhis second lermin office Perón introducOO impmtant restriclions lo huJtl<l.Jl and political rights. However. ifhis government could be characterized as authoritarian, il was 3 mild version of authoritarianism compared to other experiences that the countl)' "'ould undergo decades later. Moreover, even ifPerón implemented repressiv-e poli eles against his oppon~nts, the truth is that he not only respected the fmms uf democracy (he wun ekctiou.s that were as clean as they could be), but he also empowered the working daos gcnerating a strong sensc of identity still present among Argenline workers.

The Argenline middle class, particularly the intcllectuals, were massively oppused. to Péron. Dagfal shows that the pus,ihle resislances uppu'led by the Perouist government lo the dilfusion of psychoanalysis were not related to the contcnts of the latter but lo thc política! polarir.ation that the Argentinc society wru; living through: psychoaualysis (together with Prench existentialism, avant­garde art, e\cetera) represcntcd. because theywcre mostlyobjects of consumption ofthe sectors that upposed Péron, the kind of culture that Péron wanted to eradi cate. In other words, Pér.on did not have specilic probkms with psychoanalpis but rather with the ~ocia! class lhal practiced il 'Ibis opposition, nonetheles,, <lid not manifesl ilself in prohibitions or ·persecution beyond the controls th3l the regime exercised over all forms of public social interaction.

The military government established after Péron wa• overthrown was no less complex than thc regime it replaced. Although it sct up a highlyrepressive system it allowcd, at the same time, the existen ce of importaut "<kmocratic islands" and prometed a modernizing discourse that materialized in cultural and (sorne) social policies. Hoth the democratic islands {the most notorious of them being the public universlties) and the policies enhanced the diffusion of psychoanalysis, The ncw and increasingly popular prograril.s of psychology established in publk universi­ties soon be carne piiwerf,¡) agents for the diífusion of psychoanaly-sis, while so me ofthe policies implemented in the publjc system ofmental bealth assistancc, dís­cussed by Plotkin in hi; chapter, aL<D.promoted a ~psychoan.'llytic viev/' lll psy­chiatric practice. Moreover, there were other noninstitntionalizcd ways of diffw;ing poychoanalysis associatcd with popular culture or wilh !he development of modero social sciences that nm parallel with the (largely apolítica!) vcrsion "f poychoanalysis promoted by !he Argentine Psychuanalytic Association.

The situation in Bnuil during the long Vargas period (1930-1 \145/1950-1954) was mthn diftúent. Vargas's program of reforms from the top down, particularly during the authoritarian perlod known as ~Estado Novo" (1937-1945), was inspired by a hctcrogcncous setof models including Roosevelt's :-l"ew Deal, Italian Fascism, a.nd the Portuguese Estado Novo established hy Oliveira Salazar. VargaS Estado Novo was less indusive in social terms than Péwn's l\'ew Argentina, buL it was more ecumenical in ideological terms. Unlike Péron, who alienatcd mu~l Argentine intellectuality, Vargas was able lo attract prominent inte!lecLUals from the most diverse ideolo¡i;ical backgrounds."

In a country such as Brazil, whete a large part of the populatiori was illitemte, educational refonn was on~ of Vargas'& priorities and he took adwmtage of the

existen ce of an importan\ group of doctoTS/anthropologists/educato;s intere<ted in psychoanalysis such as Artur Remos and others, to implemcnt reforrm in the public edu.cation splem. Varga• was also able to attract members of Modernist aV<"tnt-garde to hLs governmcnl, and during bis term, different services of mental hygiene (in most cases headed by· doctol'8 interested in ~ychoanalyois) were established in various states of the republic. In her chapter (Chapter 5), C. Lucia M. Valladares de Oliveira shows that Vargas appropriated a particular readingand interpretation of.psychoanalysis that he found compatible with his nationalist, authoritar.i.J.n, and, al the same time, modernizing project.

If the governments established in Brazil and Argentina under Vargas and Péron had sorne indisputable authoritarian elements (more the former than the latter), th~y still had sociaily inclusive goals and obtained the loyaltyofimportant sectors of societr. Thcy-tried to obtain consensos through authoritarian means, while mobilizing the population at the same time. However, neither Vargas nor P~ron made use af terror in the same wily .as the European totalitadan regi.mes did, although sorne oftheir polides did Vio! ate civil and political rights.

,The military dictatarships established in both countries in the 1960s and'I970s were of a different nature. Orlginating in the paranaid environment of !he Cold War and with the active support ofthe U.S. govürilherit, these re gimes did resort to terror as a technique to discipline the populiltions.'In most cases.they com­binedstrong conservative valucs rooted in fundamentali:;t Catholicism with mod­ernizing technacratic tendencies. Moreover, as Plotkin and Jane Russo show, these dlctatorships ruled over sodeties that were undergoing fust processes oí change and modemization. Psychoana!ysis 1vas adopted simultaneously as a nonthreat· ening discoune that could explain and channel the anxieties provoked·by social transformation andas a tbemetical instrument u sed bythe influential inteilectual left tó explain the ever elusive local political reality•

Furthermare, in Argentina al leas!, 'thcre were segments ofpsychoanalytic dis­course and practii::e that were al so appropriated by the dictatorships for !he pur­pose of introducing important social and economic reforms from !be top down. Partkularly importantwas the introductiun of psychoanalytically oriented thera­pies, including the use oftherapeutic communities into the Ar¡¡cnline public psy· chiatric system dur!ng the 1960,· and early 1970s. 'lhis. situation started ·to dderiorate during the 1970~ as the ¡.\olitical environmcnl be¡;ame more radical­ized, and especially after 1976 when a particularly murderous military regime took power. During that period, all·forms of sodal·interaction· that could be sus­pected of being "subversive'' were harshly repressed. Nonetheless, the dictators made uSe of the legitimacy that psychoanalysis enjoyed in sodety for their own propaganda pnrposes. Like in interwar Europe sorne psychoanalysts were perse­cuted {and in sorne cases murdered), but this harassmcnt was related to.their poli ti cal activism and not to their allegian<;:e to Freud and his doctrine.

The evolution of psychoanalysis in Brazil during the 1960s and 70s was both similar to and different from the Argenlinian case. As thcir Argentine coun­terparts, the Brnzilian dictatoTS carried out a poliq• of"authoritarian moderniza­tion.'' According to Russo, for the social se<:tars most affected by social

,¡ wtro'"''"" ---- ----- - ~-~

!: modermzatiun, and particularly for those associated w¡th counlen:ultural move-!i ments, individual transformation was seen as a prerequisite fur sucia! transforma-'' tion. Enter psychoanalysis. Russo condudes that "the diffusion ofpsychoaoalysis

among the learned urban middle strata may he comidered as part ofthe modern­ilalion process that began in the 1950s and was greatly intensificd during the military regime.'' Thus, Russo complicates the analysis of otber influential Brazilian intellectuals like Luciano Martins, according lo whom lhe diffusion of psychu­analysis in Brazil can be explained as a substitute for polit.ics and as a form of escapism for the generntion thal carne to age duringthe mosl represoive period of themilitaryregime." A> in Argentina, the official psychoanalytic .1odeties in Bra:dl were largely left alone hy the military. On the other hmld, those societie:; never opimly expressed opposition t'o th~ regime. Wbat wa.1 probably the darkest hour of Brazilian psy· choanalytk societles is what is known as the "Lobo case;' which became public in spile of the efforts made by thc IPA-afliliated Brazilian societks and by the IPA itself to keep it secret. Amilcar lobo was a candidate of one of the'Rio de Janeiro soódies who, asan Anny doctor, had been in volved in torturing political oppo· nents. However, as Russo poínts out, there were also psy¡::hoanalysts who were activcly involved in the resi<tance against the militar y regime.

At this point, and to conclude.this introduction, we rnust relurn to our point of departure. Can we consider that there is a "real" psychoanalysis against which the ather fonns of psychoanalysis should be measured? Can we d.istinguish between a psychoanalytic {subversive) theory and a comervative pradice? We, as editors ofthis v6lume, do not bclieve so, although v.ce are aware that sorne of the contributors may not share our point of view. As we pointed out at the beginning of this introductian, we bel\eve that tbe history of a given system of thought cannot be d.istinguished from the historyofits {multiple) receptions and appropriations. These multi¡íle levds ofreceptiom generate hybrid form; that are particular! y evident In the case o f. psychoanal¡rsis where popular and ~expcrt" forros of receptions and circulation' are usually intertwlned. Thinking otherwise, in our view, would make us fall into a naif essmcialization of ideas: As Roger Chartier pointed out more than 20 year:; ago:

The appropriation [of ideas oi' cultural forms] as we understand it, is a soda! histary uf uses and interpretations, assodated with their fundamental determinations and inscribed into the specific practices that produce

them."

~~ can be argued that any theoretical discourse is always placcd witbin a network of interpretations and diverse readings from which it cannot be dissoci­al'oOd." 'lhis dDe! not mean falling into an empty social reductionism. Systerns of ideas have a specificity that can and mm! be analyzed and understoad. However, if lVI;: consider thai ideas and systerns of thought are also cultural and social artifacts we cannot ignore-those other dimensions mentioned above. As Pierre

'"' lntmcluelio~

Bourdicu has pointed out, the devdopment ofthe scientific and intcllectunl fields are not out of the social game."' Moreover, it ís impossible lo say what is the real and true psychnanaly;is bccause-as in the case of.Marxism-we are analyzing a vcry complex phenomenon with many actors that ha ve a claim over the monopoly of its acorrcct'' interpretation, and with u fluid interna! hierurclty ·(doctors, psychologists, soCial workers) that should al so be taken into consideration. Toda y "subversives" could be uguardians of the Temple" tumorrow, as bcc.ame the_case with Lacanians in Argentina and in Spain.

As.to.the <econd ques!lo'n rcgarding the.possibility of dislinguishing between a asuill'ersive" psychoanalytic Lhcory anda more conservatPre prac~ice, we bilie,·e that the an.i"·er is also complex. From the very beginuing Freud m~de dcar that he understood psychoanal)•si• to be a therapeutic technique anda method for the research of the unconscious. This method ís !he diriical one. Therefure; practice (that is to say the clinkal dimen'sion)'and theory cannót.be separated. Huwever, through its history, many people. tried, .for different r,>asons, to separate'theory and praclice. Thus, in countries such as Argentina· ai1d France, for instance, the early reception of psychoanalysis by medica! cirdes was associated with a practice th~t· wa• deemed acceptable,. where~s the theory was usually noL The possible separation between Lheory and practice is complex and dillicult to discern because there are mauy iosues at stake, from ideological concems to concrete professional interests. Wc prefer to talk aboul, "really existing psycho­a'nalysis,» as there is a "real!y exisling Marxism;' in cach cultural and social space. And this "really e.~hting psychoanalysis" can be conservative;subversive, neutral, oral! three things at the same time

'Nhat we see in the essays included in this volnme is that under authoritarian or totalitaria u regimes, psychoanalysts were often perseCllted for. things that had little todo with their profes~ion and ideas. 11us volumc also shuws that !he spcci­ftcity of psychoanalysis h relative_ We.should not expect from psychoanalysis what we do not expect from any other profession .. For good or.for bad, psycho­analysis ha< become an importan! componen! ofWestem (and we dare'to say, not mUy Western) culture; andas in any' other cultural or professional 'pradice under the stin we can find in psychoanalysis both the best J.nd the worst.

