Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/world/americas/do-argentines-need-therapy-pull-up-a-couch.html?pagewanted=all
By
SIMON
ROMERO
Published: August 18, 2012
Diego Sehinkman, a psychologist, writes a column imagining
politicians' therapy sessions. Tomas Munita for the NYT.
BUENOS AIRES — The cafe, just north of a leafy
district affectionately nicknamed Villa Freud, was almost empty. Roberto Álvarez
sipped his espresso, furrowed his brow and began ticking off the names of psychologists
he had seen over the past decade. He stopped counting only when he noticed that
he was running short of fingers.
“Let me tell you something about us Argentines,” said
Mr. Álvarez, a 51-year-old construction worker, after a tangent on Jacques
Lacan, the famous French psychoanalyst who sometimes conducted sessions with
patients in taxicabs. “When it comes to choosing a psychologist, we are like
women searching for the perfect perfume. We try a bit of this and a bit of that
before eventually arriving at the right fit.”
Indeed, Argentines often manage a smile upon hearing
that psychoanalysis has been on the wane in the United States and other
countries, rivaled by treatments that offer shorter-term and often cheaper
results than years invested in sessions of soul-searching. Even as Argentines
grapple with high inflation and an economic slowdown, many seem to know
precisely what they want (at least in one area of their lives): psychoanalysis,
and plenty of it.
The number of practicing psychologists in Argentina
has been surging, to 196 per 100,000 people last year, according to a study by
Modesto Alonso, a psychologist and researcher, from 145 per 100,000 people in
2008. That compares with about 27 psychologists per 100,000 people in the United
States, according to the American Psychological Association.
Those numbers make Argentina — a country still
brooding over its economic
decline from a century ago — a world leader, at least when it comes to
people’s broad willingness to bare their souls.
“There is no taboo here about saying that you see a
professional two or three times a week,” said Tiziana Fenochietto, 29, a
psychiatrist doing her residency at the Torcuato de Alvear Hospital for
Psychiatric Emergencies, a public institution. “On the contrary,” said Ms.
Fenochietto, who has been in therapy herself for the past eight years, “it is
chic.”
One need not wander far in this city to get a grip on
the resilient obsession with neuroses of various stripes. The name Villa Freud
is a nod not only to the Austrian founding father of psychoanalysis, but also to
the number of psychologists who ply their trade in the buildings along the
elegant streets around Plaza Güemes, in northern Buenos Aires.
A short cab ride away, in the theater district along
Avenida Corrientes, lines form each night where the local adaptations of two hit
plays have opened side by side: “Freud’s Last Session,” currently an imagined
debate between Sigmund Freud and C. S. Lewis, and “Toc Toc,” about obsessive-compulsive
disorder.
Slip into many bookstores here, and tomes abound
written by Argentines about the psychological ills that plague people, and their
cures. Malele Penchansky’s “Universal History of Hysteria” and Alejandro
Dagfal’s “Between Paris and Buenos Aires: The Invention of the Psychologist” are
among the offerings. A new prizewinning Argentine comic book, “Repairer of
Dreams,” even blends psychoanalysis into the tale of a dystopian city called
Polenia.
Psychoanalysis is not just for Argentina’s moneyed
classes, with some psychoanalysts in the state medical system offering patients
free sessions. And while some private health plans do not pay for
psychoanalysis, insurance programs for some unionized workers cover dozens of
therapy sessions a year.
“We say no to charity and yes to equal opportunity,”
said Adriana Abeles, president and founder of the Fields of Psychoanalysis
Foundation, which carries out research, trains students of psychoanalysis and
provides therapy. When patients cannot afford to pay, they can volunteer in
exchange for their sessions, doing jobs like repairing furniture, cooking or
painting walls.
The country’s growing supply of psychologists also
means that consumers have considerable bargaining power. While some of the top
analysts here charge the equivalent of hundreds of dollars per session, many
work on a sliding scale in accordance with their patients’ incomes, offering
sessions for as little as $15 an hour.
