Freud in the Pampas. The Emergence and development of a Psychoanalytic Culture in Argentina. MARIANO BEN PLOTKIN: Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001.

Abstract

This study stands in opposition to some of the generally accepted views of the history of this discipline, including those seeking to pinpoint the "real" current in psychoanalysis. By contrast, Mariano Ben Plotkin adopts a "historical approach" that focuses on the many ways in which different cultures affected the reception of psychoanalysis in Argentina. Accordingly, the author rejects a reconstruction of the past that assumes that psychoanalysis was necessarily meant to become the culturally influential phenomenon that we can observe nowadays. Although Plotkin shares this anti-teleological view with Hugo Vezzetti, he provides a different interpretation.