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Home , Daniel Lagache, Lacanianism, Louis Althusser, Wilhelm Stekel

Starcenbaum, Marcelo

Marxism, and : Althusser's Paths of Reception in Argentinian Psychoanalytic (1965-76)

Historical

2020, vol. 27, nro. 4, p. 99-125

Starcenbaum, M. (2020). , Structuralism and Psychoanalysis: Althusser's Paths of Reception in Argentinian Psychoanalytic Culture (1965?76). , 27 (4), 99-125. En Memoria Académica. Disponible en: http://www.memoria.fahce.unlp.edu.ar/art_revistas/pr.11424/pr.11424.pdf

Información adicional en www.memoria.fahce.unlp.edu.ar

Esta obra está bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 4.0 Internacional https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ Historical Materialism 27.4 (2019) 99–125

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Marxism, Structuralism and Psychoanalysis Althusser’s Paths of Reception in Argentinian Psychoanalytic Culture (1965–76)

Marcelo Starcenbaum University of La Plata [email protected]

Abstract

Althusser’s reception within Argentinian psychoanalytic culture assumed a variety of different forms. For the purposes of delimiting mediations between Marxism, struc- turalism and psychoanalysis in Argentina during the 1960s and ’70s, this work seeks to reconstruct historical readings of Althusser according to his reception within three distinct interpretative communities. The first group, centring on the figure of , concerns Althusser’s role in the development of Argentina’s incipi- ent Lacanian groups. For the second group, primarily dissident-psychoanalytic and Freudo-Marxist, the reception of Althusser will be considered in tandem with ensuing debates between Freudo-Marxism and Althussero-Lacanism. The third group asks us to consider the role of Althusserianism in discussions around the professionalisation of , where the careers of Carlos Sastre and Roberto Harari showed the stron- gest connections to Althusser’s work.

Keywords

Althusser – Argentina – Marxism – psychoanalysis – structuralism

Introduction

From the mid-1960s until the 1976 coup, the reception of took place within select areas of the Argentinian intellectual strata. During those years, the work of Althusser and associated intellectuals (, Jacques Rancière, Étienne Balibar, , etc.) was widely dis- seminated and embraced by critical intellectual currents. Initially adopted

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/1569206X-00001574 100 Starcenbaum by certain disciplinary fields – among them, , and education sciences –, two intellectual circles were especially receptive to Althusser’s formulations, finding themselves obliged on account of that influ- ence to problematise and reformulate their attitudes towards the question of political intervention. The reception of Althusserianism within Argentine and psychoanalysis took place at the same time as a series of theoretical and political transformations were introducing organisational changes into both fields, encouraging a reconceptualisation of each group’s understanding of political action. In that sense, the reception and dissemina- tion of Althusserianism was closely related to two distinct processes. On the one hand, the reception of his figure was associated with the rupture of the Argentinian Communist Party (PCA, in the Spanish abbreviation) and a con- current radicalisation within the local communist political culture. On the hand, local reception of Althusserianism was connected to the disinte- gration of the Argentinian Psychoanalytic Association (APA, in the Spanish ab- breviation) and the reformulation of and practice. With respect to the first phenomenon, the outstanding features of the Althusserian re-reading of Marxism (the Marxist emphasis on scientificity, the notions of theoretical practice and overdetermination, the priority given to analysing socio-economic formations) were consistent with the radicalised communist political culture which, having emerged from the PCA’s rupture, fostered the emergence of political and cultural organisations cohering in the Argentinian . As concerns the second process, peculiarities of the Althusserian approach to the psychoanalytic tradition (the emphasis on the unconscious as the of psychoanalysis, the symptomatic reading programme, or the proposal for a scientific reading of ) contributed to the emergence of a local Lacanian tradition, the consolidation of the Freudo-Marxist movement, and the foundation of scientific psychology. The aim of this work is to analyse the defining features of Althusser’s recep- tion in the second field, within psychoanalysis. For the purposes of defining mediations between Marxism, structuralism and psychoanalysis in Argentina during the 1960s and ’70s, this work sets out to reconstruct historical readings of Althusser according to his reception within three distinct interpretative com- munities. The first of these communities concerns the reception of Althusser by Masotta and, more generally, within the emerging field of . It can be argued that the articulation between then-contemporary readings of Althusser and Lacan was accompanied by a simultaneous effort to resituate Lacan’s work within a broader psychoanalytic culture, leading to the migra- tion of Lacan’s propositions from the field of phenomenology and existential- ism to . Moreover, the present work seeks to show how the