This volume is organized in thrce :Scctions, cach of which il; preceded by' a shnrt llll:mduction written by the editors. The first section, furupc, is composed of four chap!~n;: on Fascist Italy (Mauro Pasqualini), on occupied Franc~ and Vichy (Annick Ohayon), on Spain (Anne-Cécile Druet}, and on Hungary under Fascism and Communism ()udit Mészáros). The second :;ection on.Latin Ame rica focuses on Argentina and Braúl and indudes four chapters, tWci on each country. Thus, there is a chapter that concentrates on Argentina under Peronisrn (Alejandro Dagfal) and another on the military dictato.,híps uf thc 1960s and 1970s (Mariano Ben Plotkin). On the Brarilian side, there is a chapter on Rrazil during !he Vargas Regime (C. Lucia M. Valladares de Oliveira), and another on the .Brazilian dicta.tun¡hip of ~e l960s ·.and 1970o (Jane A .. Ru~so). Finally, the third seclion, Psychoanalysis in the United State~ during the Cold War, indudes une ch~pter on the fa te of psychoanalyst:s during the times of Hoover and

McCarthy (Elizaheth.Ann Danta) anda final chapter on psychoanalysis and dif­ferent forms ofcultural authoritarianism in the 1960s ~nd 1970s (Eii Zaretsky)

'This book is the re,ult of the collective work of an international group of scholars lhat, coordinated by Mariano Ben Plotkin and foy Damow;i, has been con- · tinuo1.1sly working together since 2007 on differenl aopects of the transnational dimension of psychoanalysis. This is thc sccond volume (and we could say, a con- ¡ tinuation ofthe lirst one) putout hythe group." Therefore. unlike other mlledions . uf essays, this one did notoriginate in a confurence, olthuu.gh the group meets every 2 years for the purpose of di.1cussing advanceo oC its members' research and new projects. J\]though each aulhor is oolely responsible for the contents of his or her own chapter, we considerthatthe book as a whole is the end productofintense col­laboration. Working in the context of this group has been for !he ed.itors of this ' volwne a most reV>mding and·enriching experience. Therefore, we would like to e:>¡prcss our deepest appredation lo al! those V>ith whom "e ha,c bcen working · togelher in this andin !he previous project over the past Syears. We wonld also like tothankthose institútions thatmadepusslbleour lastmeetingin Pari:;, in Septemher , 2010, whcn the contents of this volume were discussed: the Academy af Social Sdences in Australia, the Australian Re1earch Council, and the Argentine Ministry ofEducation, through the Maisond.e l:Argentineat the Cité Univcrsitaire in Parí~;_ In particular, we want tll thank the director ofthe.Mai~on, Alej3ndm Birgin, forher huspitahty.ln preparation ofthis ,-olu.me we wouldespeciallyexpresi ourthanb lo :>1ary Tomsk and Carmel Reilly for their cxemplary editing skills. I'inally, we also want to express our gmtitude tu the "Auslralian te-.ml'thatparticipated in i:hatmeet­inga.l commentatoT5: Tohn Cash, Brigit Lang, and Robert Reynolds.lhi.s book al so belongstutl1em.

32. Frosh,ThePolitks,ll.

"· lN-·Yo•>•V.o""·'004l. ;4.

"

44. According lo Douglas Kirsner and Elise Snyder, ~psychoanalysishad a respectable though not stwming ir\Ouence in China befo re 1949:' See Kirsner, Douglas and Elise Snyder, "Psychoanalysis in China" in Akhtar, S.1lman {ed), Freui! and the Far Emt. P.Íy.:hoanalytk Pmpecrives 011 th~ Prop/e and Culture of Chim:t, ]apan and Korea (Lanham: Aronson, 20C>9)

45. f.rosh, Stephen,-Haie <~tul the ]ewish Sciencc. t\nti-Sowitism, Ndzlsm and P.¡y· dwanalys¡s (L<mdon: Palgravc-Macmillan, 2005); Cocks, Gcoffrey, Psychothempy in the Third Reicl! (2nd e<.l.) (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1997).

46. Zaretsky,Secrc!s,222. 47. Zaretsky,Secrets,227 48. Fm:;h,Hale,ll9.

49. Carlés, Francisco et al., Psicmmúlisis en España (/893-1968) (.\ladrld: Asodaci6n EspañoladeXeuropsiquiatrfa,2000)

50. During the war, !Iciss.ku Kosawa, one of the early Introducen; of psydloanalysis lnto )apan wa.~ placed under p<l!ke survei.l.lance, but could continue, at the same time, hisprivatepractkeofpsychoanalysis.SceOkinogi,Ke.igo,"Psy<:hoana!ysisln)apan', Jn Akthar (ed), Freud, 11. See also Taketomo, Yasuhiko, "Cultural Adaptation to Psychoanalysi!i in Japm, 1912-1952" Social Rese~rdJ. 57:4 ('li"lnter 1990), 951-991.

51. See Frooh, H~to¡ Roudinesco, Blisabeth, "Humanity and Its Gods: Athdsm." P~ychoanalysls ~nd History, 12:2 (2009), 251-262: Yerushalmi, Yosef Ha¡im,

¡r

1 i 1

!11 •1

,11

'!i' lil

}·~'.'. 1 !;[¡,

8

The Diffusion of Psychoanalysis

under Conditions of Political

Authoritarianism: The Case of

Argentina, 1 960s and 1 970s1

THE PSYCHOANALYTIC BOOM

In lhe pa;t 50 years Argentina has becomE thE "world capital of p~ychoanalysi,_" Notouly do es lhe country, witha curren! population of mere! y 40 million people, host one of the (if not the} largest psychoanalytk <::ommunitie; in the wurld, but psychoanalysis has become part, atle.ast for some sectors of the population, of whal Petcr.Bergcr has defined as "the.wor!d takcn for granted;' that is to ó<!y, that

part of realitythat is beyond questioning.' If Su<::h a diffnsüm of psydwanalysis in a country lo01ted su far frum the cen­

ters in which psychoanalysis originated is intriguing in itself, more puzzling is the fact lhat the beginning oí tlús process took place during the 1960s and I9i0s, when \he countrywas mled most ofthe time by repressive military dlctators who hadlittlc positive to say about psycho~nalysis, who ímposed very rigid constraints on the discourse (and practkc) of scxuality, and who tried to control the behavior ofpeoplc, both publk and privat~.lhus, the factthat the disseminalionofpsycho­analysh, far from stopping, cxpanded when Argentina was ru\cd by rcpressive regirues requires an expl~nation.

In this chapter I will.show that the development of a "psychoanalytic nliture" in A~ntina under. authoritarian regimes is the result of the oonvergencc of a cornplex set of cultural, political,-and social factors that laid the conditions for lllultiple-and sometimes .incumpat.ib\e-appropriations of the Freudian Bystem

LATlNAME~ICA

POLITICS ANO THE PARADOXES OF MOOERNITY

The ooup d'étatof 1966, led by General Juan Carlos Onganfu, mhered in a new ern in Argentine politics. From this pointonward, the gen erais made it dearthat their intention was not onlyto stay in power for as long as they dcemed necessary; but also to implement deep social and political changes in Argentine society and cul­lure.'"I:o'this end, the government proniised to implemenl usurgical procedures" aimed al uprootfug Communisl or any other mbversive infiltratlon.

The authoiitarian re gime that ,ruled the country in the 1960s, influenced by "developmentalist" ideas, al so sought lo modernizethe economy and sodety in an authoritarian fashion.' Howevcr, its modernizing policies coexisted uneasily with other discourses and policies inspired in conservatlv~ Catholidsm. On gaining power, 'Ongania hamessed these diScourses and extended the already existing campaign of"moralj7..ation" to enforce strict censorship of the.press and the ans, as well as lo repress any expression of counterculture or.ofwhat hi: consideredlax moral behavior. Young men had their hair forcibly cut by !he polh;e, while the length of womcn's ;kirts was regulated. Internationally prestigious centers of avant-garde art 'such as the "Instituto Di Tella" fell victim to thls campaign. 'Jhe publishing ofbooks and the distribution-offilms l'>'ere regulated and cen­sored.' The govcrnment also attempted to control people's sexuality byraiding the "hoteles alojamiento" and repressing any public man!festation of erot!cism,' Accordillg to the chief ofpolice, anyreference to free !ove, the dissolution ofmar­riage, or adult.ery would be subject to censonhip,. sine e "al! this is immoral beca use it favOrs the destruction of marriage, of famUy unity. of the purest Christian values. And tlmUs one of the classtc Communist tactics: to destroy the morallimits Of Christiansodcty:"'

,1hese ideas, however, were no! new. SinCe the late 1950s, the military, well traincd in thc so-ca!lcd "National Se.::urity Doctrine" originated during the Cold War, went ]ooking for "interna! enemies" that subvcrted 'the Kbasic Christian V<llues" of Argentine society. Communist infiltration, according to a publkation of Lhe Milita~· Academy of 1957, "like degeneratlve diseases, demands an early diagnosis anda surgical ii:ttervention outside oftraditional military technlques:·• 1hele "surgical interventions" would later indude illegul kidnapping, torture and murder of political opponentS, as wdl as a broad repres,ion·of all forms of social behavior and culhual cxpressións deemed subversíve.

As the dccade progressed, lhe country wtderwent a deep polilkal polaril.ation anda .rndicalízation that affectcd all dimensions rJf pui:>lic'interacUon. The seem· ingly unbridgeablc gap bclween universit¡; students on the one hand, and thc l'eronist movcment on the other; that is to say between intcllectual~>"and workoers, started to closeas the military regime eslablished in 1966 became more repressive lo\\card both groups. From the mid-!960s on,.,llrd, a group ofPeronist leftist guer­rillas (partlyencouraged by Perón fromhis exile in Spain}, tógetherwith óther non­Peronistguerrilla groups (Guevarist, Trot~;kyst, etc.} became active. Atthe beginnings of !he 1970s the Peronist group "Montoneros'' carried out ¡ome specmcular opera­liaos such "-' Lhe kidnapping and execution ofGeneral Pedro Aramburu, one ofthe

The Diff"wi~n o! Ps¡~oaool¡•si• und<r Conditiom orPo!!tiool Authoritu~nls~ --;,~ '1

leaders ofthe military coup tha.t had o-..o-erthrown Perén in 1955 anda former de Jar:tl! presiden!, This guerrilla activity was countered by more repression, including illegal detentiona, torture, and political assasslnalions. Moreover, right-wing and left-wing Peronists werealso involvedin violen! fights (including killings} with each other. Vlolence had become the central feature of Argentine politics.

