Psychoanalysis and academia: the case of Angel Garma and the university of Buenos Aires

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Spanish psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Ángel Garma—exiled in Argentina after the Spanish Civil War—was one of the founders and the first president of the Argentinian Psychoanalytical Association. Garma unsuccessfully tried to become a university lecturer on three occasions. His final attempt was in 1965, when he applied for a professorship in deep psychology at the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature of the University of Buenos Aires. The application he submitted for this professorship position has been located in Ángel Garma’s personal archive. The aim of this article is to analyse this manuscript to search for clues about the author’s relationship with his own work and to explain the priorities and interests he intended to explore in the university environment. The first part of the article analyses the content of his application for the professorship, contrasting this content with published work and reviewing the fundamental lines of Garma’s psychoanalytical thought (child sexuality, psychoanalysis and psychosomatic medicine, the psychoanalytical institution, etc.). The second part suggests the main reasons why Garma failed in his attempts to become a university lecturer.