Historical Materialism 27.4 (2019) 99–125 Marxism, Structuralism and Psychoanalysis 101 articulations between Althusserianism and Lacanianism served to resolve the dilemma facing Argentinian intellectuals as they attempted to shift from exis- tentialism towards structuralism. Concerning the second group, focus will be placed on the mediations between Althusserianism and Freudo-Marxism dur- ing the APA’s rupture, as well as the emergence and consolidation of dissident psychoanalysis, including the emerging tensions between Freudo-Marxism and Lacanian groups as a result of their particular reading of Althusser. As will be argued here, the reception of Althusser should be understood as form- ing the background for a conception of the complementary relation between Marxism and psychoanalysis, evidenced by the publications of psychoanalytic organisations that reference Althusser alongside Fromm, Reich or Marcuse. Likewise, this particular reading of Althusser produced a subsequent theo- retical rectification of Althusserianism itself, the latter having been embraced by other groups in a scientificist and theoreticist tenor. Finally, the present work follows the careers of two psychologists who participated in discussions around the academic, political and professional significance of psychology during the late 1960s and early ’70s. Sastre and Harari in particular employed an Althusserian perspective in order to address the question of the scientific- ity of psychoanalysis, and to determine the object of psychoanalytic theory and practice. Sastre, for his part, emphasised the problem of the consolidation, justification and social adaptation of psychoanalysis as a science, as well as the need for a scientific and theoretical practice unique to psychology. Harari con- cerned himself primarily with defining the specific object of psychoanalysis, as well the problematic of .

Oscar Masotta: An Intermediary between Althusser and Lacan

1965 represented a pivotal moment in Masotta’s political and intellectual trajectory.1 That year saw the publication of Sexo y traición en Roberto Arlt (1958), published by Jorge Álvarez. In keeping with his personal style, Masotta

1 For sympathetic studies of Masotta, see: Correas 1991; García 1980, 1992 and 2005. Critical reviews include Izaguirre 1999; Longoni 2004; Rodrigues de Andrade 1997; and Scholten 2001. For an approach situated within the framework of European radical thought, see Derbyshire 2009. An entry on ‘Oscar Masotta’ can be found in Roudinesco and Plon 1997, although Germán García is correct to complain of repeated errors (Masotta is introduced as a psychologist), superficial descriptions of complex situations (Masotta is presented as an anti-Peronist who used the APA crisis to his own benefit, and as having met Lacan through Enrique Pichón Rivière), as well as gratuitous references to Masotta’s sexuality (that Masotta, who dated women, maintained friendships with homosexuals hardly seems relevant).

Historical Materialism 27.4 (2019) 99–125 102 Starcenbaum used the publication to provide an account of his own intellectual trajectory in the late 1950s and mid-1960s. During the presentation of Sexo y traición, Masotta read an additional text, Roberto Arlt, yo mismo, in which the author explains how the book was written while he was personally invested in the works of Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. He then announced that this period had come to an end: Masotta refers to his discovery of Claude Lévi-Strauss, structural linguistics and Lacan, admitting that phenomenol- ogy had run aground and structuralism instead provided the elements for a reorientation of capable of breaking with a philosophy of . However, structuralism seemed to hinder the kind of political stance that existentialist commitment had previously guaranteed. Masotta thus recognised the transition as a decisive, if not totally definitive one:

