Mariano Plotkin

Universidad Nacional Tres de Febrero · Department of History

Although the reception and early circulation of psychoanalytic ideas and practice in Latin America have been largely ignored by most ‘global’ histories of psychoanalysis, in some major cities of the region psychoanalysis was known, discussed and practised earlier than in many European major cities. Today, some Latin American cities are considered a...

This article analyzes the transformation of the Argentine fields of intellectual production and circulation at the turn of the 20th Century from the vantage point of an apparently minor debate that took place in 1903 between the young physician José Ingenieros and the director of the National Library, Paul Groussac about the use of the term “psychi...

Resumen Este artículo plantea una agenda de investigación sobre el establecimiento de las culturas psi en América Latina. Comienza analizando algunos debates sobre la naturaleza del psicoanálisis ubicado entre las ciencias, la filosofía, y el sentido común. Se argumenta que es necesario problematizar el lugar de las culturas psi como emergentes de...

THe article analyzes the context of production of Ingenieros´ most popular work. In doing so, it questions some received knowledge about Ingenieros and the Argentine intelectual elites

Omar Acha, Crónica de la Argentina peronista. Sexo, inconsciente e ideología, 1945-1955, Buenos Aires, Prometeo, 2014, 408 páginas

This article analyses the failure of the Proyecto Marginalidad (Marginality Project), which the Ford Foundation financed in the 1960s, and the political and academic conflicts that it provoked. It takes into consideration the viewpoints of the principal actors involved (the director of the project, the Ford Foundation, and its critics). The origina...

This article —part of a larger project on the creation of «knowledge of state» in Argentina between the late nineteenth and 1930—, analyzes a series of publications that operated as «transmission belts» of economic knowledge and, more generally, of concepts tied to liberalism during the last decades of the n.ineteenth century in Argentina. What we...

Editorial note to the journal and book review

Psychoanalysis and Politics is the collective work of an international group of scholars who are all interested in the transnational dimension of psychoanalysis. Joy Damousi and Mariano Ben Plotkin coordinated the group, and they also edited this collection. The essays in Psychoanalysis and Politics developed from a desire to analyze the possibilit...

Mariano Ben Plotkin examines the development of a psychoanalytic culture in Argentina under authoritarian regimes of the 1960s and 1970s. He makes the case that the strong impact of psychoanalysis in the Argentine culture is the result of an historical process that saw the convergence of a complex set of cultural, political, and social factors that...

ZanattaLoris, Eva Perón: una biografía política (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 2011), pp. 458, pb. - Volume 44 Issue 1 - MARIANO BEN PLOTKIN

The article analyses the trajectory of Dr. José Bleger (1922-1972), an Argentine psychoanalyst who tried to articulate his triple identity as a Jew, a Marxist, and a psychoanalyst. Bleger played a central role in the constitution of the 'psy movement' and, in more general terms, in the diffusion of a 'psy culture' in Argentina, a country that today...

This article discusses –through a comparative analysis of the reception and circulation of psychoanalytic thought in Argentina and Brazil–, the conditions for the transformation of a system of ideas into a system of beliefs. Particular emphasis is placed in the manner in which what Norbert Elias has characterized as “national hábitus” generates con...

This article discusses –through a comparative analysis of the reception and circulation of psychoanalytic thought in Argentina and Brazil–, the conditions for the transformation of a system of ideas into a system of beliefs. Particular emphasis is placed in the manner in which what Norbert Elias has characterized as "national hábitus" generates con...

ArmusDiego, La ciudad impura: Salud, tuberculosis y cultura en Buenos Aires, 1870–1950 (Buenos Aires: Edhasa, 2007), pp. 413, pb. - Volume 41 Issue 2 - MARIANO BEN PLOTKIN

Psychoanalysis is a clear example of a transnational system of thought. Since its creation in late imperial Vienna at the end of the nineteenth century, and particularly after World War II, the center of production and consumption of psychoanalysis has shifted, from continental Europe to the Anglo-Saxon world; and then in the 1960s, to the Latin wo...