In 1972, as the situation became intólerable, the military governmenl decided to callelections, Although Perón was no! allowed to run forthe preoidency, for the ñrst time since 1955 the Peronist party was permitted to present candidates. Dr.He<:tor J, Campara, el ose to the Peronistleft, waS elected presiden! in 1973, but il became clear that his role would be just to pave the way for Perón's return. When Perón did rehtrn in ]une 1973 the Peronist left and the Peronist right became involved in one of the most yjolent episodes of Argentine contemporary hlstory­the "Ezeiza lllJ.ssacre:' Immediately after-the massacre Campera resignL'd and Perón was clected presiden! for the third time, ·appointing his third wife, Maria Estela Marlinez, a former cabaret dancer known ao "'sabel,~ as bis vice-presiden!.

Perón's third periodin office 1~as short: he dled in Jul)' 1974leaving Isabel as the first fe m ale presiden! of Argentina. She surrounded herselfwith the mool cor­rupt ekments of the right-wing of the Peronist leadership, and conditions within the count~· deteriorated even further as a result of political violence and eco­nomic mismanagement. Conflict between 1he guerrillas and the army became more violenl and the situation spun out of control. In March 1976, with the approVal of a large part ofthe Argentine population, particularly the middle class, a "military junta~ overthrew Isabel. What followed Ibis coup was one ofthe dark­e~t p~riods ofArgentine hi•tory. Il l'<lS. paradoxically, in the unlikdyenvirOllment ofthe 196<ls and 197()s that a "psychoanalytic culture» emerged and devdoped.

PSYCHOANALYSIS: BETWEEN MODERNITY ANO TRAOITION

Ifthe I960s was the decade of dictatorship in Argentina, it was al so, as elsewhere, a decade marked by rapid social changes and cultural mndernizalion. The difference, however, is that in Argentina-as in Brazil, as shown by Jane Rll.ISo-"the !%Os" evolved in a context of politiéal authoritarianism. Thus,social and cultural changes weri= frarned in a repres;ive and violen! polilical environmcnt. Sorne of these cbanges facilitateJ the reception and imp11ntation of certaln forms of psyclloana­lytic thought· and practice.' First, dllring thosc years the social seclor Lhat com­pri>ed, lhe potenUal clienlele- of psychoanulysis-an aJllllent and highly cducated lniddle da:;> "~th new expectations and ncw pattems of cnns11mption-cxpanded ve~· quickly in a context of fa.,¡ economic growth. For sorne, psychoanalysis be carne an object of conspicuous consumption. At the same rime, it was perceived as a , modern therapeutic technology that treated the problems and conflicts that origi­nated, paradoxkally, in the same modernity th~t the diffusion of psychoanalysis contnbuted lo define.

Second, social modernization brought about chan~s in the truditional con­cepl nffamily and of women':; role at homc and in society. 'Jhese changes were thc

rcsult ofthe massive entrance uf women into the job market and into the system ofhigher cducation, ufthc ooncomitant delay uftheir marriage age, as well as of their enfran~hi.,emenl in 1947. This opened anotherarca for the reception of psy. choanalysis. Traditional parenthoud was chalkngcd by child·rearing and fcnli· nine maga7ines a.ud uperts, and by .popular psychologists such as Eva Gibert.L, who promoted the "Schools for Parents.'.' Giberti had a per~ru~nent presence in the media. Femalc sexuality was taken out of the realm of tradilional medicine when a new group of experts (mostly female andmostly gradlllltes in psychology, which in Argentina was then, and still is., a synonym for psychoanalysis) bccamc ava.ilahlc.

Third, lhe rapid social and cultural changes thal took place after the 611 of Perón·proYided.conditions for a general qu~>tioning of traditional customs aod

mores, which ran parallel, throughout the 1960s, wilh the emergence of a tirnid (fur more timid than its Brazilian countcrpart)'COUntercultural movcment. 1hi• questiooing, howevcr," had strong nuances due. lo the limits imposed by state repression (both under .military and dvi!ian goverrunents), buL al ro because of lhe pervasive conservative elements exioting in Argentine culture linked tu lhe

strength of tmditional Catholk va\ues among powcrful sectors of society." The amalgamation oftraditional and progressil'<'values in Argentine culture can be detected even in sectors that were associated and associated themselves wlth

moderoi~~ 1hus, as might be expeclcd, the poli ce routinely raided rock concerts and arreoted largc numbers of )"'ung people because Lhe way they dressed was perceivcd lo be a threatto accepted ~iews of ma.1culinity (in many cases Lheywere accused ofpromoting homosexuality). Yet, at the same time, Eva Giberti, who ph1.yed a central role in the dissemination.ofpsychoanalytic concepts, was also w·.uning, as late n.s 1970, about the danger of "little ero ss-dressing garues M played by rock fans and musidans, which, in hcr view, could enhance the natural sexual confusion of adolescents."

Ifthere WliS a asexual revolution" in Argentina, itwas relatively mild compared to other counlries." 1he ideal of premarital irirgini~· wao gr:1d\!.ally repla~ed. as Valeria Manzano shows, by a more.pcnnissive áltitude towurd ~prcmarilal sex" (which, ofcourse, assumed that sex was acceptable in so far as it paved the way to

marriage}. Psyclmanalysts and othcr experl> bclunging to the "psy world" intro· duccd and disseminated thc concept of "psychic .malurity" as a threshold of acceplability for sexual relations oulside wedlock. "l'sychlc maturity;' sa.id the humorous magazine Saliric6n, was par! of a amodern'' disdplinary device.".Latcr in the decade, and in the early l970s, the.leftísl radical political armed organiza·

tions also imposed a strict sexual morality among their members. The Trotskyisl PRT, for instance,-punished those activists who had cxtramarital sex, oomidered as a form of pelly hourgeoi,;, individualistic behavior. Similar-although perhaps less rigidly enforccd-norms were also implemented by the .. Peronist gueirilla group, the Muntuneros.

Conditions were thus in place for an increasing demand for a systcm ofthought that oould provide explanatlons for social and cultural eh auges without nece;oar· ily·threatening accepted views. To sorne cxtent, psychoanalysls Jilled the bill.

The Pltt\.,ion of Ps¡-cl:toan•ly•i• unJ,•r CunditJMS M Political AuthontarwliO!U

1he incrcase in the.potential demand for psychoanalysis was malched by an equally fast growth in the .1upply, offered by thc lnrge nnmber of psychologists . graduating from public and private universities that proliferuled after the latter were allowed to grant professionaltilles in the late 1950s.

Mainstream psychoanalysls [ the one prom<>ted bythc Argcntine Psychoanalytic Assodation (APA)], as well as the version promoted byolher popular ''diffusers,» offert'da nonthreatening new languagcand a conceptual apparatus to explain and make sen se of thosc social and cultural changcs, without necessarily subverting traditional values. Marie Langer and Ama! do Rascovsk)', lwo inlernationally rec· ogni;_ed psychoanalysts (both founding membcrs ofthe APA) who were routinely featured in !he media and whose buoks enjo)'ed a broad readership well beyond the psyclloanalytic contmuuity, offered ncw (and at the same time conservative) perspec!i1•es on family and un the role ofwomen. Ra;covsky,-for instance, elabo·

rated the popular theory of "filicide;' a(c:ording to which there is a philogenetic tendency in parents lo dCstroy their children." In Rasoovsky's view, the morder· ous freudiru1 Oedipal chi!d. 1Vho wil.nted to gel rid of hia father to have s=al access to his mother was, instead, turned iota a weak victim ofhis or her parents' homíddal dcsirc. Acwrding tu Rascovsky, filidde can be seen in dioguise in almos! every !Orm of inlera.ctiun hetween adnlts and children. Behaviors such as sending newborn bables to nurseries, not hreast·feeding them, and even sending older children to kindergarten amounlcd for him to ·"microahandonmcnt;' rela·

tively mild forms offilicide. In the eod. however, the conoeqnence to this child· centered and· seemingly progressive theory·was.a model of family that was.not incompatihle with !he one promoted by 'traditionalist sectors for, according lo

Rascovsky and his followers, the only hcalthy enviromnent fur women >~ith chil· dren was at home caring for them.

'Ihe increasing partidpalion ofwomen in multiple industrial, professional, artistic, and scicntific aclivities ... ha' heen carried out at !he expense of !he maternal. fumtion. ,The maternal function implies constant presence and emntional snpport during the early development of the child, nol Jisrupled

byotheracti>ities."

Ihus, although Rascovsky :introduce d. new _conccpts and a new language, the model off.unily emerging from hi> idea.> was not very different from the onc pro· moted bytraditional sectorsof sodety in contradiction, paradoxically, to women's magazines, which discussed the prufessiooal fulfillment oftheir readers in a posi· tivelight

Marie Langer is crcdilcd as being the fint analyst in Argentina to theoriz>e ahout female sexuality aml its n:latíoi:t to maternity. She took_an interdisdplinary approoch .. including elelJ!~nts fro!ll cultural,anthropólogy. Following the works of .\feianie Klein-a caooniml author for.Argenline.psychoanalysts at that tlme­and of Karen Horney, as.well as of Margare! Mead and nthers, Langer explicilly rej~cted freud's ~phallocratic notions" and his idea ofwomen as "c~slrated meo:' 1his redefinition of the staÍJ!S of-women had, however, important limitations

¡!

Although Langer's ooncernswere far from those prometed bytraditional Catholic or eugenic discourses, the kind of pril.ctical consequences that could ilow frorn her work were disturbingly similar. Thus, according to Langer, \'romeo could find total fulfillment only in motherhood. Fernale sexuality could be realized only in reproduction.

Al the &ight of a mouse, our grandmothers dimbed on a chair and raised their skirts crying for help, but in general they had no problerns wlth breast feeding their children. Nowadays, young women know how to drive cars, ambulances, and even airplanes, but frequently either they do notknow how to feed a baby or they give up this task. 11

For Langer, rejecling·rnolherhood was equi1fllienllo rejecting wnmanhood.