A la alternativa: ¿conciencia o estructura?, hay que contestar, pienso, optando por la estructura. Pero no es tan fácil, y es preciso al mismo tiempo no rescindir de la conciencia (esto es, del fundamento del acto moral y del compromiso histórico y político) [Faced with the alternative of consciousness versus structure, I think we must opt for structure. But it is not so easy and, moreover, it is necessary to not simply abandon con- sciousness (that is to say, the justification of the moral act and the politi- cal and historical commitment)].2

A stage in Masotta’s career had come to an end. During that stage, spanning the late 1950s and mid-1960s, Masotta had analysed traditional Argentinian cul- ture from an existentialist perspective that drew on Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, seeking to uncover the possibilities offered by phenomenology that could ren- der a more complex version of the psychoanalytic tradition. Apart from his cri- tique of Roberto Arlt, Ricardo Güiraldes, Ricardo Rojas, Leopoldo Lugones and David Viñas, Masotta had made two important contributions towards thinking the relationship between Marxism and psychoanalysis in the early 1960s.3

2 Masotta 1969a, p. 159. This is an obligatory reference for any work of intellectual concerned with the 1960s and ’70s. The foregoing question leads to another equally impor- tant dilemma: ‘¿debe o no un intelectual marxista afiliarse al Partido Comunista? [Should a Marxist intellectual become a member of the Communist Party?]’. As with his response to the theoretical dilemma, Masotta’s answer recognised that the former legitimacy of the Argentinian Communist Party (PCA) for left-wing intellectuals was giving way to new groups of politicians and intellectuals associated with the Argentinian New Left. That the literature on Masotta tends only to emphasise the first, theoretical, dilemma is highly indicative of a depoliticising tendency in studies of the author. On the topic, see Longoni 2004. 3 For more on this period, see Scholten 2001.

Historical Materialism 27.4 (2019) 99–125 Marxism, Structuralism and Psychoanalysis 103

In La fenomenología de Sartre y un trabajo de Daniel Lagache, published by Centro in 1959, Masotta considers Sartre vis-à-vis an article written by Lagache and published in La Psychanalyse. The figure of Lagache simultaneously al- lowed Masotta to introduce Lacan and the group of psychoanalysts separated from the Psychoanalytic .4 Adopting a markedly phenomenologi- cal schema, Masotta showed a pronounced interested in the Lacanian ques- tioning of the institutionalisation of psychoanalysis, as well as North American cultural penetration. Moreover, he was attracted to the Lacanian programme for reinterpreting and reinforcing the Oedipal figure, as well as the call for a return to Freud, effected through the ideas of Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger. Likewise, in 1960 Masotta had written a commentary on Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason for the weekly journal Marcha. The publication of the long- awaited Sartrean work offered the pretext for an appraisal of the political and theoretical trajectory of the French intellectual. Masotta’s text clearly delin- eated the development of Sartre’s ideas regarding communism and the USSR, along with his steadfast attachment to anthropomorphism and consciousness. Evaluating these elements, which necessarily entailed contextualising Sartre’s work within traditional Marxist problems, Masotta’s reading could be seen as endorsing Sartrean ideas and reflecting on contemporary Marxism from the Sartrean standpoint. Thus, his reading could be seen as echoing the criticism of issued by György Lukács and , along with the conviction that Marxism must develop a hierarchy of mediations with which to understand the constitutive processes of the individual at a given historical moment. While advocating for Sartre’s theory, Masotta recognised that Marxism had to assimilate psychoanalysis. By the mid-1960s, Masotta had fully staked his position as a theorist with one foot in the emerging Lacanian field, determined to further problematise the relations among Marxism, psychoanalysis and structuralism, even if he remained connected to certain elements of and phenomenol- ogy. It is crucial in this respect to consider his initial engagement with Lacan’s work in a text entitled o el inconsciente en los fundamentos de la filosofía, first presented in 1964 at the Pichón Revière Institute and published the following year in Pasado y Presente.5 Therein, Masotta seeks to define the Lacanian enterprise by conceiving of French psychoanalysis as an attempt to fend off North American culture and Anglo-Saxon psychoanalysis. In that

