Psychoanalysis and post-modernity, argentine authors in the Erógena Zone magazine in Argentina

Abstract

The preparation of this work focuses on the magazine Erogenous Zone edited during the years 1989 to 2001, the proposal consists in rescuing the magazine as a space for debate, reflection and production by the hand of a good number of intellectuals from various disciplines, especially psychology, who were questioning about the panorama that was brewing in the 90s at the political, economic and social level in a clear advance of neoliberalism about Argentina. This magazine launched 50 issues between its years of edition, reaching true popularity in the circle of intellectuals of the field "psi" of the time. That is why it is considered essential to recover both the proposed debates and the issues on which it was reflected.

In the beginning the magazine was created by young students of psychology and social sciences of the National University of Buenos Aires (UBA), its director Fernando Urribarri, son of the well-known psychologist and psychoanalyst Rodolfo Urribarri, was a young student of psychology and intellectual of the moment. The magazine was proposed as a space for exchange and debate, for the treatment of various topics, since they considered that the University promulgated a dogmatic and sectarian knowledge that resulted in an atomization of it, whose effects consisted in sweeping critical and creative thinking, replacing a mere inertial imitation (Urribarri, 1989). In this context, it is proposed to resume contributions from various Argentine and international authors, whose product of peyorizing criticisms are relegated and silenced.

This context of "advanced neoliberal" will cross and define a new profile of the psychologist who, according to the authors of the Erogenous Zone, falls into inoperative and dogmatic speeches as a result of the loss of local references, as well as emptying and forgetting of care practices developed with prior to the last civil-military dictatorship. This resulted in the sealing of the possibility of creation, participation and collective construction. The scenario was won by an eclecticism that was combined with postmodernism, which promoted a fearful attitude in relation to interrogative activity, since in this framework all criticism will be thought of as erasure and waste of previous conceptions, which defined as ineffective will be buried by full.

Regarding the formal production of this work, the qualitative socio-bibliometric analysis associated with the historiographic approach was used as a methodology, which allowed to visualize both the different sections that were composing the magazine throughout its edition years, as well as the authors who have been privileged and their origin. Some sections and issues of the journal that are consistent with the first objective proposed for this article will be retaken. It will be proposed to make visible the space of reflection that the magazine meant for Argentine authors of the mid-90s, dedicated to the attempt to recover the contributions of Argentine authors whose theoretical developments were around the 40s, 50s and 60s. The central debates will be reflected that concerned the young generations of psychologists and other disciplinary fields, in relation to the future exercise of their profession, the particular crossing of the policy that was taking place at that time and issues related to mental health policies.

The journal in this framework will provide a question mark that within the limits will resume authors of the Argentinean school of psychoanalysis, not to raise theories to the category of dogma, but to meet questions that motorized pioneering authors such as: Enrique Pichon Rivière, José Bleger, Armando Bauleo, Eduardo Pavlovsky, and others. Criticism, questioning and debate will be conceptualized as necessary spaces to rethink practice and meet the complex reality of Argentina in the 90s.