This message, like Rascovsky's and others, had a strong appeal to a society that longedfor modernitywhile clingingto conservativevalues. Thus, a particular pat­tern of receptlon a.nd diffusion of psychOanalysis offered to various sectors ofthc rniddle dass a language anda theoretical apparahis to conceptualize soda! changes and the arutieties they provoked without, at the same tiíne, &haking a"epted and deeply rooted values. Jt is importan! in this respect to point out that a militan! feminisl movement that could have challenged these views did ÍloLdevclop in Argentina during those year:;. In 1972 one of the largest feministgroups hád only 50 members and moot.groups dis•<Jlved as a result ofthe ailvances of political radicalism in the early 1970s. Unlike movements in Europe9r in the United States, cultural and the'politi~al amr~t·garde movements in Arg~ntina were nevn fully articulated, and a focos on gender was perceived by the powerful radicalleft as a threat that could provoke deviations iir the revolutionary drivc,of thc nmsses. In the 1970s politics linked to idcntity dissolved into the dichotomizlng views of soclety promoted al the same time by leftist guerrilla organizations and rnilitary repressors.

Vl7hile rnainstream psychnanaly¡,is wa' compatible with both lhe modern a.nd the traditionul clements exisling in Argentine culture, other poli ti cal and cultural factors al[o.,.,-ed for different appropriations of psychoa.nalysis. .Amnng these fanors was the reception of psyi:hoanalysis by influential !eftist intelle.:tua!s who promoted it both as a wnccptua! instnuncnt to anal pe reality andas a thcr· apeutictool.

PSYCHOANALYSIS AND LEFTIST POUTICS

:1he post-Pcronist pcriod of instability, repiession a:nd dioappointment not only 'ontributed to the radkalizalion of the left hut alsO geriemled olher exislential problems for intclkctuals who, increasingly dissatisfied by the analytic tools pro· vided bythe traditionalleftist parties, were in desperate search ofnew conceptual instrument.s to understand a reality that was bccoming more cnmplex over time. This process conwrged with the disench'antffient that important sectors ofthe !eft

lne.l.JittnoioriCfPofi:liO.ñiJ¡:ili"iiñdOrt;OJld!tioo•·ofPoUticol·Authorltatianism---,o>l

fclt with the Communi>t Party, whlch wa; undergoinga deep crisis at thc intcrna­tionallevel The revelittions of the XX congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet, Union, the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, the gro"~ng cnnflid between China a.nd the Soviet Union, the wars of independence in Africa, and, above aH, the Cuban revolution shook up most ofthe ~certitudes~ imposed bythe party. An inlluential "new leftisC culture originating outside of lhe lradilional parties grew and developed during the 1960s. However, unlike other 'ountries such as the United States, in Argentina this New Left ran along a palh paralld to other countercultural movements.

In this contelrt, the philosophy of Jean-Paul.Sartre, the new social sciences (someti.mcs in a mixture of dubious coherence], and the thoughts of Antonio Gramsci, ofLouis Althusser, and psychoanal¡•sis (characterized by Sartre, kt us rcmember, as the theory that could fill in the blind spot ofMarxism by prov:iding a theOt)' of subjectiyity) were aj:>propriated and redefined for thc purpose of

underslanding an increasmgly elusive reality. It is noteworthy that the first article pllblished in Spanish <m the psy¡;;hoanalysis of jacques Lacan appeared in Pasado y Presenle, an inil11€nlial pOlilical and cultural rna!¡azili.e published by a group of young inte!lecruals from the province or Córdoba who had been expelled frum the Communist Partyfor thcir hetcr6doxy, and who Were credited w:ith introduc­ing the thinking of Antonio Gramsci in l.atin Arnerica." Mórcovér, sorne com· binéd a theoretical interest in ps¡-choanalysis.with actual therapy that would help thón t(l make sense oftheir complicated identity. For peop!e who were deeplyand personally co~mitted to politics, linding themselve.1 without a dear political identitywas felt as a personal failure.ln lb e earl)' l960s a 'group of prominent leCt­ist intellectuals who had 'supportcd the gm-ernment of Arturo Frondizi created a new political Party: Movimiento de Liberación Nacional (MLN). Interesti enough, the whole \eadership of MLN started group therapy at the dinic Dr. Alberto Pontana, a psychoanalyst who had been cxpelled" from the APA be cause of hls use of LSD' for therapeutic purposes. For members of the MLN, psychoanalysis was a radical way of exploring the self and, at the same time, of gain\ng insight Ínto tlieir own rel'oiutionary subjectivity and their group identity. Psychoanalym for these groups was not a substitute for politics, bu! iather its complement.

'fhe acceptance of psychoana!ysis by inlluential sectors ofthe leftist intelligen­tsia gave ita sea! <)flegitimacy for many young people. Later in the decade, Lacan's version of psychoanalysis and, by extension, p!ychoanalysis in general, would receive another ushock oflegitimacy" when local intellectuals discovered his theo­ries through' lhe writings of Wuis Althus..•er, who by the end of the 1960& had beco mean uintellectual bcacnn" for sectors ofthe Argerítine left."

Forolhers, lhe connection between psychoanalysi• as a theory andas a therapy was more complex. Although the APA de:fihed itself as an apolitical institution (and was harsh!y criticizeJ bythe left for this)', sorne Ofits members became polit· kaliy conlmitti:d. A special case is Dr. José"Hiegá' who, 'until 1966, was alw the ffil>SI popular professor in the program of psychology at tbe Univcrsity OfBuenos Aires. Bleger was a member of the APA and, at the same time (until the early

l960s), a card-carrying member of the Argentine Communist Party. Even afkr his expulsion from the partr in the eady l960s (his s)1llpathy for psychoanalysis might have been one of the cau~es ofhi> expul;iun) and until his untimdy death in 1972, he continued lo comider himsdf a Marxist. One ofhis great lheorelical projects was lo continue the unfini;he-d work of the French-Hungarian philoso­pher Grorges Pulilzer to create a "concrete psyclmlogy" that would be ba~;ed un the materiali,<tic and dialcclical elements present in psycl10analysis.1' Laler, Bleger also attempted to articulate lhe social categories uf"objeth<adón" and "alienación;· inspired in the ;orks uf the pmng :>.1arx -with ).1elanie Klein's conceplllÍ "posi­tions" ("schizoparanllid" and "depressive,h to whkh Bleger addcd an earlier one the«glischro-cárica")."'

A:;, the decadc progrcSsed, olhcr radicalizcd sedors of the lcft fowtd in psycho­analysis a polenlially revolul;ionary tool Progressive seclors of the psychoanal}1ic community became ·moro, politicized, induding Marie Lmger, who by then had Tecovered the lefthl activism ofher youth. In 197l·two groups uf senior and junior analysts, known as "Plataforma'' and "Documento," resigned from the APA for polit­ical Íeasons." "Plataforma" wantffi lo put lts members' knowiedge ami practice

[A]t the service ofthose ideologies that challenge, wlthoul comprumise, the system that in our country is cltarjlcteriled by favoring the exploitalion of the oppressed dasses, by giving•away our weallh to big monopolies, and by repressing al! politicalmanifustations Lhat try to rebelagainst iL"'

Members of"l'lataforma~ and "Documento" beq11ne very active in creating the 'X:entro de Docencia, e Inve>tigación" (CDI), which offcred cours"'" on psycho­analysis, Marxism, and olher to¡:iics to ;lll "mental health workent (psychoana· l}'5tS, psychnlogists, psy~;:hiatristo, nurscs, and others). These experience> were lerminated v.hen ll[Jkial polides became more repressive, and many ofthe mem· hers ofboth groups had 10 exile themselves to protect their lives even before the eslabiishmenl of the dictatorship of 1976.

~or culturally intluential sectors of 1he leftist intel!igentsia, and after decades of rejection hy the Communist party, psychoanalysis obtained its sea! oflegítimaL-y in the context of ~ politidzed, polarized, and increasingly violent sodety.

MENTAL HEALTH ANO PUBLIC HOSPITALS

If the diffusinn of psychoanaly~is could be·partiallr explained hy the soda! and political conditions ofthe cOuntry in the 1960s, another factor that ~ntributed to ils disserninalion was its introduction into public hospilals as well as the renova· tion of psychialric pmctices carried out in the pubjic system of mental health Paradoxically, the govemments that emerged after the full ofPeron, most notably the dictatorship established in 1966, were rhe ones that inlroduced sorne of the most daring experiments to tlte public psychiatric system as part of their modernizing projecL In 1957, aJler decade; of neglect, lhe militar y government,

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inlluenced by ideas prornoted by the World Health OrgaoÍ7.ation, crealed the 1 "Instituto Nacional de Salud Mentaln (INSM) and lhe semioffi~;:ial "Comisión Argentina Asesora de Salud Mental."" Thc INSM was an amarchic inslitution that took conlrol of all rnatlers related to menLal health, including thc ovcrseeing of mental ho;pitals under federal juril.diction." Fmm tbe beginning, ils directorate indudcd psychoanalysls,and suda! sdentists of dilferent theordical and polilicel orientations, in accordance with thc idea that mental health not only hada psy­chiatric dimension, bul was also tl1e resu]t·of social and ewnomic conditions." f\oth the INSM and !he Comisión Asesora included sorne ofthe most progressh•e members nf the psp;hiatrk profession su eh as 'Enriqwe Pichon Ifu·ii.re-a presti-gious fuunding mcmher of thC Al' A who, nonetheless, shifted his interests from

psychoanalygis toward social psychology. )osé Bleger and Maurino Goldernberg, the ]alter a·psychialrist sy:mpathetic to psychoanalysis.who headcd a prestigions

psychopathological servke in a general hospital in Lanús, a working dass suburb ofBnenos Aires. In spite of a perennial\a~;:k offunding and the terriblcronditious existing in lhc big p;ychiatric hospitals, the INSM not only promoted a renova-tion of therapeutk techniques but it also became ;-isible through its campaigns to make the population more conscious of.the irnportance of mental health, which were carried out through.the TV and other medí~. Moreovcr, the INSM and the Cotnisi6n-Asesora,organized_prof~ssional conferencc> on different themes lhat conslituted an important _sounding board ·for the theoretical and ideological debate taking place within thepsychiatric field,

An importan! aipect of the·new policies implemented by the IN SM was the creation ofpsychiatric se!'-·ices in general hospitals with thc purpDse of reforming a sy¡;tem still artkulated around the big urban asylums. 'Ihe service at thc Lanús hospital, for instance,_treated 6767 patients in 1960. Four years la ter the number of patients had risen to 14,222. As in the United Slates,-the psychiatric services in general hospilals playcd a very important role in the diffusiun of P'ychoanalysis, primarilr because thcy brought psychoanalylically ,oriented psychotherapy to low-income patienls who otherwíse would have had no access to it. Of the patients aiiled by lhe Lanús service, those sulfering from nenroses accounted for 29.5% in 1960 and 54% in 1964. Of50 doctoro workingat Dr. Mauricio Goldemherg's ser­vice in, 1962, 32 had psychoanalytlc training,- and thts figure does not-indude a group of foliowers of lhe ideas of Harry Stack Sullivan and Erich Fromm."' The sen·ice continued operatíng unlil its members '\'ere harassed by the dictator­ship in !he-late 1970,1. Eventual\ y, Goldcmberg himselfhad to go intu exile.

