You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Published online: 3 August 2022
© The Author(s) under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited 2022
Reading about the history of psychoanalysis easily transports the reader back to classic Freudian texts, since it is no novelty that this subject was one of great interest to the Viennese psychoanalyst himself. A quick glance at Brazilian Psychosocial Histories of Psychoanalysis could make one instantly think of “On The History of the Psycho-analytic Movement” (Freud, 1914/1957), for example. However, a deeper look into the book shows that perhaps there are more similarities between it and texts like “Delusion and Dream in Jensen’s Gradiva” (Freud, 1907/1959) and “A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis” (Freud, 1936/1964). This is due to the fact that this collection of essays is not limited to presenting versions and interpretations of historical facts to its readers, but goes beyond that by constantly unfolding its findings into theoretical and methodological discussions. These discussions inevitably return to the previously presented historical cases, in a movement that one could quickly acknowledge as very familiar to psychoanalysis and history. After all, both activities share a great deal of uncanniness when dealing with matters of truth, memory and fantasy.
In this regard, the way the book is organised takes the reader on a particular path (which might not be pursued, of course). Beyond a thematic organisation, the volume’s sections favour the aforementioned movement, since not only the collected chapters converse between themselves, but also, when latter discussions make the reader go back to previous ones, they reveal new elements and potentials that were already present but could have been missed. This can be seen, for example, in Mariano Plotkin’s presentation in the first chapter (and section) of the book: a chapter that may initially work as didactic effort to give the reader some context about the reception of psychoanalysis in Latin America - somethi