The economy between crises: political economy and finance at the University of Buenos Aires (1870-1900) This article analyzes the inaugural period of teaching economics in Argentina, examining material linked to the chairs of political economy and finance created around the time of the institution of the legal career at the University of Buenos Air...

La difusión de la vertiente "lacaniana" del psicoanálisis y su relativa masificación fuera de Francia ha sido un fenómeno fundamentalmente latinoamericano y, en particular, argentino. Mientras en países como Inglaterra o los Estados Unidos la recepción de las teorías de Lacan se ha dado sobre todo en ámbitos académicos (departamentos universitarios...

This article analyzes the process of constitution of a field of economists in Argentina between 1913 (year of the creation of a School of Economic Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires), and the creation of the Central Bank in 1935. It examines different instances of intervention of economists and their gradual recognition as a state elite.

By the turn of the twentieth century, Argentina was considered a rising star among the former European colonies. With rates of literacy that compared favorably to those of many European countries, one of the fastest growing GDPs in the world, and over forty years of continuous democracy, it attracted masses of European immigrants. However, as Julia...

Antonius C. G. M. Robben, Political Violence and Trauma in Argentina (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), pp. xii+467. $55.00; £36.00, hb. - - Volume 38 Issue 2 - MARIANO BEN PLOTKIN

"Luis Alberto Romero has written a book that is comprehensive, balanced, and full of insights into the developmen--and turmoi--of modern Argentine history. This book can serve as a starter for anyone interested in the topic. Specialists too will rely on it for its analysis and detail. James Brennan's translation is outstanding."-Jeremy Adelman, Pri...

After the fall of Juan Peron in 1955, Argentina became integrated into the process of internationalization that had transformed the political and economic landscape of Latin America in the previous decade. “Modernization” and “development” became new buzz-words in this new world placed under the hegemony of the United States. The present article st...

Argentina is the world's center of psychoanalysis in the twenty-first century. Not only have many Argentines undergone psychoanalytic therapy, but Argentines from taxi drivers to actresses, from politicians to generals, all speak in "psychoanalese," and two of the most popular TV shows in the country have psychoanalysis as their central issue. This...

El artículo analiza la evolución de la compleja relación que la intelectual y empresaria cultural argentina Victoria Ocampo estableció con los Estados Unidos. A través de esta trayectoria, el artículo analiza también temas mas amplios como la evolución de los proyectos modernizadores de la élite social e intelectual argentina. Ocampo era a la vez u...

The article analyzes the evolving relationship that Argentine intellectual and cultural entrepreneur Victoria Ocampo established with the United States. Through her trajectory the article analyzes broader topics such as the evolution of the Argentine social and intellectual élite’s project of modernization. Ocampo was at the same time a typical and...

Hispanic American Historical Review 80.1 (2000) 160-161 During recent decades psychoanalysis has become a central component of the culture of some South American countries, especially Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, and, to a lesser extent, Chile. However, the enormous diffusion of Freudism (and, more recently, Lacanism) in those countries has been lar...

How does one write the history of psychoanalysis? Although the question seems too broad it is still pertinent. In countries like Argentina, where psychoanalysis has become a Weltanschauung , traditional approaches from the history of science, the history of ideas or institutional history are insufficient to give a full account of its cultural impla...

Bulletin of the History of Medicine 73.3 (1999) 506-507 During the three centuries of the Spanish American empire, mercury extracted from the mines of Almadén in southern Spain constituted crucial raw material for the production of silver in the colonies. The unhealthy working conditions existent in the mines, and in particular the high toxicity of...

Trabalhos recentes ressaltam a crescente importância dos economistas como elite estatal e técnica na América Latina e em outras partes do mundo 1 . Não há dúvida de que foi a partir do segundo pós-guerra que a economia e as ciências sociais em geral conheceram a aceleração de seus processos de insti-tucionalização e de consolidação. No entanto, o f...

El proceso de circulación y recepción de ideas tiene al menos dos dimensiones. En primer lugar, una dimensión transnacional, es decir, aquella vinculada al complejo proceso de transferencia de ideas a través de fronteras culturales y políticas. Pero en segundo lugar, este proceso no puede ser adecuadamente estudiado sin tomar en cuenta el "suelo de...