However, the most radical policy carricd out in mental hospitals under dicta· LJrial governments was lhe creation nf"thcrapeulic commnnities" during the late l960s. Thcse were part of an experimental experience (experiendas pilotos) set up b¡.: the It--:SM al !he national level with the purpose uf lransferring patienls frum thc overcruwdcd and decaying urban asylums to newly created and smaller institutiom in the provil1ccs._ In tum, this was part of a larger program that also creatcd centers of community psychiatry-and _included other progressive mea" sures snch as lhe abolition uf uniforms in 1rieotel hospitals. In 1966 the dirtator­ship "intcrvened" in the INSM placing Colonel 'l)r_ Julio Esteves, a military

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psychiatri't who promoted progressive reforms in the mental health system. at its head. Estews appointcd other progressive psychiatrists with links to the psycho­analytic oommunity such as Goldembcrg and Wllbur Grimson, who had com­pleted his training at APA, to keypositions in the area of mental health.

As the·director of one of the therapeutic oommunities remembered decades later, stilrting in I%6 "there was a greal impulse in the area of mental health that !asted apprmümately 8 or 10year:s:'17 lt is interesting to note that by datingthe end ofthis "gol den age" ofmental health "8 or 10 years" after it started, it is not clear Jf it!!"termination took place under the military regime established in 1976, or under the final and repressive phase of the government ofPerón's widow.

The renovation of the psychiatrk scrvice:; under the governmerit cstablished in 1966 was part.of that regime's general emphasis on modernir.:ition and effi­

cicncy impo1ed from the top down. Mental health innovations such as the thera­peutic coniruunities, which emphasized dcmocratiution, howcver,.were in opcn conflkt with the government's authoritarian corporatwe model. A.~ Dr. Wilbur R. Griruson, who headcd one of.those therapeutic communitie.>, pointed out, by then )ron oohldn't ;·otc anywhere in Argentina; yet. peoplc were voting al the mental hospitil:' Interesting enough, only mad peoplc voted in the Argentina of the 1960s.

The conccpt ofthe"rapcutic community had beeirintroduced"in Greal"Britain by Maxwel\ fones in the 194lls. In a therapeutic community al! facets ofthe insti­tution, induding thc rclationship between patients and staff and among patients themsclves, beca me therapeutic tools. 1hi.s project iniplied a drastic dcmocmtiza­tion ofthe hospital's stnlcture.lh the most radical version, prometed bythe antip­sychiatry movement which 'wa> •·ery inflnential in Argentina, patients would have a voice in matters of general policy, induding those conccrning the admis­sion or discharge of other patients, which were decided in general a.~Semblies of staff and palients. The therapfutic oommunity challenged thc very authority of psychiatrists. In Argentina, as Griruson points out, most thempycarricd ont in thc therapeutic communities was based on psychoanalytic ideas."

Doctors, howcver, did not always· s« a conLradidion between thesc democratiz­ing prm:tke a.D.d the facr. thit they wen: living under-and working for-imthoritaTian regimes. Dr. Raúl Camino, director (and the only psychiatrist) of thé hOspital of Federal in the ¡irovince ofEntre Ríos, which operatcd as a thernpeuüc community for chronic patients, when asked decades later about this contradiction, otfered the following thoughts:

I thought a lot about that ... I.think that the political system has riothing to do ~1th.the institutional operation ..... 1 belicvc that this has todo with thc ideologyof the one who directs the program: ifhe did not generate obstacles furthe authorilie~ ofthe mornent, there was no problem. I made the effurt of notgenerating obsta eles. Had we hada program of communitary psychiatry program a~sodated to true social psychiatry, we would have had sorne con­flicts. Colon el Esteves promoted this kind of new techniques ... because he hada daughter wlth m~ntal disorders."

In Dr. Canüno's ''iew, therapeutk communitics had nothing to do "'1th leftist or rightist ideology: "I sa.Ld to myself: 1 am under a dictatorialgovemment, but as long as 1 do not tréspass the limits ofthc institution 1 would not have anyproblem with Lhe govcrnment:'"' Jhis seems to have also been the way the military dicta­torship dealt with mental health in general. As long as the therapeutic oommuni· ties and other experiments were conceptualized as mere psyclllatrlc techniques, the generals had no objectlons. '•Vben these experiences becarue "ruó re polltlcized or social! y visible, things started to be se en ditferently. Although on a totally dif­ferent.scale, ~omething similar was happening.in those years in.Spaln under Franco, where sorne progressive psychiatrists were able to carry out" programs inspirt:d by therapeutic communities and "the use of psychoanalysis withoui incur­ring in censorship as long as those programs remaincd confincd to psychiatric institutions and did not have any political connotatwns.-

The first therapeutic community in Argentina had been established back in 1966 at the service of the p~choanalyst Dr. Jorge Garda Badarao::o at the Borda Hoopital, the main public psycl1iatric hospital formen in Buenos Aires. Between 1967 and 1969 other therapeutic communities were established at the.:'Centro Piloto" for acule patients at the Hospital: "Luis E.llévd' in loma¡< de 7.amora, a working class suburb of Buenos Aires;"anotber nne al the Hospital Roba\\ os in Paran á,- province ofEntre Rios; and yet anotber one ata new hospital for chronic patlents located in a former military garrison;in Federal, a\so in thc province of Entre Rlos. Furthermore, in addition to oftk¡aJly sanctioned therapeuticconuuu­nities, ooncerned and socially corumitted citizens also established informal com­mun_ities in psychiatrk hospitals such as thc'"Peña CarlOs Ganlel" organized at the Borda Hospital by Alfredo Moffat, an architect with a strong interest in issues

relatedtomentalhealth. Due to the influence of the antips)rchiatry ·movCnient (David Cooper was

invited to Buenos Aires and establi!!hed himselfthere for a while), of a more ·gen­eral discourse ofliberatión (botbnational and ~exual), as wdlas lo someexposure to the ideas ofMichcl Foucault, intellectuals ..aw menl.al patients asan example of a gn:iup oppressed by the state and the dominan! sectors, who nccded to be liber­afed"'Iherapeuticcommunities and othcr similarexperiences became oonceptu­alized as tool<> fur liberation. Althongh therapeutic communities were not politiCal

institutions.,'in the increasingly radicalizcd political atmosphere ofthe early I970s thcy siarted to be pen;eived of as political, both by the left and the right.

Although there are no credible statistics for theperiod, the directors of all thcr­apeutic con1munitie.< daimed unusllally high m tes of success, even with chronk patients. Accordingto both Drs. C~mino and GrimSon, the average length of stay in their hospitals was drastically cuL from decades toa few moni:hs, and the rate of diocharge grew to an outstanding 80% to 85% after the organization ofthe com­munities. These figures, however, were sharply questioned hy those psychiatrisl• who opposed this kind oftechnique and, in anycase, cannot be corroborated"

Most of these experiments, however, were short Hved. One of the reasons for their failure was thc resistance oiierOO by members ofthe p:;ychiatric comrnunity firmly attached to the old system ofbig'mcntal hospitals. The ncw =periences

questíone<.ltheir authority and their professional status as well as their ~onception ofpsy~híatry. Pmhably the most importan! reason furthe demise ofthe therap~u­llC communities, however, was linkcd lo the rapid pro~~ss ofpolilkal polarization tlmt lhe country was undergoing. In this >iolent context the military re<.iefined and enlarged lts concepl of""subven;ion" to in dude almos tal!. fonns ofsocial inter­action that questioned acccpted hierarchies. Moreover, the theropeuLic communt­ties attemptcd the impmsihle: lo introduce democracy in psy¡;hiatric hospitals within an authoritarian contexl. E ven the lauguag~ used by the doctors im'\Jived in state-run therapeutk conmmnities was totally incompatible with Lhe languagc uscd by the govemment. The latter emphasized the need fi>r creating a new "organicn (that is to saycorporntive and hierarchic:U) social arder, and poínted out that the social and econornic "timesn of reform would come bdorc the ~political time"-in other words, that lhe dictatorship would introduce dccp changes in society and economy befare fix:using on politics, and that all this would take a long time. Meanwhile, the director of a therapeutic community at Roballos Ho:;pital pointed out the need. for de-.-cloping a democratic, egalitarian social stmcture within the ho<pital. He concluded lhat "the age of autocraq·-be it benevolcnt or not-has ended long ago.""

In most cases the opposition to communal psychiatry carne from a rombina­Lion of political ideology and vcsted intcrests that were interna! to the medica! corporation. Accusations of political (and moral) subversion sometimcs hid an oppusition to technkal innovatíons or other kinds of professional jealousies The epi so des surrolmding the termination of Dr. Gril!l5orú therapeutic commu­nity in Lomas de Zamora shm"' to what extent medical and political ideology wereusedlucovereachother.

In 1970 the dictatorship tightencd its repre.•sive policiesand Colond Esteves>vru; rq>laced as head ofthe INSM by Dr. Agustín Badana, who did not share lhe profcs­sional interests ofhis predecessor. Dr. Badana placed thc hospital of Lomas de Zamora nndcr administrative oversight under Dr. Rodríguez Leonardi, a fonner Jesuit priest who inllllediatelytook action against Dr. Grimson's scn~ce. Rodríguez Leonardi started by firing one ofGrimson's clase collaborator' and, soon after, firing Grimson himself. Tire new authorities allt:mpted to trans:fur the inmates to the two big mentalhospitalsofBuenosAires, an aclion thatthat wa> resisted bypatients and doctors who look over the hospital and preventeJ. the transfer from taking place. However, the therapeutíc com.mUJlilywas tenninated.. \\¡ñat is interestiogis thedif­ferent interprclalions given to this epísode. According to Grimwn and his wllabo­rators, the authorities' reaction againstthe communityoriginalcdfrom acombínation uf political idcology and anti-Semitism. Dr. Lucila Edclman, thc first doctor tu be fired, was )ewish and had been a member of the Communist Party S years earlier (she had been expellcd from the party). Acwrding to the "rebeh;;' however, the mosl importan! reason for their dismi;.sal W"<~S linked lo profcssional mterests: the revolutionary methods they were using limitcd the possibility of trans­ferring patienls to the private dinin owned by sorne offi.dals ofthe INSM."

