Letter from Uruguay

The Uruguayan Psychoanalytical Association (APU) has about 100 members and 80 candidates and is located in a small country, with a cultural life that is open to multiple influences and a strong tradition of democratic coexistence. This tradition of openness to pluralism influenced the Uruguayan Association to respond in a particular way to some of the challenges that psychoanalysis faces in today's world. From this perspective I would like to comment on some aspects of development in my society,1 and raise some issues that might have a more general validity. I will refer to three aspects in particular:

1. The manner in which the Training Institute is organized, which forms part of what has been designated in IPA documents as the ‘Uruguayan model’ of psychoanalytic training.

2. The formal acknowledgement of a degree in psychoanalysis by the national authorities. The APU Training Institute was recognized as a University Institute and the degree in psychoanalysis was accepted by the Ministry of Culture and Education as a ‘Master's in Psychoanalysis’. This degree was also accepted in the registry of Public Health, which makes psychoanalysis an approved therapy in professional practice.

3. The internal characteristics of pluralism and the theoretical and technical discussions in the Uruguayan Society.

A brief historical background might be useful. Psychoanalysis in Uruguay started with a very close relationship with Argentine psychoanalysis. In Buenos Aires the decision to create a psychoanalytic group arose in the 1940s, during World War II. In those years several persons’ desire to train as psychoanalysts coincided with the arrival in Buenos Aires of European analysts who had been trained in Berlin, Paris or Vienna. This allowed the formation of the Argentinean Psychoanalytic Association, which was quickly recognized by the IPA as a Component Society in 1949. At that time there were also people in Montevideo interested in psychoanalysis who contacted the Argentinean group. In 1954