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The first reference to psychoanalysis in Peru dates from a thesis presented in 1914. The following year, Honorio Delgado published an article on the new discipline in the country's most important daily. In 1918 he and Hermilio Valdizán founded the Revista de psiquiatría y disciplinas conexas (Review of psychiatry and associated disciplines), the first mouthpiece for psychoanalysis in Latin America. In 1919 he wrote the first Spanish work on the subject. That same year he received a letter from Freud, the first in an epistolary exchange that was to last until 1934.

Although Freud was interested in enlisting Delgado—whom he cited as an example of his influence in Spanish-speaking countries, and whose articles and reports appeared in Imago, the Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse, Psychoanalytic Review and the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis—the Peruvian physician, on the other hand, manifested some reticence. He attended the Berlin Congress on Freud's invitation. He arrived late but nevertheless managed to meet the founder of psychoanalysis. In 1926 Delgado published Freud's biography and paid homage to him in the National Academy of Medicine. Paradoxically, in 1927, just as he was beginning to manifest a much more critical attitude, he was made a member of the British Psychoanalytic Society (BPS), attended the Innsbruck congress, and visited Freud at Semmering.

Having been a major figure in Peruvian psychiatry for more than thirty years, Delgado changed position from that of an exponent to that of a detractor. He was the architect behind the enthusiastic welcome that psychoanalysis received in the 1920s, when the discipline was introduced into psychiatry lectures and when the most important reviews published translations of Freudian texts—in 1926 one of them devoted an entire issue to Freud and psychoanalysis. José Carlos Mariátegui, the most eminent Peruvian thinker of the 20th century and founder of the Peruvian Communist Party, devoted an article to psychoanalysis as well as a chapter in one of his books. In 1929, one year before his premature death, he wrote a psychoanalytically informed article on literature.

Delgado's opposition in the 1930s was an obstacle to the expansion of the psychoanalytic movement, which was suspended for another four decades. With the exception of some isolated articles and a few theses, the psychiatric milieu lost all interest in the discipline. It disappeared from the scene for several years, until reintroduced through the influence of Carlos Alberto Seguin. The science journalist, Oscar Miró Quesada (RACSO), nevertheless devoted several articles to Freud and psychoanalysis, as well as a book in 1937.

In 1940 Seguin published a book in Buenos Aires on Freud. He later went into analysis and frequented the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. For many years he was director of the first psychiatry department attached to a general hospital in Latin America and contributed to promoting dynamic psychiatry and psychosomatic medicine on psychoanalytic bases. He was president of the psychoanalytic section of the Peruvian committee at the first World Congress on Psychiatry. His influence was of major importance: ninety percent of psychiatrist members of the Peruvian Psychoanalytic Society studied under him.

Saúl Peña's return to Peru in 1969 marked the beginning of active work in university and clinical circles, which continued with the returns of Carlos Crisanto in 1973 and Max Hernández in 1974, the year of the foundation of the Center for the Development of Psychoanalysis. In 1979 the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) recognized this institution as a provisional study group and appointed a sponsoring committee which admitted the three analysts as training analysts and selected the first candidates.

Founded in 1980, the Peruvian Psychoanalytic Society was accepted as a study group in 1981. Peña, Crisanto, Hernández and the new sponsors made up the joint training committee of the brand new Peruvian Institute of Psycho-analysis. In 1985 the group acquired the status of a provisional society and that of a member society in 1987.

With Sara Flores as president, the Society had forty-eightassociate and full members as of 2004, to which we must add the twenty-two candidates and students from the Institute directed by Jorge Kantor, and the eleven candidates from the seventh group to begin training. The many influences from psychoanalysts trained abroad and the foreign personages associated with the society have contributed to representing very different schools (British-independent and Anna Freud, East and West Coast United States, Argentina, France, and Frankfurt).

The society has organized and/or sponsored eight national congresses and other events, mainly international and inter-disciplinary, which have contributed to forging a role in cultural life for psychoanalysis as well as having an influence on artists, specialists in the social sciences, educators, historians, writers, psychologists, and psychiatrists. The 1998 international conference "On the Threshold of the Millennium" and "At the End of the Battle" (2001), both co-sponsoredby the IPA and UNESCO, also aroused the interest of politicians, economists, captains of industry, diplomats, and the general public.

Since 2001 the most prestigious private university of the country has a Master's Program in Psychoanalytic Theoretical Studies, organized by Max Hernández and Moisés Lemlij, whose second class is about to graduate. Also the most widely read weekly in the country has a column presenting a psychoanalytic point of view and a psychoanalyst heads a radio program where people seek advice and consultation.

Max Hernández is one of the leading intellectuals in contemporary Peru and a major personality in the Peruvian Society. His influence extends beyond the discipline and his contributions have been rewarded with the Sigourney prize. During his presidency of the FEPAL, Saúl Peña, the first president and honorary president of the Peruvian society, organized the first Latin American Congress of Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis and presented the contributions of Latin American psychoanalysis in the form of various publications.

César Rodríguez Rabanal, a former member of the Peruvian Society and an important leader of opinion, made a renowned contribution on the subject of how to approach marginalized and under-privileged populations. As an active promoter on an international level of culture in general and psychoanalysis in particular, Moisés Lemlij has twice been vice-president and treasurer of the IPA.Álvaro Rey de Castro, current President of FePAL, stands out for his active participation in the war against corruption .

The main psychoanalytically-informed institutions in Peru are: the Center for Psychosocial Development and Counseling (1976), the Lima Center for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapies (1983), the Association for Child Psychotherapy (1986), the Center for Psychoanalysis and Society (1986), the Interdisciplinary Seminar on Andean Studies (1987), the Center for Human Development and Creativity (1995), the Center for the Development of Art Therapy (1997), and the School of Applied Clinical Psychotherapy (1999). The Lacanian movement is still at an embryonic stage.

The leading works are published by the Biblioteca Peruana de Psicoanálisis and the Fondo Editorial SIDEA. Directed by Moisés Lemlij, these publishing centers have together published more than thirty works sice the early 1990s. Also worthy of note is the Libro anual de psicoanálisis (Annual book of psychoanalysis), published by Gustavo Delgado (The Peruvian Society publishes a journal, Psicoanálisis, every two years).

MOISÉS LEMLIJ

See also: Delgado, Honorio; Revista de psiquiatria y disciplinas conexas; Valdizán, Hermilio.