The Problem Of Originality And Imitation In Psychoanalytic Thought:

The author discusses some assumptions that are taken for granted when considering the discontent felt in Latin America with its psychoanalytical thinking, which is often characterised as the result of a colonised mentality which leads to imitation of European, especially British, ideas. The author criticises this explanation based on the opposition between the culture of the coloniser and the culture of the colonised. The author suggests that we start from another perspective, believing that the discontent which afflicts many Latin American analysts can be better understood by an analysis of how consumer societies treat knowledge that originates elsewhere. Consumer societies tend ruthlessly to simplify academic knowledge, rapidly transforming it into routine techniques ready for consumption. This treatment dislodges the knowledge from the conceptual schemes which generated it and which served as its source of inspiration. In this context certain consumer groups become owners of certain psychoanalytic ideas, simplified by the very use to which they are put. When ideas and theories become simplifications, mere techniques to be applied, they may be used to institutionalise and legitimate the domination of certain groups within local Psychoanalytic Societies. In this situation the remaining sectors of the local societies tend to treat these ideas as exotic and alien to their environment and the dominating groups foster the notion that it is the original, foreign power that is to blame for the colonising dominance of its ideas. In other cases, however, foreign ideas may be carefully studied, criticised and used creatively to develop new ways of thinking.