4 For further reading on the itineraries of Lacan and Lacanianism in Argentina, see Izaguirre 2009; Plotkin 2003; Russo 2007; Visacovsky 2002 and 2007. 5 For a contextualised reading of Masotta’s article in Pasado y Presente, see Starcenbaum 2011a.

Historical Materialism 27.4 (2019) 99–125 104 Starcenbaum sense, the elements of Lacanianism that Masotta most prized were its opposi- tion to any of consciousness and its criticism of ego-oriented therapy. It is worth noting that Masotta’s emphasis on Lacan’s dissolution of the ego was largely compatible with the main variables of Georges Politzer’s project and with existentialism more generally. Masotta traces the singular character of the Lacanian enterprise back to the uniquely French psychoanalytic tra- dition, drawing a parallel between the Lacanian criticism of ego and the Politzerian criticism of the reification of the unconscious, as well as Politzer’s criticism of metapsychological abstraction and Lacan’s criticism of the from the particular to the general. Lacan and Politzer are con- ceived by Masotta as a pairing, their critical theories related to the critique of the substance-concept formulated by Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty in the 1930s. Beginning in 1965, the year marking Althusser’s emergence into the Marxist field and his problematisation of the relation between Marxism and psycho- analysis, it is possible to detect in Masotta’s work an attempt to overcome the theoretical and political divide between ‘consciousness versus structure’, as well as an effort to reconstruct the parameters within which Lacan’s work and its relations with psychoanalysis could be framed. Althusser’s conceptu- alisation of theoretical practice made it possible to overcome the divide be- tween the theoretical field and political practice, as well as existing critiques of psychoanalytic theory and practice that had previously enjoyed currency. Likewise, the emphasis on the scientificity of psychoanalysis assisted in the mi- gration of Lacanianism from the Politzerian and phenomenological traditions towards structural Marxism. Masotta’s embrace of Althusser’s ideas was on dis- play in his interventions from the mid-1960s and early 1970s, largely through polemics that found him facing down hostile reactions to Althusserianism and Lacanianism. One of those polemics took place in debates held between Juan José Sebreli and Eliseo Verón, on the relations between Marxism and structuralism, in 1967 for the journal Marcha. In Anotación para un psicoanálisis de Sebreli, Masotta rejected the existentialist positions defended by Sebreli, criticising him for his ignorance of the main principles of structuralism and thus failing to meet the challenges posed by Marxist analysis. Masotta reads Sebreli’s position in favour of political practice as typifying the type of behaviour that had contributed to the stagnation of contemporary Marxism. Rather, according to Masotta, the political temptation to legitimate theoretical positions through political posi- tions was to be avoided at all cost. Masotta himself acknowledged that the con- cept of theoretical practice required some circumspection, lest one succumb to the theoretical temptation to legitimate political positions by appealing to

Historical Materialism 27.4 (2019) 99–125 Marxism, Structuralism and Psychoanalysis 105 theoretical ones. Althusserian theoretical practice, Masotta noted, was not without its contradictions, and none more so than the situation in which Marxist intellectuals found themselves in relation with the Communist politi- cal culture. Nevertheless, whereas Sebreli would basically take this illegitimacy for granted, Masotta postulated that it was intellectual work – the theoretical control of Marxism’s theoretical operations – that would allow for such contra- dictions to be overcome. Perhaps the most significant milestone in the new stage of Masotta’s think- ing was related to the controversy surrounding Emilio Rodrigué, a Kleinian psychoanalyst who had served as president of the Argentinian Psychoanalytic Association (APA). The text Leer a Freud, presented at the Lucchelli Bonadeo Institute in 1969 and published in the first issue of Revista Argentina de Psicología (RAP) in the same year, opens with a statement making clear where Masotta’s allegiances lie:

