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.
In a previous lecture (Rubin, ) I ended my disquisition on the problem of ethics versus power within the framework of international psychoanalysis as it related to Brazil, as follows: “So here we are late in 2000 with Dr. Vianna accused by Dr. Wallerstein of ignorance of the International Psychoanalytic Association's adherence to a collective professional ethic in the Cabernite affair” (p. 1031). I added, “For to protect an institution, any institution, for any reason, at the expense of human beings is to betray psychoanalysis. But more profoundly, it is also to betray the humanity which psychoanalysis understands itself to be born to serve.”
The Cabernite Affair has still not been settled, at the time of this publication. There have been at least two other attempts at settlement, which if they were not sad could be considered ironically amusing. In 1999, the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) Committee on Ethics responded to a request by the Pr6-Etica Group of Brazil to generate an official report on “torture and violation of human rights within psychoanalytic associations and by their members (in Rio)…in order to protect the practice and transmission of psychoanalysis… against attitudes which oppose ethics and human rights” (The Pr6-Etica Group, 1999a). The committee stated the following: “As important as your requests are, the Committee on Ethics felt it is clear that they lie outside of the mandate of the Committee on Ethics” (The Pro-Etica Group, 1999b). (It should be noted that the IPA produced its first ethics code in 1998.) This ethical solution is one of redefinition.
In the summer of 1998, the Proo-Ética Group asked to meet