Psychoanalysis and Marxism in Chile. Two Case Studies: Juan Marín Rojas and Alejandro Lipschütz

Abstract

Drawing on a new critical history of psychoanalysis in Chile, this paper analyses the appropriations of psychoanalysis in the Chilean political field, particularly in Marxist theory, as it appears in the work of two important intellectuals who published their contributions from the 1930s to the late 1950s. These two case studies are of Juan Marín Rojas, a medical doctor, writer and diplomat born in Chile in 1900, and of Alejandro (born Alexander) Lipschütz, an endocrinologist, physiologist and anthropologist born in Latvia in 1883 and who migrated to Chile in 1926 and naturalized as a Chilean citizen in 1941. This study provides the context and looks at the interactions, debates and problems that arose at the crossroads of psychoanalysis and Marxism in Chile between the 1930s and the 1950s, and consequently opens the door for new perspectives from which to address the local history of psychoanalysis.