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This number consists of brief presentations of approximately thirty-eight articles read at the First Latin-American Congress of Psychoanalysis. The quality of the papers is very uneven: some should be longer, some might have been omitted entirely.
In a section on dreams, Angel Garma (Buenos Aires) with his usual lucidity and depth discusses traumatic dreams. Apparent gratification of a wish is the best disguise (in the manifest content) against recognition of a death wish and it satisfies the desire of the ego to avoid dying. Garma also suggests that 'dreams are hallucinations created by a psychic trauma in an ego temporarily impoverished by being asleep. Secondary processes disguise them before they are perceived consciously… Dreams are hallucinations of a disguised traumatic situation.'
G. Koolhaas (Montevideo) describes typical dreams of elevators and their relation to specific phobias and sexual difficulties. He also correlates inability to achieve erection with fear of storms; failure of orgasm with fear of earthquakes; and premature ejaculation with fear of drowning. These three types he correlates with three stages of birth trauma: the induction (erected body); the expulsion (violent motion); and the moment of birth (asphyxia and respiratory trauma).
E. Blaise (Madrid) demonstrates that capacity for sublimation 'requires proper previous "use" of the aggressive tendencies'. If this process is blocked or hampered it leads to 'an uncontrolled and sudden release of hostility in a destructive way'. S. Wencelblat and H. Pastrana (Buenos Aires) try to show that circumcision provokes 'a restriction and diminution of the initial relationships with a love object'. There is also 'a regressive intensification of the person's archaic internal object imagoes'. C. A. D'Andurain (Chile) describes two analyzed cases of male homosexuality; 'one was cured by fear', the other 'cured legitimately' in Bergler's sense. From Brazil, A. Koch (Sao Paulo) writes, 'omnipotenc