Introduction

In recent decades, some Latin American countries - most notably Argentina and then Brazil - have become international centres for the practice, circulation and discussion of psychoanalytic ideas both Freudian and Lacanian. Currently, Buenos Aires boasts one of the largest psychoanalytic communities in the world. The importance of Latin American psychoanalysis was recognized when, in 1993, Argentine Dr Horacio Etchegoyen was elected the first ever Latin American president of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA), followed by the 2005 election of Dr Cláudio Laks Eizirik, a Brazilian analyst, as the second Latin American to preside over the organization. Furthermore, in 1996 a historic meeting took place in Buenos Aires between the two heads of the - until then - seemingly incompatible Lacanian and orthodox psychoanalytic schools; Jacques Alain Miller - Lacan's son-in-law - and Etchegoyen met in the latter's apartment. While at present there are only two IPA-affiliated societies in France (both located in Paris), Argentina has six psychoanalytical associations fully recognized by the IPA (three in Buenos Aires and three in other cities), and Brazil has 11 official psychoanalytical associations located in different parts of the country.

Although the beginnings of the Latin American ‘psychoanalytic boom’ - which, of course, has not affected all countries in the same way - are to be found in the 1960s and 1970s, the encounters between the