Professor Estela V. Welldon: Recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award of the British Psychoanalytic Council

Presented on Saturday, 16th November, 2019, at the British Library, London.

Our story begins on Tuesday, 3rd November, 1936, at precisely 6.30 in the evening, when a comet exploded, east of the Andes mountains, just above the Argentine city of Mendoza, and a beautiful baby, Estela Valentina D'Accurzio, arrived in our midst.

The world has never been quite the same.

It pleases me hugely that the British Psychoanalytic Council has chosen to present the Lifetime Achievement Award to Professor Estela Welldon.

But how can one possibly encapsulate the extensive achievements of this remarkable woman, across seven decades of clinical practice?

I could, I suppose, remind you that, as a young medical student, Estela D'Accurzio (later Welldon) trained under Professor Horacio Etchegoyen, undoubtedly the most distinguished psychoanalyst in all of South America, internalising his extensive knowledge of psychopathology and psychoanalytical technique. But I shall not do that.

I could, I suppose, underscore that she undertook further studies at the Menninger Clinic with the most famous psychiatrist in the United States of America, Professor Karl Menninger, who had once shaken the hand of Sigmund Freud, and who taught Estela all about criminal psychology. But I shall not do that.

I could, I suppose, emphasise that Estela survived more than thirty years at the Portman Clinic, first as Consultant Psychiatrist and then as Consultant Psychotherapist, providing compassionate and effective treatment—both individual analysis and group analysis—for some of the country's most notorious murderers, rapists, paedophiles, and arsonists, at a time in history when capital punishment remained the gold standard. But I shall not do that.

I could, I suppose, concentrate on the numerous books that Estela has authored, ranging from the now classic Mother, Madonna, Whore: The Idealization and Denigration of Motherhood, in which she reconfigured the traditional psychoanalytical theory of perversion, to the more pla