1here wcre also multiple reasons given by the authorities for their actions. The ncw INSM authorities accuscd the therapeulic comnmnilies of brewing

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communists: mental patient.s learncd that thcy did not havc to follow any orders and that eYeT)1hing conld be dedded in general as;emblies." According to a prominent official ofthe INSM, Communist propaganda was fuund at Grimson's <en·ice." 1he inage of the therapcutk community as a nest of communists was reinforccd, in the mrlhorilies' >~ew, by the fact that during the conflict one palien! Md raiscd a red Jlag. However, accordmg lo Grimson (and to the patient himsclf) the meaning ofthc red flag had nothing lo do with politics: it was a symbolic wa)· of cxpressing that, in the patients' vicw, the hospital was for ~ale." Other accus.a­tions of alleged sexual misconduct of doctors and patknt~ were never prowd. Ncvcrtheless, accnrding lo the adors and to the press, the political (and moral) reasons for the termination of thc thcrapeutic communities were of seoondary importan ce: "Lcaving asid e mutual accusations, the cnnflict is about the confron­tation oftwo psychiatric currents: the so called dynamic psycltiatry and the dassic one.»31 'lhe Federación Argentina de Psiquiatras (FAP}, of leftist orientation, shared this perception: "The punishment [imposed on doctors] i.1 jusi an expres­sion ofthe pDlides followed bythe health authorities who are opposed to changcs in the social structure of treatment."'"' The FAP went as far as denouncing the therapeolic communitics as mere showrooms. According to the I'AP the commu­nities were a psychiatrk technique that could be uscd both for liberating and repressive purposes." An even more negative characterization was pul forward by one ofthe ~Platafi.mna~ leaders, Eduardo Pavlovsky, for whom "ifthe communily­based thempy is not linked directly to the revolutionaT)· struggle, it is swallo\''ed by reactionary forces. 1hus, there is nov .. · a proliferatinn of new lechniques (such as therapeutic communitics) that are employed by the reactionary sectors"•L Thircfore, t!Jere was nothing inherently "leftist" in therap~ulic communitie,, a perception also shared by sorne authorities of the INSM who said that they woul d continue implemenling tbem although nnder more restdctive rules. The commu­nities hecame perceived as political when the general context beC<lme more radi­calized and all forms of puhlic interaction that encouragcd discourses or practices linked to íiberation" were perceived as threatening and subversive."

Pnlitical and technkal qoestions notwithstanding, the conllict at the Estévez hospital also induded a component of professional jealousy of a different kind. Grimson's center had 74 staff members who served 68 patients, whcreas the other sections ofthe hospital had 338 staffmembers for 2100 patients. Moreover, the centro piloto had estahlished its own procedures for the ad.mission and discharge of p;llients, and opponents said that the high rates of successful discharges boa~ted by Grimson were the resLIIl of selective admission policies."

Although archiva! sources for the therapeutic community are not availablc, the general archive of the hospital ~José E>leve7," has bccn prcsenrcd and it gi,·es usa hint of the kind oftreatmcnt rccdvcd by the inmates housed in its "regular" sec­tions. The archive, covering the period from the heginning of the twentieth cen­tllT)' to the 1980s, con,isls of a collection of more than 2000 clinical histories, most of which belong to paticnts who died at the sanatorium after decades of confinement. Lidia C., for instancc, was interned in 1948 and died (n the hospital in 191!6, while María H. was brought to the hospital in 1939 and dicd therc in

1971. What is striking about th~se and many other clínica! histories is the fart that the.long stays in the hospital fur from imprming their condition seem to have contributed lo their mental and phyoical deterioration. Doctors appeared mor~ worried about keeping them calm and sedating them than sbout administering adeque.te theraples, and only very sporadically did they report On the patients' condition.ln the case ofLidia C., for instance, electroshocks and insulin shock& (as well as straightjackets} were used when she showed unruly behavior. Mar la H. was, accordlng to the admitting doctor and fullow:ing reports, in relatively good shapewhen she entered the hospital in 1939 (uthe patient is quiet, lucid and coher­ent. Well oriented in time and in space. Good memory and good affectivity"). Three years later the intervicwing doctor reported lncoherence, weakened meri:lory, and only partial orientation in time 'and space. By 1958 the palien! was reported to be in a state Clf global defidt Clf all her mental faculties. Her life was «purely vegetative." .. In a context such as this it is easy to understand the disrup· ti ve nature oftherapeutic communities.

PSYCHOANALYSIS ANO THE DICTATORSHIP, OF i 976

By !he time the murderous·dktatorship established itselfin 1976 most experi­ences of commmml and social psychiatry had be en drasticallyterminated. A few ofthe doctors who had partidpated in them had gone into erlle, while some wcre persecuted and, in'some cases, kidnapped and killed by the military. This time political issues were of ¡Y.tramount importance since the dictatorship was suspi­cious of any activity thaf involved visible social;interadion and that qnestioned any kind of authCirity. However, even then, the IXSM's official jCiurnal (the !NS~f had been placed once again under administrative ovcrsight) published po>ilive articles on therapeutic communities emphasliing; nonetheless, d1e importatKe of keeping a ilealthy" form of authorily and responsibility among its members, and maklng dear thal the mistakes oC the past that led to complete anarchy must be avoided."'

The new dictatorship placed terror at the <;:en ter of it., strate¡iy for disdplining and demCibilizing the populatiCin .. As the military governor. of Buenos Aires dedared: «The guerrilla is onlythe armcd exprcssion of an ideologythat infiltra tes and works \dthin the university, in schools, in the press,·in the arts,-in industry, using a thou.sand de.;eitful modes of operation.»" 'lhis time the universitíes were placed under militar]" control, particula.rly !hose schools and pmgrams that (like tlie ~ocia] science::;, induding psychology) were considered fertile ground for ~subversion:'

For the "psy world" the conditions had started to deteriorate even before tlw CO\lp Clf 1976. The ratlonale for !he persecution of mental health professionals. however, was stated by a naval oflker in 1976;

Mental health centers had becn rurned into centers of subversive indoctrina­tion , .. [1here, the armed forces found] presses devoted to the preparation

'TheDilfu,!onofPsychoamlysisund<rCo~dlti<lnsofPolitlcalAuthoritarioninn

of pornographic materia\, sexual promiscuity among psychiatric patients encouraged by propaganda that justiiied itas a kind ofliberation from psy­chiatricdep:ression."

As one ofthe general& in power declared: Freud and Man: were ideological crim­inals. The official discourse (or parls of it) was totally antipsychoanalytic. An intelligence soura: cited by Somos. a popular magazine supportive to the

dictatorshlp,revealedthat

from the beginning of the war against subversion, among the infCirmatiCin evaluated was the relationship of psychoanalysis and terrorism , .. It has been proved that many subversives were enlisted in the active fight after

spending time Cln d1e analyst's couch."'

However, in spite ofthis rhetCirk, if anything happened to the Argentine "psy­choanalytic culture" d¡¡ring thooe years it was its consolidation. Although it has been said many times that psychologists and psychoanalysts were singled out for repression by' the milil:J.r}', this claim cannot be confirme d. As happened else­where, members of the psy professions who were persecuted were not targeted beca use of their profes~ion hut-as Jthappened with members of otherpwfessions--, a> a result of theiT real or alleg~d lcftist sympathies or their oppooition to the regime. Although sorne ps¡cchoanalysts were persecuted furdifferent reasons, psy­choanalysis was tolerated and even encouraged by·the authCirities. Neither the oflicial APA nor·thc Asociación Psicoanalitica de Buenos Aire~ (APdeBA), the Clther IPA,affiliated p~ychoanalytic'organization thatwas createdin 1976, suffered repres~ion. On the other hand, both IPA-affiliated organizations refused ICI denounce thc military dictatorship. The APA even received a grant frCim the Ministry ofPublic Health in :\-lay 1976 (2 months afte:r the coup, when repression was at its height) to cO'>·er the costs of organizing a Latin American psychCianalytic conference. The institution continued to grow and by 1979 it had become the fourth largest psychoanalytic institution in.the world. APA and ApdeBA analysts continued to travel.freely throughout the coWJtry 10 lectnre and ofrer training courses. In 1980, the APA presiden!, a familiar figure in the media, w~d boast the importan! pla<;:e that the APA (and psrchoanalysis) Clccupied in the nalion's cul­turallife, e:xercising its in:fluence far beyond the anal y tic community." Moreover, in those years, an increasingly strong community of followers ofJacques Lacan CCin~dated, becoming hegemonic in the follCiwing decade.

In his monumental study ofthe dilfusion ofpsychCianalysis in the United S tate•, Nathan Hale introduced the concept of~somatic style" to characterize the psychi­atric discourse and práctice prevalent in the Unit~d S tates at the turn ofthe twen­tieth century."' 1 would like to propose that by 1976 there was in Argentina a "psychoanalytic style" that was prevalerit in the conceptu:ilization of mental health, and that permeited even the discourse (if nCit the pmctice) of those who were not particular\y sympathetic to the Freudian system. !.el us examine, for instance, Neuropsiquia.tría, the, official jonrnal of the j:t-;SM. Originally, Neuropsiquiatrla

hatl been a journal published by the Secretary of Pub He Health in the !J.te I940s. In 1974 the journal rcappeared as thc official orgau ofthe IKSM (in its sewnd ep<1ch) continuing thc numeration interrupted lhree decadcs earlier. As its title sugg~st, the journal had a strong n~-umhiological orkntation. However, it is pos­sible Lo perceiveeven there th~ pemsiveinlluenceof psychoanalysis. For instan ce, a poslhumous artide written by a mainstay of the psychiatric establishment, Dr. Ramón Melgar, discussed the links between the pathological faiuily and schi.zophrenia, dting Enriqlle Pichon Rivihe (a prominent psydwanalyst) and R. D. Uung among others." rn spite of the general orientation of the journal the official discoun;e ofthe lNSM emphasized the nced to avoid hiological reduction­ism in the conceptualization and treatment of mental di sea se

After the coupof 1976 the Ih'SM was placcd.in the harub ofa militar¡· physi­cian. Howevcr, the director of the journal, Dr. J"rge Martini, was not replaced. Fmm 1976 on, if an¡1:hing, the journal became less biological in urkntation. Ihe INSM promoted through its official journal an anthropolngical, holistic approach·to ¡iS.ychiatry-that.woi.lld consider all dimensi,ms of the mental p;ltient, in combination with a kind <Jfjasperlan existentialism that was al so popular among psyd101hempists in Franco' Spain (see.Chapter 3, by Anne-Cécile Druet, in lhis volurn.e) .. However, the !anguage of p1ychoanalysis "~ all-pre:;ent, induding cita­twns ofFreud and Lacan.'"' In the lastissue ofthe journal there was an artide writ­ten by a training membcr of APA. Furthennore, sorne APA member' participated routindy in seminars and conferences sponsored by lhe lNS.\1 and organized by psychiatrk organizations that werc announced in the journal.

