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Like many psychoanalysts, Irene Cairo did not turn to fiction until late in life. After graduating from the University of Buenos Aires Faculty of Medicine in 1964, she moved to the United States and studied at the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, where she is a member of the faculty. She is also a training and supervising analyst at the Contemporary Freudian Society. She has served as the North American Chair of the Ethics Committee of the International Psychoanalytic Association. Cairo is the author of more than two dozen journal articles, chapters, and book reviews, written in English and Spanish, on a wide range of subjects, including shame, envy, and trauma. Her willingness to be self-disclosing, and to admit her clinical mistakes sets her apart from other analysts.
Cairo's open-mindedness appears throughout her writings. The heroic, she argues in her book chapter “Voiceless Heroines: Deafened by Theory?” is defined by “courageous acts and nobility of character” (Cairo, 2019, p. 96). The chapter, part of Changing Notions of the Feminine: Confronting Psychoanalysts' Prejudices, edited by Margarita Cereijido, explores how Cairo freed herself from classical psychoanalytic theory, particularly ego psychology, that has limited her understanding of female patients. Growing up in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Cairo recounts how she has “no social or political early memories that do not involve a tyrannical government and a fear of the police” (p. 96). She was cautioned by her mother, “If you get lost, do not go to the police” (p. 96). Nor was she allowed to repeat ideas heard at home; even listening to clandestine radio broadcasts was dangerous. Cairo identified with three powerful women: the biblical Judith, the literary Antigone, and the historical Joan of Arc. The adoption of these three women revealed Cairo's early identity theme: “defiance of authority, with achievement of success, but sometimes at a
brutal price!” (p. 97). These heroines embodied admir