analyses in progress, with the assistance of Horst Kächele. Although this study had a short life, due to financial difficulties and lack of interest from analysts to participate in it-by answering the questionnaires that were part of the research - it showed that this kind of studies was feasible. Less ambitious projects were successfully done in different places of the region and, especially, strengthening what Marta Nieto (unpublished) called a “research attitude” of analysts. This attitude leads to focus to the degree of adequacy of theoretical ideas to clinical facts, favouring the suspicion when discrepancies occur. In a similar direction, Juan Pablo Jiménez noted the positive effect of research, not only through its specific contributions, but also in promoting the need of a greater clarification of clinical concepts in relation to the metapsychological assumptions of ideological type (Jiménez, 2007). In the field of clinical research, H. Etchegoyen underlines the role of the testing of interpretation,(Etchegoyen, 2001, 2002). How interpretations changed through time in a given psychoanalytic society was also studied (Bernardi et al., 1997), as well as what kind of evidence leads analysts to change their theoretical and technical models (Bernardi, 2003). There are studies about the characteristics of clinical inference (Leibovich de Duarte, 2010). Papers like the one by Ramonet et al. sought to establish bridges between clinical practice and research (Ramonet et al., 2005). Other research fields were explored, especially regarding child development (Altmann de Litvan, , 2007; Schejtman, et al., 2014); underlying structures of mother-infant interaction at brief psychotherapeutic processes (Altmann de Litvan, 2015); depression (Botto,, Acuña & Jiménez, 2014); the efficiency of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy (Mantilla Lagos & Sologuren De La Fuente, 2006); the relation between frequency and analytic process(Altmann et al., 2002). These examples do not expect to be a systematic revision but only a fragmentary illustration of some papers written in the psychoanalytic research field from different Latin American countries. There is also a variety of papers related to conceptual research and to discussions of epistemological nature about the role of research in psychoanalysis which I do not mention here due to space reasons. The creation of an exchange net among analysts interested in research in Latin America was strengthened by the activities organized by the IPA Research Committee and the Society for Psychotherapy Research (SPR) in the region. The Research Training Programme (RTP), developed by the IPA Research Committee, chaired by Peter Fonagy, allowed researchers from different countries to share and compare their research projects, to receive counselling from a faculty of experts, and to later keep an exchange among them through an electronic e-mail list (ipa.researchtraining@lists.uni- ulm.de). It is the opinion of those who participated in this program that the RTP experience left an indelible mark that significantly enriched their vision of research and also of psychoanalysis. This was also helped by the possibility to receive IPA grants for research projects, managed by the research committee. This has been an important incentive for a greater development of research in Latin America. Another important factor that strengthened the net of analysts interested in research was the creation of the South American Chapter of the Society for Psychotherapy Research, which took place in Mendoza, Argentina, in year 1992, fostered by Horst Kächele and Ken Howard. Juan Pablo Jiménez was the first Latin American Vice-President of the SPR, which helped psychoanalyst researchers to have a fluent dialogue among themselves and with psychotherapists from other approaches. Universities have also a crucial role facilitating research, e.g. through research grants and doctoral theses, but unfortunately the presence of analysts in universities has decreased in the last years. Comments about psychotherapy research by Guillermo de la Parra, Past President of the SPR, are also valid for psychoanalysis (De la Parra, 2013): “In short, Latin America’s production is slowly growing at an international level, although it is still small in scale” (p. 612). He states that difficulties and weakness of research in Latin America are linked to the lack of research culture, lack of training, scarcity of resources and the little time to devote to research and the need of English translation (p. 618).
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