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The article analyses the trajectory of Dr José Bleger (1922–72), an Argentine psychoanalyst who tried to articulate his triple identity as a Jew, a Marxist and a psychoanalyst. Bleger played a central role in the constitution of the ‘psy movement’ and, in more general terms, in the diffusion of a ‘psy culture’ in Argentina, a country that today is considered as one of the ‘world capitals of psychoanalysis’. However, his trajectory showed not only the limits of his projects in the increasingly politically polarized Argentina of the 1960s, as well as their internal contradictions, but also the difficulties of articulating different identities in those agitated times. Through an analysis of Bleger's trajectory this article explores larger issues of Argentine political culture and their relations with the emergence of a psychoanalytic culture.

The life of Italian-Argentine scientist and intellectual José Ingenieros (1877–1925) has been considered a clear example of the potential for upward social mobility based on talent that existed in Buenos Aires at the turn of the 20th century. Born Giuseppe Ingegnieros in Palermo, Sicily, from a working-class family, Ingenieros was able to become both one of the most internationally renowned Latin American intellectuals and scientists—his scientific and philosophical works were translated into several languages—and also a socialite of high visibility befriending some of the most prominent members of the Argentine social elite. His trajectory seems to be an example of unparalleled success. Nevertheless, a close look at recently unearthed sources, particularly his private correspondence, not only shows a different picture of Ingenieros’s life and works, but also forces us to reconsider accepted knowledge about the possibilities offered to immigrants by turn-of-the-century Argentine society. His trajectory constitutes an excellent case study for the analysis of both the potentials and the limits of social mobility in Argentina at the time, as well as the relationship between intellectuals and power during the transition from the oligarchic republic established in 1862, after the unification of the country, to the really democratic republic based on universal (male) suffrage introduced in 1912. An analysis of the context of production of his most popular work, El hombre mediocre, provides an opportunity to contrast his public image with the social insecurities he expressed to his relatives and friends.

This article analyses the failure of the Proyecto Marginalidad (Marginality Project), which the Ford Foundation financed in the s, and the political and academic conflicts that it provoked. It takes into consideration the viewpoints of the principal actors involved (the director of the project, the Ford Foundation, and its critics). The original aim of the Marginality Project was to study the conditions of marginality of urban and rural populations in various Latin American countries, but it generated few results. The article shows that this outcome resulted from a series of 'structural misunderstandings', due to the fact that the different actors did not share what, in the words of Marc Angenot, might be called 'social discourse'. In other words, their assumptions about what was thinkable and sayable in the Latin American context in the late s and early s diverged significantly, giving rise to a series of conflicts about the objectives and conduct of the project.

Russo, J. (2012b). The social diffusion of psychoanalysis during the Brazilian military regime: Psychological awareness in an age of political repression. In J. Damousi & M. Plotkin (Eds.), Psychoanalysis and politics: Histories of psychoanalysis under conditions of restricted political freedom (pp. 165-184

How does one write the history of psychoanalysis? Although the question seems too broad it is still pertinent. In countries like Argentina, where psychoanalysis has become a Weltanschauung, traditional approaches from the history of science, the history of ideas or institutional history are insufficient to give a full account of its cultural implantation. There is a level of cultural reception that is unaccounted for by those approximations but which is, nevertheless, a constitutive component of the history of the discipline. Although some authors have identified a common “latin pattern” in the reception of psychoanalysis, national differences sometimes overcome similarities. Whereas psychoanalysis, for instance, started to be discussed in Argentine medical circles as early as in the 1910s, it did not have the influence in avant-garde literature that it had in France or Brazil. However, since the early 1920s psychoanalysis had an impact in popular magazines and publications in Buenos Aires. Only a multilayered analysis can provide a good understanding of the different patterns of reception of psychoanalysis. Elsewhere I dealt with the impact of psychoanalysis in the medical profession and in the teaching of psychology in Buenos Aires. My goal here is to analyze another area of diffusion of psychoanalysis: popular periodical publications. Although the massive diffusion of psychoanalysis in Argentina began in the 1960s, since the late 1920s popular magazines and publications introduced discussions on psychoanalysis and its creator, thus defining a space through which the discipline inserted itself in the culture of the city of Buenos Aires. It seems clear that in Argentina publications aimed at an expanded lower-middle class public, outside and beyond the restricted circle of the “republic of letters,” constituted an earlier path of reception for psychoanalysis than what is usually considered high literature.

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