Es Althusser – quien lee a Marx no sin haber leído a Lacan – el que nos sugiere el sentido y el alcance de la tarea: leer a Freud [It is Althusser – who did not read Marx without having also read Lacan – who suggests the meaning and scope of the task at hand: to read Freud].6

According to Masotta, the psychoanalytic establishment, represented by the APA, produced a history of psychoanalysis in which Freud had been repressed. The framing of the late Freud, Masotta argued, was conceived so as to reduce psychoanalysis to the transmission of a technique and the formalisation of a theory whose basics could no longer be questioned. For example, Rodrigué had effectively separated Freudian theory from the issue of the signifier, thus reduc- ing the Freudian legacy to a question of symbolism. Against this impoverished reading of Freud’s work, Masotta turned to Althusser and Lacan, postulating that it was necessary to deconstruct the Freudian myth and rebuild Freudian theory, starting with the rejection of ego-centred approaches, followed by a shift in focus towards the unconscious as the proper object of psychoanalysis. While several commentators have recognised in Masotta’s abovementioned statement the theoretical importance of Althusser, fewer have acknowledged the latter’s role in terms of the Argentine’s emerging programme calling for a return to Freud. In other words, for Masotta it was not so much Lacan as Althusser who had suggested the significance and scope of the Freudian programme (here, Althusser’s text ‘Freud and Lacan’ assumes special promi- nence). While Masotta’s text is unequivocal on this point, the accompanying

6 Masotta 1969b, p. 19.

Historical Materialism 27.4 (2019) 99–125 106 Starcenbaum footnote further confirms Althusser’s primacy in terms of Masotta’s call for a re-reading of Freud and a reconsideration of the psychoanalytic tradition. In an important remark, rarely acknowledged in studies of Masotta or in histori- cal studies of Argentinian psychoanalysis, the Argentine states:

La obra de Lacan, que induce una interpretación precisa y una lectura dura de los textos de Freud, al concederle su verdadera dimensión, y si facilita el proyecto, no resuelve la tarea [Lacan’s work, which allows for a precise interpretation and complex reading of Freudian texts, while re- storing its true dimension, and even while facilitating the Freudian proj- ect, still does itself not solve the task at hand].7

Published in the fifth issue of the journal Los Libros, Masotta’s critical review of ’s What Is Psychoanalysis? offers a similar approach. Masotta high- lights the liberal framework underlying Jones’s reading of Freud and suggests that this political partiality explains the author’s failure to consider the rela- tionship between Freud and Marx. Focusing on Jones’s principal intellectual strategy, Masotta offers an indictment of the author’s refusal to consider the linguistic sign or the Oedipal complex, two main cornerstones of Freudian the- ory. A separate but related problem, Jones overlooks the multiple connections between Freud and Marx. Therefore, according to Masotta, Jones had failed to consider possible analogies between the historical articulations of the uncon- scious in Freud and similar historical articulations of the productive processes in Marx. It follows for Masotta that the Freudian and Marxian critique – of an exteriority concealing a deeper reality – is essentially a relation of correspon- dence rather than a question of superficial similarities. The early 1970s found Masotta further developing an Althusserian approach to his reading of Lacan and his recontextualisation of Lacanianism. Several of the Argentine’s texts from the period reveal that Althusser’s ‘Freud and Lacan’ exerted an increasingly strong influence over the previously established parameters of Lacanian psychoanalysis. For instance, in his prologue to Las formaciones del inconsciente, Masotta offers an overview of the Spanish edi- tions of Lacan’s texts in order to show the importance of Althusser’s article, and also settle some scores with his own intellectual legacy. Citing his own review of La fenomenología de Sartre y un trabajo de Daniel Lagache, Masotta insists that Lacan’s dissemination was largely due to the success of the volume Psicoanálisis, existencialismo, estructuralismo, published by Papiro in 1969, with texts by Althusser, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault and Lagache. Along those

