Description
Book SynopsisThis is a fascinating history of how psychoanalysis became an essential element of contemporary Argentine culturein the media, in politics, and in daily private lives. The book reveals the unique conditions and complex historical process that made possible the diffusion, acceptance, and popularization of psychoanalysis in Argentina, which has the highest number of psychoanalysts per capita in the world. It shows why the intellectual trajectory of the psychoanalytic movement was different in Argentina than in either the United States or Europe and how Argentine culture both fostered and was shaped by its influence.
The book starts with a description of the Argentine medical and intellectual establishments' reception of psychoanalysis, and the subsequent founding of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association in 1942. It then broadens to describe the emergence of a psy culture in the 1960s, tracing its origins to a complex combination of social, economic, political, and cultural fa
Trade Review
"This book is the first detailed study of how clinical work, literary and cultural movements, and even intellectual and political discourse [in Argentina] have been and continue to be profoundly shaped by psychoanalytic premises." -- American Historical Review
"This is a marvelous book. Rich in narrative detail, sweeping in scope, and bold in interpretation, it offers a comprehensive account of one of the world's largest psychoanalytical movements. Plotkin also provides insights into Argentina's public and private cultures that are suffused from top to bottom with psychoanalytic concepts." -- Jeremy Adelman * Princeton University *
"Mariano Plotkin's 2001 study, Freud in the Pampas: The Emergence and Development of a Psychoanalytic Culture in Argentina isan important and necessary book..." -- Latin American Research Review
"The achievement of Freud in the Pampas is its informative account of the enormous impact that psychoanalysis has had on Argentine culture and of the profound effect that the politicized culture of Argentina has had on psychoanalysis." -- JAPA
Table of Contents
Preface Introduction 1. The beginnings of psychoanalysis in Argentina 2. The founding of the apa and the development of the Argentine psychoanalytic movement 3. Social change and the expansion of the psychoanalytic world 4. The diffusers' role in the expansion of the psychoanalytic realm 5. The encounter between psychoanalysis and psychiatry 6. Psychologists take the stage 7. When Marx meets Freud 8. Politics, lacanianism, and the intellectual left 9. The aftermath Notes References Index.
