An Interview with Isaac Tylim

In Global Perspectives, we bring you interviews with psychoanalysts from around the world in an effort to explore the influence of culture on psychoanalytic thinking and practice. Our first interview is with Isaac Tylim, PsyD, from Argentina. Dr. Tylim has a private practice in New York City and teaches and supervises at New York University's Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. Although he has lived here in the United States for a number of years, he continues to remain very involved with the South American psychoanalytic community as well as the international psychoanalytic movement at large.

JILL CHODER-GOLDMAN: Dr. Tylim, thank you so much for agreeing to be the journal's first international psychoanalyst to be interviewed in what we hope will be an ongoing part of the journal.

ISAAC TYLIM: It's my pleasure.

JC-G: So, tell me about your journey from Buenos Aires; where you grew up, how long you've lived here in the States, and a little bit about why you left Argentina.

IT: Well, I grew up in Rosario, which is the second-largest town in Argentina. But I have traveled since I was very young. I spent time in Israel studying after high school, and then I lived in Europe for a while and came back to study at the University in Argentina—first in philosophy, and then I shifted to clinical psychology. I was coming to Europe to do my doctorate in France at La Sorbonne,

and I had also applied for a scholarship to the States—a Fullbright scholarship. Two weeks before I was leaving Argentina, before I had completed my degrees in philosophy and clinical psychology, I got the scholarship, and so I changed directions and I came here. I had always wanted to live in New York, but it was very difficult to envision, so that gave me the opportunity.

JC-G: So when you came over here originally, did you know at the time if you wanted to pursue clinical psychology or philosophy?

IT: In the USA I knew I wanted to be a psychoanalyst. I thought that maybe I would go for