7 Ibid.

Historical Materialism 27.4 (2019) 99–125 Marxism, Structuralism and Psychoanalysis 107 same lines, Masotta again cites Althusser’s ‘Freud and Lacan’ as a pivotal text in his ‘Sobre el trabajo de Althusser, nada que decir’.11 Althusser’s text, argued Masotta, consisted of an unusual Marxist approach to psychoanalysis that si- multaneously dealt with largely unexplored dimensions of the psychoanalytic tradition:

... el marxista francés no sólo muestra un conocimiento adecuado de los textos de Lacan, señalando algunos puntos jamás discutidos por la comu- nidad profesional … [… the French Marxist not only shows his adequate knowledge of Lacan’s texts by pointing out some aspects never previously discussed by the professional community].8

One of the dimensions highlighted by Masotta was the relation between psy- choanalytic theory and practice, as well as the conditions for the origination and development of psychoanalysis:

… el término de Althusser no es tal vez irónico, sino sociológicamente descriptivo: la ‘corporación’ de los psicoanalistas… [… Althusser’s term might not be so much ironical as sociologically descriptive: the ‘corpora- tion’ of psychoanalysis].9

Moreover, Althusser demonstrated that this new reading of Marx could be used to better understand the constitutive elements of psychoanalysis:

… sino que alude además a qué puntos de su propia teoría habría que recurrir para pensar y discutir el estatuto de la práctica, la técnica y la teoría psicoanalítica y sus relaciones de implicación recíprocas … [… he [Althusser] furthermore suggests which points in his own theory should be employed when thinking and discussing the statute of psychoanalyt- ic practice, its technique and theory, and their reciprocally implicated relations].10

In his retrospective reading of the abovementioned compilation, Masotta la- mented that Althusser’s text had been disseminated along with Merleau-Ponty and Lagache, since the latter approaches to Lacan were at odds with the con- cerns behind ‘Lacan and Freud’.

8 Masotta 1970, p. 3. 9 Masotta 1970, p. 5. 10 Masotta 1970, p. 6.

Historical Materialism 27.4 (2019) 99–125 108 Starcenbaum

Just as when Las formaciones del inconsciente was first published, Masotta would likewise revise the earlier contextualisation of Lacan he had performed in La fenomenología de Sartre y un trabajo de Daniel Lagache. In a compilation entitled Ensayos lacanianos, the Argentine offered a corrective to his earlier ar- ticle ‘Jacques Lacan o el inconsciente en los fundamentos de la filosofía’. In the prologue to the volume, written in in March 1976, Masotta informed the reader that the 1964 essay ‘Jacques Lacan o el inconsciente’ should be re- garded as an historical artefact, entirely separate from those texts dating to the 1971–5 period.11 On the one hand, Masotta’s systematic analysis had been based on a number of suppositions that he had since ‘abandoned’; among those, the idea that the relation between Marxism and psychoanalysis was essentially one of a connection or bond; additionally, that existentialism, phenomenology and structuralism could all be integrated into a single problematic. Masotta’s prologue thus sought to contextualise his previous reading of Lacan while an- nouncing its definitive overcoming. While the approach to Lacan typical of the mid-1960s was described as an effort to be rid of the ‘impacto y influencia ejercida sobre nosotros por la fenomenología francesa [the impact and influ- ence exerted by French phenomenology]’,12 the phenomenological mediation in Lacanian psychoanalysis was now resoundingly repudiated: ‘Preferiríamos hoy cerrar ese capítulo: el “análisis existencial” es pre-freudiano [Today it would be preferable to bring that chapter to a close: “existential analysis” is pre-Freudian]’.13 In that same compendium of texts, the relation between Lacanian psychoanalysis and concrete psychology received a similar treat- ment. Masotta explained that the reference to Politzer should be understood as a ‘Trojan horse’ responsible for introducing the problem of the unconscious. If this achievement could retrospectively justify the detour through concrete psychology, such mediation now had to be rectified as well. Masotta stated that ‘Politzer debe ser revisado o su crítica refinada [Politzer should be to revision, or his critique should be refined]’.14

