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It is no easy task to review a two-volume book consisting of 45 articles written in a language not available to most of the Journal's readers. The first temptation to be avoided is that of presenting a summary of some of the more significant papers, as the result would very likely be long, confusing and boring. The nearly 1000 pages of this work are witness to the vitality of the Chilean psychoanalytic movement, a living history of its influences, and an opportunity to see how psychoanalysis forms part of the Latin-American cultural context.
In the prologue, the editors cite Proust's classic passage on the memories that were brought back by the flavour of the madeleines dipped in tilleiul (lime). All of Cambrai, its surroundings, its gardens and the atmosphere of Proust's house rise up from the cup of tea. This is the beautiful introduction of what is to come. As I see it, this is a vivid metaphor for the history of the influence of European psychoanalysis on Latin-American culture. I believe that a psychoanalysis based on the understanding of emotional experiences and the search for their meaning, resulting from relations between psychic objects that take place in an interior world, would arouse a feeling of familiarity in any Latin-American. Our myths, legends and culture favour intense emotional experiences and thus are fertile ground for theories that give a central place to the emotions and an internal world where meanings are produced.
One of the reasons why Kleinian thinking has become so widespread in Latin America seems to be the importance it gives to emotional experiences. These are seen as giving meaning to mental life; they operate as a kind of connective tissue that structures the individual's internal world. This idea that there is an interior world where emotional experiences can be thought out finds an immediate echo in Latin-Americans' emotional and intellectual life. It is there that emotions take on meaning and are perceived as being at l