La Situación Psicoanalítica: Latin American Contributions to Psychoanalysis

NYPSI’s 1029th Scientific Program Meeting:

“La Situación Psicoanalítica: Latin American Contributions to Psychoanalysis”

Tuesday, May 8, 2018

8:00 pm

Panelists: Jorge Balan, Ph.D., Irene Cairo,  M.D., Luis Ripoll, M.D. (moderator), Rogelio Sosnik, M.D.

This panel will address a distinctly Latin-American perspective in psychoanalysis. Latin-American contributions to psychoanalysis have been of increasing interest in the age of psychoanalytic pluralism and, over time, they have come to be grouped together. Yet there is limited opportunity to study this collective contribution, especially where European, British, and North American psychoanalytic traditions prevail. To a greater extent than in other regions, psychoanalysis in Latin America has been characterized by an enthusiasm for object-relations theory, based largely on Melanie Klein’s depressive and paranoid-schizoid positions. British, post-Kleinian authors, along with Wilfred Bion, have also played a significant role (particularly with regard to their research on psychosis, however varied it may be) in the thinking of Latin American psychoanalytic theorists. Some have also been curious about the elucidation of linguistic aspects of the unconscious and associated distinctions between specific levels of mentation, including an interest in unconscious phantasy, with its individual and trans-individual dimensions.  Within the broader domain of Latin American contributions to psychoanalysis, the focus of this panel will be the precise theoretical, societal, and historical frameworks of Latin-American contributions to the field.

Jorge Balan, Ph.D. is an Argentine sociologist who has published extensively on comparative higher education policy, academic and labor mobility, rural-to-urban and international migration, and regional development in Latin America. His work on psychoanalysis and its professional organization in Argentina, published over 25 years ago in Buenos Aires and revisited recently in an article of the Revue Francais de Psychanalyse (Paris, 2017), is widely known. He received his PhD in sociology at The University of Texas at Austin and gained postdoctoral awards from the Social Science Research Council in New York and the John S. Guggenheim Foundation. He has held faculty appointments with major universities in Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, the United States, and Canada. Dr. Balan has frequently advised governments, international agencies, and philanthropic organizations on social science research and policy issues.

Irene Cairo, M.D. is Training and Supervising Analyst and Faculty Member of the Contemporary Freudian Society and a graduate and member of the Faculty at the New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute. Since 1994, Dr. Cairo has co-chaired, with Dr. Rogelio Sosnik, a discussion group on the work of Wilfred Bion at the biannual meetings of the American Psychoanalytic Association, where she also coordinates a clinical workshop. Her recent publications include, “To make the best of a bad job” (in The Bion Tradition, eds. H. Levine and G. Civitarese, Routledge, 2015) and “Babette Interrupted” (in Finding Unconscious Fantasy: Narrative, Trauma and Body Pain, Routledge, 2017).  Among her papers, “My colleague, that Other,” which appeared in Psychoanalytic Dialogues (2005), is one of her personal favorites. Dr. Cairo is currently North American Chair of the Ethics Committee of the International Psychoanalytic Association. She is in private practice in New York.

Luis H. Ripoll, M.D. received his medical degree from the University of Florida. He completed his psychiatric residency and clinical research fellowship on the neurobiology of personality disorders in New York at the Mount Sinai Medical Center, where he remains Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Psychiatry. Dr. Ripoll has published articles on neuropsychoanalytic conceptions of borderline personality disorder. Other interests include attachment theory, trauma, hermeneutics and post-structuralism, as well as the influence of curiosity, creativity, and play on the psychoanalytic situation.  He is an advanced candidate and Silvan Clinical Research Fellow at the New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute, where he is also a member of its Scientific Program Committee. He was also recently appointed to the board of the Psychoanalytic Research Consortium. Dr. Ripoll is in private practice in New York.

Rogelio Sosnik, M.D. is Training and Supervising Analyst, Buenos Aires Psychoanalytic Association; Training and Supervising Analyst and Faculty, New York Freudian Society; and a member of the American Psychoanalytic Association and the IPA. He is on the Editorial Board of the IJP. Dr. Sosnik has published papers in Argentina, Uruguay, Italy, and the U.S. on the relationship between Ferenczi and Bion, on the British School, on the work of Jose Bleger, and on the “ethical texture” of psychoanalysis. For over twenty years he has chaired a discussion group on the clinical value of Bion’s ideas at the biannual meetings of the American Psychoanalytic Association, where he also co-chaired a discussion group on the death penalty. Dr. Sosnik is in private practice in New York City.

2 CME/CE credits offered. 

Educational Objectives: Upon completion of this activity, participants will be able to:

1. distinguish important Latin-American theoretical contributions to the conception of the psychoanalytic frame and clinical work
2. describe how these came to arise in an historical context
3. describe how various sociocultural influences can impact the psychoanalytic situation and influence analysand and analyst, in the context of both the analytic relationship and the work of unconscious fantasy