11 Masotta began his European exile in 1974. After a stay in London, he moved to Barcelona where he would play a vital role in the dissemination of Lacan’s work throughout Europe. For more on this stage of his itinerary, see Druet 2006; Visacovsky 2007. 12 Masotta 1976, p. 10. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid.

Historical Materialism 27.4 (2019) 99–125 Marxism, Structuralism and Psychoanalysis 109

Cuestionamos: Althusser and Dissident Psychoanalysis

In 1971, APA underwent a crisis that resulted in the resignation of many young candidates and associated members.15 This exodus could be traced to a dissat- isfaction dating from the late 1960s. Criticism of the institution, while centred on its hierarchical structure, was particularly encouraged by the proliferation of new psychoanalytic theories, as well as a heightened political and intellec- tual radicalisation at the national and international level. Intransigence among the institution’s most conservative members – exemplified in their refusal to back members who had expressed solidarity with the victims of police repres- sion in Cordoba, or their refusal to publish an article by Marie Langer in their journal – led to en masse renunciation and their subsequent disaffiliation from the International Psychoanalytic Association. The dissident psychoanalysts from the APA coalesced into two groups: Grupo Plataforma [Platform Group] and Grupo Documento [Document Group]. While both groups shared a common critique of the APA, they focused on different aspects of the institutional structure and the existing psychoanalytic theory and practice. One version of that critique was on display in the twenty-fifth issue of the journal Los Libros, in an article titled ‘Psychoanalysis and in Argentina’. There, Grupo Plataforma denounced an ideological pact formed be- tween the existing institutional structure and the dominant class; in its place, the group advocated for a science committed to the transformation of reality, insisting that knowledge of the unconscious be articulated with the study of other determinants of human life, such as the production system and the po- litical structure. Grupo Documento similarly accused the institution of main- taining a hierarchical structure that promoted a brand of psychoanalysis in the service of the dominant classes. Their denunciation centred on the tendency to isolate psychoanalysis from other disciplines and the refusal to embrace in- novative practices. Psychoanalysis, the group maintained, must be prised away from the conservative movement and pressed into the service of the struggle for a . Psychoanalysts from both groups played a fundamental role in the Education and Research Centre (CDI, in the Spanish abbreviation). An in- stitution dedicated to training and research, the CDI was sponsored by the Mental-Health Workers’ Organisation (CTSM), created in 1972 and comprised of the Argentinian Association (FAP), the Psychology Association of Buenos Aires Province (APBA), the Social-Worker Association and the

15 For more on the APA rupture and dissident psychoanalysts, see especially Vezzetti 2009; Balán 1991; Plotkin 2003; Carpintero and Vainer 2004.

