The article discusses the medical reception of psychoanalysis in Chile from the 1910s through to its institutionalization in the late 1940s. Until the 1930s psychoanalysis was mostly rejected by Chilean psychiatrists - who were under the influence of the French School - because of its ‘unscientific and excessive emphasis on sexuality’. In the early 1930s psychoanalysis was reassessed and became accepted within medical circles as an expert knowledge on sexuality and as a preventive tool against social diseases.