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David Liberman was one of the great contributors to the development of psychoanalysis in Argentina. He focused his research on the dialogue in the session. He used as raw data for his research detailed records of his patients’ sessions at different moments of the analytic process; these were the foundation for his contribution to psychoanalytic theory.
He made use of communication theory and his work is an outstanding example of multidisciplinary approach to psychoanalytic development. He was particularly interested in the relationship between content and style of interpretation convinced that both relate to development fixation points.
Liberman was born in Buenos Aires in 1920 in a middle class, Jewish family. His was a musical family. His father, Sam Liberman, was a well-known jazz musician. David was a gifted piano player and was very aware of the rhythm of spoken language. He once told me that his Oedipal phantasies were shaped by the way his father handled musical instruments.
He met León Grinberg – another pioneer of South American psychoanalysis – in primary school, and they remained friends for the rest of their lives. They both excelled as researchers in different areas of analytic theory but shared psychoanalytic, scientific and ethical values. They went at the same time to medical school, shared Freudian readings, became psychiatrists and did analytic training at the Argentine Psychoanalytical Association (APA).
David Liberman’s mentor during his training in psychiatry was Enrique Pichon-Rivière, who eventually became his training analyst. Liberman’s
dissertation was on “Psychosomatic Semiology”, starting a line of research that culminated with the publication of the book Del cuerpo al símbolo (From the body to the symbol) that we edited with him and a group of colleagues interested in the same subject. We started to meet as a group interested in Liberman’s novel approach to psychopathology, which had been published in his book Linguística, interacción y p