Despite the continued boom in psychoanalysis,
Argentina is not impervious to global treatment trends. Techniques like
cognitive behavior therapy, which claim to offer shorter-term results, have
gained ground here, and some health
insurance plans frown upon the costs involved in drawn-out psychoanalytic
counseling. Drug treatments have also made inroads, and some therapists in
Argentina have expanded online offerings, turning to technologies like Skype.
But Andrés Raskovsky, president of the Argentine
Psychoanalytic Association, recently asserted that psychoanalysis had little
risk of extinction in Argentina since seeing a psychologist twice a week is
still viewed as being affordable for much of the population.
Theories abound as to why hang-ups, and the
professional class that treats them, seem to flourish here.
Martín, the main character in “Sidewalls,” a
critically acclaimed 2011 romantic comedy about life in the shoe box apartments
of Buenos Aires, offers this theory: “Apathy, depression,
suicide, neuroses, panic
attacks, obesity,
fear of heights, muscular tension, insecurity, hypochondria,
sedentary behavior — all are the fault of architects and construction
entrepreneurs.” (Martín, of course, in a scene worthy of a Woody Allen film,
professes to suffer from all of them “except for suicide,” and rarely leaves his
high-rise building except to attend therapy.)
Others look to Argentina’s past for explanations, and
not just the sadness bred by the faded glory of a nation that was once wealthier
than many European ones.
The country, some say, was long vulnerable to
melancholia, or at least an acceptance of sharing those troubles with a patient
listener. With its history of immigration,
largely from Europe, Argentina has a tradition of drawing inspiration from
European intellectual trends, including the rise of Freudian psychology
a century ago. Spanish immigrants who sought opportunities away from the fascist
rule of Francisco Franco were pivotal in establishing psychoanalysis in the
1940s as a respected profession in Argentina. Nowadays, some of the top
psychoanalysts here are Jewish, most of them descendants of European Jews.
Others have sought to tie the appeal of psychoanalysis
to the nation’s music, like the tango, which can plumb decidedly dark themes.
(There is even something here called “psychotango,” which explores the use of
psychoanalytic thinking and dance as a tool for “self-transformation.”)
But Mariano Ben Plotkin, author of “Freud in the
Pampas,” a book about the emergence of psychoanalysis in Argentina, said the
reasons were much more complex. “Sure, we have the tango, but the Portuguese
have the fado,” said Mr. Plotkin, referring to the mournful music of Portugal, a
country with fewer psychologists per capita.
Instead, Mr. Plotkin, whose own parents sent him to a
psychoanalyst several times a week when he was a child, attributes the rise of
psychoanalysis in Argentina partly to its reception by a large, relatively
well-educated middle class in the 1960s.
Despite the rise of rival treatments, Mr. Plotkin said
he remained sanguine about what he called the “hegemonic” position of
psychoanalysis in Argentina’s psychological community. After all, ordinary
Argentines readily employ psychological terms that in other countries would be
the preserve of psychology majors, and can hold forth on the difference of
Freudian and Jungian methods.
Respect for psychoanalysis extends to other realms as
well. It is embedded in various state institutions; parents of children at
public schools, upon being asked to attend meetings regarding their child’s
behavior, for instance, are sometimes surprised to learn that one of first
discussions is with a psychoanalyst employed by the school system.
And in a sign of its wide acceptance, President
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and her cabinet chief took time out in April to
meet with leaders of the World Psychoanalysis Association, which was convening
then in Buenos Aires.
Opening a newspaper or cultural supplement here often
feels like leafing through decades-old editions of The New Yorker, when cartoons
were drenched in psychoanalytic jargon.
Diego Sehinkman, a psychologist who writes a weekly
column for the newspaper La Nación in which he describes imaginary therapy
sessions with politicians across the spectrum, said: “We are fascinated in
Argentina with peering into the suffering of people in power. Especially those
who have made us suffer a bit.”
Emily Schmall contributed
reporting.
A version of this article appeared in print on August 19, 2012, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Do Argentines
Need Therapy? Pull Up a Couch
