International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis | Aberastury, Arminda, Known as "La Negra," (1910-1972)

The Argentine psychoanalyst Arminda Aberastury was born on September 24, 1910, in Buenos Aires, and died there on December 24, 1972, by committing suicide. Because of her dark hair she was affectionately known as "La Negra," and it was this name that others used when they referred to her.

In 1937 she married the psychiatrist Enrique Pichon-Rivière, a pioneer of psychoanalysis in Argentina. The couple had three children: Enrique, Joaquin, and Marcelo. In 1953, she became a training analyst with the Associación psicoanalítica argentina (APA). She taught for nearly twenty years at the Teaching Institute, where she was the director, and introduced the teaching of child psychoanalysis as part of the training of the analyst candidate.

She later held the chair of child and adolescent psychology in the School of Philosophy and Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. In Latin America she distributed psychoanalytic...