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psychoanalytic communities in Europe and North America (see the separate entry THE UNCONSCIOUS). Within the context of the broad historic-cultural importance of language and translations, French analysts initiated the trend of “ going back to Freud ”, ‘re-tourning’, re- reading, de-constructing and setting the classical concepts to work, even before Laplanche’s ‘Oeuvres complètes de Freud – Psychanalyse (‘OCFP’)’ (Laplanche 1989a) , viewing their work as an elaboration and a dialogue with Freudian œuvre. Due to the distinct character of intersubjectivity in French psychoanalysis in both Europe and North America (Canada), Intersubjectivity in French Psychoanalysis will be treated as a separate chapter (below). II. D. Socio-Historical Context of Theory and Clinical Practice in Latin America Latin American psychoanaysis drew from the original sources, mostly in Europe. In this way, Freud, Klein, Winnicott (and later Lacan) “founded” psychoanalysis in Latin America in the 1940s. Yet two decades later, we witnessed the influence of the viewpoints advanced by the British school first, and by the French school later. After being studied and implemented in the Americas for more than fifty years, the ideas of Freud, Klein, Winnicott, or Lacan have not remained the same. Cultural conditions impose changing patterns that differ from the cultural patterns of the countries where these ideas were born. The history of our profession starts in a center (Vienna, London, Paris). When it moves toward the periphery, new phenomena occur, and more so when it crosses the oceans. There, the fortunate expansion of psychoanalysis intertwines with a variety of factors. While looking to Europe for inspiration, Latin America is not a copy of the Old Continent. Latin American psychoanalysis had developed within local cultural expressions, and gradually transformed and mingled with them. It strived to integrate into academia and hospital care, and it interpenetrated with political expressions and social movements. Working in a hospital, or in a consulting room, in Latin America is not the same as doing so in Europe. Latin American analysts span a wide socioeconomic range – from independent professionals, to colleagues who are poorly paid employees of health insurance companies and must often resort to other sources of income. The (sometimes violent) “irruption” of social life into our consulting rooms is inevitable. For this reason, many analysts who practiced decades ago were intersubjectivists ahead of their time due to the way they approached their clinical practice. They took context very much into account, in the manner of an expanded psychoanalytic field. In view of their way of working with patients, today they would be considered intersubjectivists, even if they did not know the authors of reference in this field. Currently, many analysts who identify with a variety of theoretical frameworks (Lacanian, Neo-Kleinian, Meltzerian, or Freudian) approach their patients oblivious to their own alleged theoretical viewpoint; their clinical attitude is close to that of intersubjective analysts.
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