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Luisa Agusta Rebeca Gambier de Alvarez de Toledo, medical doctor and Argentine psychoanalyst, was born the 13th of June 1915 in 9 de Julio (Buenos Aires Province) and died on the 5th of September 1990 in the city of Buenos Aires. Rebe, as she was known by her friends and relatives, had from her youth a passion for medicine, and she moved to Buenos Aires to study. As a medical student, she showed some interest in psychoanalytic thinking, even before the Argentine Psychoanalytical Association (APA) was founded.
However, she was not a Founding Member of the APA, even though she was actively involved with the founding members, and for 25 years she was involved in the institutional life of the APA. She was elected Associate Member in 1946 and reached the presidency of the society in 1956–57. There she was a deeply committed person and very certain of her way of thinking, regardless of her fragile appearance.
She took very active part in the first psychoanalytic mental health institution in Argentina, Hospicio de la Merced, directed by Enrique Pichon-Rivière. She was part of the Adolescent Department. Between 1955 and 1958 she traveled to Montevideo (Uruguay) and trained professionals through seminars and supervisions, working with the analysts who eventually founded the Psychoanalytic Institute and Society (APU).
She always chose privacy above professional status. This was especially the case during the later years of her life, when she gave up the political institutional activity. However, her retirement was only apparent; she continued analyzing analysts from different analytic groups, giving the chance to other
colleagues to undertake analysis with a quite impressive, lucid and highly experienced person.
Each one of us who had an intimate analytic relationship with her realized that Rebe was capable of expressing, through her analytic work, a tremendous wisdom that one gets through a long life of experience. She was capable of exploring the unknown with courage.