Prologue: Psychoanalysis in Spain

?Page-startFor this issue of the journal, we invited seven prominent psychoanalysts who practice in Spain, even though their country of origin and their training may be outside of Spain, to tell us about their journey in becoming the psychoanalysts they are today.

This issue is a continuation of a series the editors began in 2002, devoted to psychoanalysts chronicling how they became the practitioners they are today. The intention then was to understand the changes in and current state of psychoanalysis through the autobiographical sketches of those who contributed to such changes. The first two issues focused on psychoanalysts trained in the United States: the first one on those who trained in institutes of the American Psychoanalytic Association and the second on psychoanalysts who trained in institutes outside the American Psychoanalytic Association. Since then, there have been three more issues devoted to analysts who trained and practice outside the United States: analysts in South America, analysts who trained at the British Psychoanalytic Society and practice in Great Britain, and Israeli analysts. To this latter list we are happy to add a fourth issue featuring psychoanalysts in Spain. We hope that such chronicles can help readers better understand how analysts who practice outside the United States think about psychoanalytic theory, how they have contributed to developing and changing such theory, how they approach their patients, and how culture and society have played a part in shaping their theoretical and clinical outlooks.

To examine the state of psychoanalysis in Spain is of particular importance, given that during the twentieth century the country was first torn by one the bloodiest civil wars in history and was then under the grip of Francisco Franco’s autocratic regime for forty years, precisely at a time when psychoanalysis was gaining prominence as a practice in Europe and elsewhere. And yet, as Alejandro Ávila-Espada relates in his brief recount of the histo