Psyclioanaly;is had hecohle part of the ps)•chiatric "common sensen in

Argentina and continued to be so· in ~pite ofthe antlpsychoanalytic discourse of some gen erais and officials ofthe regime, and of sorne psychiatrists as well. As one editorial in the 1.:-J.SM joumal pointed out, biologic:11 ps}chiatryand psychoanaly­sis were_not in contradiction but mthcr complemented each other as dcterminis­tic approaches to mental disease. The real enemywas those theories thatpromoted "hberlarismo~ (sic), that is to say the nega!ion of al.\ forms of detenninlsm, and thus of the pm;sibility of a sden!ifk apprnach to mental disease. Making disin­genuou~ u.c oflanguage (certainly, the word "subversive" was fui\ of dangerou~ connol<ltions in those days),"th~ editorial (not signetl) daimed lhat

there is a subversive tendency in the liberal movement thLis defined, becau-'e to deny detenninism .implieno d~ny the classification of determining fac­tors, and therefore, all the efforts that the ~cholars v.ith thtir dassifyinglogic have made . . . are destroyed."

lhus, the same editorial.Íst who had carlier exborted psy¡:hiatri;ts to.go back lO classic formo of dassification of ment.ll disea,es, considered psychoanalysis asan allyinthew-.~ragainst"\ibemlpsychiatry:'·"

The "psychoanalylic style" waS cven stronger among psychologists and slu­dents. In 1978 two ps)·chologists published an article in Neuropsiquiatría with !he conclusions oftheir rescarch.on lhe tcaching of psychology al the university.

1 ho Dllfuslun uf P<y<hoamh-•io ~nder Crnulitiom ufPoliticol Authmitariani.<m

The research 'vas ba~ed on inteniews with students, most of whom had chosen the dinical (thatis to saypsychoanalytic) orientation ofthe program. When asked aboullheir knowledge ofthe hislor)" of psycbolog)' in Argentina, only 36% oflhe students intervi.ewed answcred that they had sorne knowlcdgc of the subject. However, to thc rcscarchers' 'urpri>e, all thc studcnts (that is to &ay thosc who daim.ed some knowledge about the history of psychology as '>l'ell as Lhose- who admitled lheir ig.norance) believed tbal lhe origins nf P'rchology in Aigentina were assodatcd with psychoanalysis. Interestlngly enough. the interviews were carried out ata time when military d.ictatorship had placed !he psycho\ogy pro­gram under administnltivc oversight with the explidt purpose of diluting its strong p;ychoanilylic orientat.lon."

More puzzling und disturbing than the subsislence oC a upsychoanalytic style" was the fact that the military appmpriated sume parts of the psychoanalytic discourse-thóse parts promoted by lhe most conservatiye psychoanalysts---=for their own purposes. Although thc militarypropaganda anddiscourse emphasi7-ed theneed to resto re "traditional familyvalucs"' rooted in paternal authority, control

and- paternal hiemrchy, this discourse, nonelhe!ess, also had a

The diclal.Orship', pmject "as at once retrograde and modemizing, and so me· times its interna] contradictions were evident. Although the oflicial propaganda cmphasized neoliberal clichés ("lo shrink the state is to enlargc thc nation"), the state thatshould be shrunkattem.pted lo control the mostintimate aspects of peo­ple's everyday lives." 1hus,according to official propaganda, youngpeople were in danger of becoming subversives -no\ un! y beca use parental aulhority failed but also because. they could not find a nurturing environment al home. 'lhe s.ume categmies of analysis that P'ychologiots had used filT explaining youthful crirni­nality were·appropriated by the government to explain "sub~ersion:· There!Ore, parcnto shou\d «talk"to thcir childrcn, and providc psychologicalsupport in limes

of crisio in arder .to keep them safe from subversive templalion. Although in the fint month:; after the OOup most media-friendly psychoana­

lysts disappcimd from tht: state controlléd media, they"soon reappeared. Arnaldo Rascovsky, for instance, beca me one ofthe mainstays of widely read feminine or cultural magazines that supported the dictarorship, as well as o[ slate-controllcd rndio and TV. As always, he insisted on the importan ce ofthe traditi<mal familyas the foundation of a healthy societ:y. According to him, leftist subversion was a mental disease thathe placed in the same category as psyd1.0sis, neurosis, tobacco addiction, etc., all of which were the result of a crisis in traditional family organi­zation. Rascovsky and othcrs wcre offering the legitimacy" derived from their posi­tion as well-knnwn and accepted analysts far·supporting th~ military polici.es Sunilarly, Somo.-, a popular magazine friendly to the dictatorship, trumpeted tlmt "the woman guerrilla is a psychopath,H al the same lime that drug abuse was deemed subversive.

Allhough the actual involvement of psychoanalysts in ~pi:;ndes oftorture has not been reported in Argentina (for one SIKh case in Brazil, see Chapter 7 by Jan e Ru:;so in this bnok), there are testimonies of survivors from concentration camps

that·mention that prisonexs from the infamous ~amp located al the &cuela de Mecinica de la Armada (ES..\1A) operated by the navy were taken toa psyd!olo­gist to evaluate the success oí their «re">wrY:' Prisoners were divided iota two groups: those who were considered lit for "recovery" {meanlng u.sodiliz..1.tion) and !hose who were not. The former were forced to workforthe navy intelligence service and were allowed to exit the camp for family visits that could last severa! days, whereas the latterwere murderedand theirbodies ''disappeared." According to sorne testimonies, there were psychologists involved in the evaluation of.this process through the administration of personality tests." The ~psy culture" was not alien to navy officers, including torturers. Elements of psychoana!ysis and social psychology had bi:en present in the currículum ofthe Naval School since the late 1950s anda certain familiaritywith psychoanalytk therapr can be detected even·among•the worst torturers.:" One former priioner who had episodes of depression in the q.¡np ~s sentto a psychologist outside the camp. One of the offiCers in charge ofthe prisOners anda notorious torturer now in príson hilllst'lf told her tb.at "you have to understand that things happen all the time ... .You will leave [the camp] and when confronted to the smallest inconvenicnce rou·will ha ve again these .reactions that, for me, are very exaggerate."" Another former prísonfr mentions thecase o fa fellow inmate who during his familyvisits decided to start psychoanalytic thempy. Apparently, the psychologist betrayed him and called the ESMA authorities. To ever}body's surprise, instead of punishing him, the 9fficer in charge told !he prisoner: ~¡f you ha ve problems we can provide.you areliablepsychologist:'"'

Psydioanalytic discourse offured an additional advanl¡tge !o the military, sin ce they were fund of pathologizing political activity, broadly using rncdical meta­phors. Psychoanalysis offured a discourse on pathology that waS largely accepted in sodety, even by its modernizing factions. By associating *eir "medica! dis­course" witl)..psychoanalysis, the military v.'lls generating a meosage that could resonate "With bread sectors ofthe Argentine middle clas~ .. Thc general guidelines on mental health policy put forward by the I:N"SM during !he dictatorship, which looks like an adaptation ofthe program formulated by the previous Peronist gov­ernment (parts were repriiduced word byword), added, nonetheless, so.rpe impor­lant nuances. Howevá, both pmgrams agreed that

sodeties Iike ours. whichare in a processofevolution and social change suffer from new palhologies or.iginated in technification, interna! migrations, drug­addktion;dissohition ofthe familyas a prima:rygroup. et(;, •• [1he program of the military cOnctuded that all] this shapes an insecure, anguished man, worried about his"persOnal d~stiny and that predisposes him to criminality in ii.Il its forms and r~ceptive to ideologies that are' aliento ou:r national feeling:

The conduding parngraph &ummari2es the argument ver y wdl·

In a few words.the.'actions of mental health are so vast that they go from resocializing medio;;al assistance [prestación médica resocializadora]. of a

Ih~ ¡)¡¡fu,¡~~ of Porch~·;;,~lysis ~"rler Condllloils of Polltko.l Authúrilarlanl•m

chronic psychotic or mental defi~ient to the highly hierarchkal level of psychopolitics (sic); in close rclation to national defense, to the war against subversion, [and] to security and national pea.ce.~'1

The language ofpsychoanalysio-which, as Somo~ happily discovered, was forbid­den in the Soviet Union-oould be used by the military to C<lnstruct a "modern» version oftheir discouroe on the family.

However; aside from the direct repression suffered by sorne psycl10analysts, the dktatorship had. more general C<lnsequences fur the psy world. Perhaps the most notable was tlu: d.epolitici.zation of psychoanalysis and the disruption ofthe ongoing dialogue between psychoanalysis and the left and, more generál!y, betweeu psychoanalysis and the social sciences. Except for individual analysts who became very active (risking their lives) in the emerging human rights move­ment, or treating "sub;""ersives;' most analysts and analytk institutions remained

detached from social and political reality.

CONCLUSIONS

What do es the lüstOry recounted so far tell us about the pos.sibility ofpsychoana­lytic practice and; even more, about the dissemination of psychoanalysis in the C<lntext of.political oppression? Psychoanalysis·is supposed.to question,centrnl elements of our uworld taken for granted.» lt is clear, however, that at least within sorne cultural settings. psychoanalysis can become a .:entra! element of main­stream culture an'd e\"'ell a detiD.ing.element o(thit "World taken fur granted.:' If psychoanalrsis as a theory contains elements 'that may question traditional social val u es and therefore has an emandpatory potential, like any other system of thought and beliet; il also admits readings and appropriations that reinforcethose values, providing uew means to channel them

Carl S~horskc has argued that the birth of psychoanalysis was linked to the highly charged but restrictive p<Jlitical environment uf fm-de->iecle Vienna. Acc.ording to him, Freud, who had beei1 actively inlerested in politks, substituted a'theory ofinward subversion fi>r thc possibility, closcd to him a:; a liberal Jew, of ha~ing ,m actual impact on politio;;allife." Tu what eXtent could a similar argu­ment be made for the Argentine casc-'acknowledging, of cour:;e, the enormous differences existing_ befu1:~U ji11·de-si~lcle Vicnna and the Buenos Aires of the 1960s 'and I970s? The multiple appropriations of psych<>analysis that 1 have de,.;ribed above force meto nl!ance any condusion, bl!t .1 still think an·argument can be made for connecting the difl"usion of psjchoanalysis and restrktive poli­tics, although perhaps not in the same wayas Schurske proposed in y¡enna.

In Argentina psychoanalfsill was adopted as a conceptuallool by sectors ofthe left desperately.in search oftheoretical bearings to understand an elusive reality. In their own particular way, they believed that the political arena was do sed for them. lhis theoretkal interest.in psychoanalrsis com""erged.in sorne cases with an interest in 1t as a therapy, in a time of political uncertainty. Members of the

---------------L'ATl:.:r"A":\lutl:A "'IIJ i:~O&mp,f<'hoanalysl,uwi;rC;;;;a¡¡¡¡m;¡;tPO!ii!Z"•L-Aü\llilriti[iii'iiii!'l---•us¡

guerrilla groups active in !he ~arly 1970s al~o sought the aid of psychoanalysis to makc sense of the spHt bdween their politkal and their nonpolitical sch-es." Psy,hoanalytic ses>ions were carried out in public spaccs for sccurity reasuns and sometimes ncither the analystnorthc palient knewca<::h other's identily, a.s a mea sure of mutual protcctíon. At the extreme, a critkal """''on ofpsy.;;hoanalysis was proposed ~s a revolutionary too! by membcn; of thc schismatic "Plataforma" and "Documento" groups, Ifpsychoanalysis was certainly nota suhstitute for politic.s (although in sorne cases it might ha\'e been), it could be argucd that, fur seclnrs of the influential intdlenualleft, it beco.me a cornplement for politks, an iostrument to make seose of it,·and a way' lo articulate thc public and the private dimensiom oftheself.

