2/4 Event: Psychoanalysis and Political Authoritarianism

"Psychoanalysis and Political Authoritarianism: The Case of Argentina in the 1960s and 70s
by Mariano Ben Plotkin"
Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero and president of the Insituto de Desarrollo Económico y Social, Buenos Aires

Thursday, February 4, 2010, 4-5:30 p.m.
Wyatt 109, University of Puget Sound

Today, Argentina is considered one of the world centers for the circulation and consumption of psychoanalysis. Several scholars have studied the emergence and development of a “psychoanalytic culture” in Argentina. However, no study so far has focused on the intriguing fact that the massive dissemination of psychoanalysis took place mainly under the rule of authoritarian regimes that established severe restrictions of political, social and human rights. The Argentine case thus challenges accepted views according to which psychoanalysis can only flourish in a democratic context. By focusing on the diffusion of psychoanalysis in Argentina during the 1960s and 70, Mariano Plotkin problematizes the relationship between psychoanalysis and authoritarianism and, more in general, between psychoanalysis and politics.

Mariano Ben Plotkin is Senior Researcher and President of the Instituto de Desarrollo Económico y Social, and Professor of History at the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero. His recent publications include: The Transnational Unconscious (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), co-edited with Joy Damousi; El día en que se inventó el peronismo: la construcción del 17 de Octubre (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 2007: Freud in the Pampas: The Formation of a Psychoanalytic Culture in Argentina, 1910-1983 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001); as well as articles published in academic journals in several languages.

Sponsored by Latin American Studies, History, and Psychology