The Lacanian movement in Argentina and Brazil

the periphery becomes the center

Jane Russo

pp. 199-226

in: Joy Damousi, Mariano Ben Plotkin (eds), The transnational unconscious, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009

Abstract

In the turn of the century, it became commonplace to speak of the decline or of the imminent disappearance of psychoanalysis. In face of the fast progress of neuroscience and the successful pharmacological influence on psychiatry,¹ psychoanalytic vocabulary and logic seemed decidedly outdated. However, we should ask which point of view has produced such cliché. Is it possible to mention a decline of psychoanalysis in all the countries where it has laid roots? Or would we be mistaking, as usual, a specific occurrence in one of the central countries for a truly global event? The question is pertinent since the United States are undoubtedly a propagating center for habits and customs, as well as for ideology. Therefore it is common to attribute to the North American hegemonic pattern in several scientific and research areas a worldwide reach that it often does not have (yet).