For otb.er, !eSs politidzcd, groups not conuccted to the left, psychoanalysis had severa! meaoiogs. ¡¡ provided a ~modem," and at.tb.e same time "nonsubversivc" interpretivetooi for making sen se ofthe 'hanging ooclai comlitions ofthe couotry, especial! y thc changes in family models and th~ e;·olving role ofv."Omen in sodcty, as the cases of Langer, ·Rascovsky; and maoy others, ;how. Mainstream psycho­anaiysis offered a m:w language, but d1d not challenge accepted vaiues. And it was precisely lhis conservativc dimension of psychoanalysis ''<'hat rriade it atfractive {or at kaot not threatening) for thc modernizing factions of the dirtatorship.

Furthermore, a certaio. version ofpsychoanal¡rtic practice can próvide a place foi: the privatization of social rclationships.Jfwe considerthat lhe kind of aulhor­itariao regime established by the military hadas one ofits primarygoal thc demo­bilizalioo ofthe population and ¡¡, depoliticiz~;ion, then we car¡"wonder to what extent the military toieraled or even encomagcd the practke of psychoanalysis ru;

a "fmm of private wcial relation5hlp, as long as it remained confined to the con­.;ul!ing room, as opposed to more ~social" forms of psychiatric pradice that were perceived as a political threat. This is a topic that, ob\·iOusly, deserves further research

'· t::~::¡:,;i.::"::~~::,,;,~~~~7;:;;;~~::;'"'"'~'P~'.~,"'::"'~'' '~e'"/ u.

, ~~r~~:·~~~;f~'~:i~fig:lg~~~~~~T~F::::;:::: "

16. langer, Marie, Malemid~d y sexo; &tu.dia pslcolltlalítim y pS!'cosomdrlco (Bw:nos Aires:Nova,l951),Jntroduction.

17. Massotta, Os.:;ar, "Jacqu~s La(an o el inconcient~ en lo& fundatm:mos d~ la filo­sofla.~ PllS/ldo y Pre.>ente 3: 9 (Apiii-Sept. 1965). On P~sndo y Pre.sente see Bw:gos, Raúl, Los gramsdamu nrgent:inos. Cultura y polrtica en la experienria ck PllSado y Pmente (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXJ, 2004)

18. The history ofthe reception ofLacanism in Argeminais still to be writren. The fcw works on this topic were written from within the Lacanian conununity and hav~ a self-legitimatingpurpase. Se~, for instance, G~nn~n Garc!a's da>slc 01car MaS<Jtta y el psicoaiÚllisis en castel/~no {Buenos Aires: Pw1tosur, 1991), or the more rer:ent but equally partisan book by Marcelo Izaguirrt', ]au¡ues La mil: El anclaje de su enseflanza en laArgentill~ (Buenos Aires; Catálogos, 2009).

19. Bleger, José, Psicoandlls/$ y dialéctica materkllista. futud/IJ SIJbn: 1« estructuro del psicoanálisis(BuenosAires:Paid6s,l9Sa).

20. See Bleger, losé, "Psicologia de la alleiiación:' Cuo.dmws de PoicoWgi~ Concreta Il· 4 (1972); 9-25. On Bleger, see.Piotkin,.Mariano, "José Bleger, Jew, Marxist and Psychoanal~t:' Psychoanalysis ~tldHistory, !3 (2) (/uly 2011)

21. SeePlotkin,Freud,ChapterS

22. 'Plataforma, "A Jos trabajadores de ~alud mental;' Los Libros (March 1972).

23., For a discussion of the evolution of the publfc ')'Slem of mental hospitals see

Ablard, jon~t~an, Madness ¡,¡ &cnos Aires. Patients, Psychi~trists aMd the Argentina State, 1880-1983 {Athens: Ohio University Press, 2008). In '1957, with a total of25

psychiatrk ho~Pitills, Argentina had the fourth largest public mental health system in thc heínisph~ce after the Unired St~t~s (586 hospitals), BraziJ (140), and Cana da (74) .. lt is worth noting that both the United States and Brazil had a much larger population tlmn Argentina. See Ablard, Madness, 181

24,. The public system of mental health, ho~r. continued to t>e undcrfunded !n 1974, the authorities of the INSM re<:ognized that Argentina had a defidt of almos! 30,000,psychlatric beds. Sec "El programa de salud mental del gobio=o,~ Neuropsiquit<trla V; 2 (Octobér-Decemt>er 1974),

25, See Decreto-Ley 12628 ofOctnber 11th, 1957 crcuting the J:SSM. On th~ condi­

tionsofthelargementalho>pitalsufterthecreationofthc!NSM,sec,fori:nsrance, the interview done to Dr. Omar !par, director of the Hospital Ncuropsiqulátrico de Hombres in 1966. "La agonia de los hospitales argcritinos," 'Prime-m Plallil, 202 (October 8, 1966), The hospital had 2500 bed> and 3500 inmates at that time.

26. 'For Goldemberg'> experience at·the Lanús Hospital, see Visacovks¡:, Sergio, El

Lanús, Memoria y pólftica en/~ wnstrucción psl4_uiátrim y psiconnalllica argentina (BuenosAire.>:Alian;.aEdltorial,2002)

27. Camino, Raúl Antonio, ~Historia de las institudom:s en salud mental_ Clllonia de rchabilit~ción de la dudad Federal d~ la Provincia de Entre Rlos, Argefltina," Revista Argentitla de Clinim Psir:oWgica 1! (1993), 207-212,

28. W. Rkardo Grimson, personal i:nterview. Buenos Aires, Novembér 28, 19%. 29. "Encuentros. Dialogando con el Dr. Raúl Camino," AR}E (N ID) 30. "Encuentros."

31. De(ades later, 'Wilbllr Grimson remetnbered a number of authors, t>oth national and foreign, who werc lnfluen!ial in the c.reatfun of therapeutic communities. A1nong them.werc Er~ing Goffmau, whose Asylums ofl962 was published in a Spanish translation in 1970; Alfred Staton and:Morris Schwart¡, who.ie Thg M~ntal

ThODiffii:ilúñ'OIP;¡:cJ\oaoaly•i•Uncl<r'COri.ir;¡¡;¡;¡{jfPi>l!iJCOI.AüihoritarJ<tni'JO . Wl Hospilal. A Studyof Institutiannl Partlcipation in Psychiatric !1/ness and Trealment ofi954Giimlionconsidett>dofparamDuntimportanr:e;DavidCiark'sAdmin;stmtiro Therapy. 1he Role oj rhe Doctorin the .Thempeuhc CommuMity ( 1964 ): and ot course R. Laing and Mlchel FaU<:ault. Interesting enough, Grimson mentions ndthcr Franco Basaglla nor Thomas Szasz. In ~ntina, Grimson, like many others, was inspired by Maurido Goldemberg's pS)-dlopathological service at the Hospital of Lanús. See Grimson, Wilbur Ricardo, "Sobre la psiquiatría wdal en la Argentina (de la locura a las adkciones)," R~vista de Prevención, S~/ud y Sociedad Vlii; S (1997),8-20.

32. "Comunidades terapéuticas. Colonia de Rehabilitación de Federal, Entr~ Rlos (1967-1976). Una' experiencia de aqul y antes" (reporta_ie a Raúl Camino) Ri~chuelo (s/f drca.l980): see also Grimson, Wilbur Ri=do, "Sobre la psiquiatría sociaJr.

33. Dr. Luis CésarGuédes Arroyo, "El hospital psiquiátrico como comunidad lffBPéu-

34.

"· ~~ji:)fg~;,~¡ 36. In a personal interview, Dr. Grimson emphasized the no.npolitical character ofthe

commmúties.

en cl pabellón Lal'rensa(December23,l970).

39. ~Opiniones sobre el conllicto en el hospital JoséEstévez," La Prerna (December. 2ó,

1970). On Dcwnbcr 31 agroup of70 intcllcduals including psychoan.:lysts, writ ers, sociolaglsts, mudsians, and hlstorians, publis.hed a note expressing their con· cerns ábout the closii1g of the Centro Piloto. see "En apoyo del centro p1loto,"

La Prensa (December31, 1970). 40. -Interview with Dr. Emiliano G.:lende, one ofthe leadcrs of FAP. .Btwnos A ir~,,

Dcccmber 16, 19%. SecAmilisi:~,SI4 (10to]anuary25, 1971), 37. 41. "La 'vidita' de papá y mamá," La RaWr1 28 de jlllio de 1971,4. 42. In !he mid-1970s man)'forms of b~havior"that had been tolerated even du-ring

previous dictatorship' v.-ere seen in political (and therefore threarening) terms. A law passed in 1968, during Gen. Ongania'~ dktutorsbip, for inst'ance, ¡}enaiized drug trafficking but not personal consumption. In 1974 (paradoxically und•• a civilian government) thelawwasmodified ~nd drug consumption became a uime because it was consi<kred a "subvcrsivc" form of b~havior. The official diRcoune linked guerrilla a<:tivitywith the comumption of drugs in spite of the fatt th.ú a1l guerrilla mcvements provi<kd severe punishmcntll for those memh~rs wbo ton sumed drugs. S el' M<onzano, "The jl¡faking,~ 380.

53,

59.

60.

,, r;~~:::.;::;::~:.:,;;~;:,~.:~;",

PART THREE

Psychoanalysis in the

United States during the

Cold War and the 1 960s

INTRODUCTION

The case study ofthe United S tates pn::;ents m exampl€ of contras!& and

contradictions when considering our !heme of the relationship belween

psyéhoanalysis and !he politks of authoritarianism.

The United S tates have ilever experienced a toúlitarian or authoritarian

dictatorship. The courllry has alwáys enjoyed political freedoms as a par!

of a democratic s¡rstem. Although atvarious times in it's history its leaders

haw imposed politi~al restrictions, such as limitatióin on the fre~dom of

speech md assembly as well as on human rights, which were ruthlessly

violated, thc United States have operated as a democracy.

Asevere challenge to this view of the United Sta tes as a democracy took

place during'the period ofthe Cold War, which ushered in a period of

suppresruon, surveillance, Ellld violen ce that seriouslythreatened democratic

principies. In this dimite, psychoanalysts who migrated to the United States

from Europe-most with deep affiliations to th~ left-éame to thc attention