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The Kleinian movement in Latin America was at its peak between the 1950s and the 1970s. During this time Melanie Klein's own contributions, as well as the contributions of the Kleinians and post-Kleinians, were fruitfully taken up by the various psychoanalytical groups that were gradually forming. Argentina's Psychoanalytical Association (APA) was founded in 1942, and articles by Klein, Susan Isaacs and Joan Riviere were published in the first issues of its Revista de Psicoanálisis.
In 1952 Enrique Pichon-Rivière published an important contribution on working with projective identifications in the context of the psychoanalytic process in the Revue Française de Psychanalyse.
Authors such as Heinrich Racker, León Grinberg, Willy and Madeleine Baranger, David Liberman and José Bleger, among others, were able to see the richness of these new theories, and how they shed light on other areas of clinical research. Of all the above, it was probably Grinberg who developed the most explicitly Kleinian train of thought. First Racker and then the Barangers also contributed to the theory of Kleinian psychoanalytical technique, although in Racker's case the links are not made explicit. The Barangers made a creative contribution with their concept of the ‘psychoanalytic field’. This concept actually includes the mechanism of projective identification in its configuration.
In the years following the founding of the APA, Kleinian thought circulated in a familiar way through the regular publication of papers
in which these ideas became common language. These papers laid the foundations for clinical practice and the theoretical development of authors such as Arminda Aberastury (child psychoanalysis), and of Enrique Pichon-Rivière (the treatment of psychotic patients). These authors were considered pioneers in the field. Even in groups who were not wedded to Kleinian theory, theoretical and technical debate took place mainly through a central reference to Kleinian thought.
In 1956 Liber