Chile (International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis)

The Chilean doctor Germán Greve Schlegel (1869-1954) was the first to publish on the subject of psychoanalysis in Chile and, in general, in Latin America. His study, Sobre psicología y psicoterapia de ciertos estados angustiosos was presented in Buenos Aires in 1910. Sigmund Freud (1911g, 1914) wrote about the event in the Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse and in his On the History of the Psychoanalytic Movement.

The true pioneer, however, was Fernando Allende Navarro (1890-1981), the first Chilean psychoanalyst. Born in Concepción, Allende Navarro studied medicine in Belgium and completed his doctorate in Switzerland in 1919. He specialized in neurology and psychiatry, studying with von Monakow, Rorschach, and Veragout. He began his psychoanalytic training in Switzerland and became a member of the Société Suisse de Psychanalyse [Swiss Society for Psychoanalysis] and the Société Psychanalytique de Paris [Paris Psychoanalytic Society]. Upon his return to Chile in 1925, he presented his dissertationEl Valor de la psicoanálisis en la policlinica: Contribución a la psicologíaclínica"t the University of Chile.

The consolidation of the psychoanalytic movement began in 1943 with the return of Ignacio Matte-Blanco (1908-1994) and culminated in 1949 during the international congress in Zurich, with the recognition of the Asociación Psicoanalítica du Chili [Psychoanalytic Association of Chile] by the International Psychoanalytic Association. Matte-Blanco was born in Santiago and studied medicine at the University of Chile. In 1933 he left for London, where he trained in neuropsychiatry at Northumberland House and at Maudsley Hospital. He received his psychoanalytic training at the British Institute. He did his training analysis with Walter Schmideberg and his control analysis with Anna Freud, Melitta Schmideberg, Helen Sheehan-Dare, and James Strachey. In 1940 he went to the United States to work at Johns Hopkins Hospital and, between 1941 and 1943, was assistant professor of psychiatry at Duke University. Upon his return to Chile he trained and analyzed a group of individuals interested in psychiatry and psychoanalysis; these men and women worked under the auspices of the Psychiatric Clinic of the University of Chile. In 1949 he was appointed professor and chair of psychiatry, which gave considerable impetus to the group but was not without complications because of the overlapping roles and responsibilities entailed.

The period was characterized by numerous activities and publications and an overall modernization of the field of psychiatry in Chile. It reached its apogee in 1960, during the third Latin American Congress of Psychoanalysis held in Santiago. The group's orientation was toward classical psychoanalysis, but it was open to new developments, many of which were inspired by work in anthropology and philosophy. Matte-Blanco published Lo Psíquicio y la Naturaleza humana in 1954 and Estudios de psicología dinámica in 1955, books that contained the core ideas he would later develop in Rome and which were published in 1975 in The Unconscious as Infinite Sets: An Essay in Bi-logic and in 1989 in Thinking, Feeling and Being: Clinical Reflections on the Fundamental Antinomy of Human Beings in the World.

There was also interest in clinical research, which was reflected in a precocious psychoanalytic investigation of the field of psychosis and perversion, primarily in the work of de Ganzaraín and Whiting.

This first generation of psychoanalysts included Arturo Prat (1910-1989), Carlos Whiting (1918-1982), Erika Bondiek, Carlos Nuñez (1918-1983), Ramón Ganzaraín, and Hernán Davanzo; they were followed by José Antonio Infante, Otto Kernberg, Ximena Artaza, and Ruth Riesenberg.

Important changes occurred after 1961. Because of operational difficulties and outside influences, the majority of analysts abandoned work in clinical settings and rejected the leadership of Matte-Blanco, focusing instead on the association as an independent institution. Between 1962 and 1971 several well-known members emigrated to Europe or the United States, including Matte-Blanco himself, who settled in Rome in 1966. There followed a general weakening of the movement, although training continued at more or less the same rate. There were exchanges within Latin America, and David Liebermann was called to Buenos Aires on several occasions. The connection to the universities was maintained by Professors Hernán Davanzo, Mario Gomberoff, Omar Arrué, and their staffs. The association itself became increasingly Kleinian.

In the eighties there was a sustained development in the psychoanalytic movement in Chile. Several generations of analysts were trained by Artaza, Bondiek, Davanzo, Eva Reichenstein, and Infante, who had returned from Topeka in 1978. Frequent visits by those who had emigrated, including Otto and Paulina Kernberg, Ramón Ganzaraín, and Ruth Riesenberg, had an invigorating effect on the profession. Access of this third generation of analysts to training and guidance within the association, together with the association's work with scientific and cultural organizations, led to the growth of a renewed psychoanalytic movement, one that was more pluralist and open to change. A number of psychoanalysts from this period stand out: Mario Gomberoff, Liliana Pauluan, Elena Castro, Omar Arrué, Ramón Florenzano, Jaime Coloma, Eleonora Casaula, Juan Francisco Jordán, and Juan Pablo Jiménez. The Argentinians Horacio Etchegoyen, Jorge Olagaray, and Guillermo Brudny provided significant contributions to the movement. The association's official publication is the Revista chilena de psiconálisis.

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