Historical Materialism 27.4 (2019) 99–125 110 Starcenbaum

Psychopedagogy Association. From its inception, the CDI not only offered programmes for training and research that differed sharply from the APA’s, it also maintained strong links with radical political groups outside the psy- choanalytic field.16 Training was organised into three areas. It included an area for General Theory, comprised of a course on Historical and , another on Peronism, a course on the ‘National Reality’ and another on General Epistemology, as taught by Carlos Altamirano, Mauricio Malamud and Oscar Landi. It also offered an area of study encompassing Psychological Theory and Techniques, with courses on Psychopathology, Psychotherapy, Theory and Psychodrama Techniques, along with seminars on Psychoanalytic Theory taught by Ignacio Maldonado, Luis Hornstein, Santiago Dubcovsky, Raúl Sciarreta and Masotta. A third area entitled ‘Analysis of Professional Practice’ invited participants to form discussion groups and analyse the content of the seminars and courses.17 Of particular note were Malamud and Sciarreta. As department chairs, both were responsible for teaching Marxist and psychoanalytic theories; likewise, both had played an important role in introducing Althusser’s work to Argentina in the 1960s, later playing an important role in his growing visibility during the 1970s.18 Both Malamud and Sciarreta had abandoned the Argentinian Communist Party (PCA) in the mid-1960s, at the height of the party’s internal crisis. In the 1970s, they played a pivotal role in the formation of study groups dedicated to the study of Althusser and Lacan. In Malamud’s case, his read- ing of Althusser was informed by a growing radicalisation of communist ideas that was itself opposed and ultimately defeated by the Party, just prior to the foundation of the Revolutionary Communist Party (PCR). Sciarreta’s reading of Althusser was informed by a growing sense of distance from party orthodoxy, a distance he himself advocated for as one of the main theorists behind the communist-dissident journal Pasado y Presente; his encounter with Althusser likewise informed his growing interest in Lacanian psychoanalysis, which

16 It is notable that the CDI began conducting its activities on premises provided by the graphics and communication workers’ union. 17 To learn more about the structure and function of the CDI, see the report published in the journal Imago, issued by its board of directors at the beginning of the group’s third instantiation: CDI Executive Commission 1974. Also see the preliminary project drawn up by the Platform group, published in the journal Los Libros: Plataforma 1972. 18 For more on Malamud’s itinerary and his relationship to Althusserianism, see Starcenbaum 2011b.

Historical Materialism 27.4 (2019) 99–125 Marxism, Structuralism and Psychoanalysis 111 he was responsible for propagating in private study groups throughout the mid-1970s.19 Contemporary with the APA’s rupture and the CDI’s emergence, theoreti- cal and political discussions began to reflect the growing tensions between the Freudo-Marxist premises and the Althusserian formulations as they re- ferred to the relation between psychoanalysis and Marxism. In that context, Sciarreta’s itinerary proved especially significant within the Plataforma group. While initially accepting the dissident psychoanalysts’ criticism of the APA, he resigned a mere month after the group broke with the institution. According to Sciarreta, the Plataforma group members not only risked reproducing the same hierarchical structure they had opposed by postulating themselves as the vanguard of mental-health workers, their opposition to the APA was itself based on an infantile ideology and their project, he sustained, lacked a solid theoretical foundation, thus reducing their pronouncements to a series of pop- ulist and empty revolutionary posturing.20 These tensions were also reflected in Cuestionamos, a compilation of texts published in 1971 and 1973. The volumes contained texts in which members of Grupo Plataforma and Grupo Documento problematised the relations be- tween Marxism and psychoanalysis. It is worth noting that both volumes of Cuestionamos were published as part of the collection ‘Izquierda Freudiana’, di- rected by Langer in Granica Editorial. The ‘Izquierda Freudiana’ collection also published: La Izquierda freudiana, by Paul Robinson; Marxism, Psychoanalysis and Sexpol, with texts by , and ; and Vicisitudes de una relación, a compilation edited by Armando Bauleo, with texts by Theodor Adorno, Vera Schmidt and Althusser himself. In addition to compiling all the volumes, Langer also wrote the prefaces for each edition of Cuestionamos. There, she outlined the general theoretical and political guidelines for a reading of the texts involved. The guiding question in the first volume centred on the issue of institutionalised psychoanalysis, specif- ically where the latter functioned to conceal possible analogies and similarities between psychoanalytic theory and practice on the one hand, and Marxism on the other. It followed, according to Langer, that psychoanalysts had failed to explain how the capitalist system acted as an accomplice in producing neuro- ses and how was implicated in inclining clinical practice towards a focus on adaptive therapy. Langer contextualises this questioning of traditional

19 Altamirano’s approach was different. As a member of the PCR, he criticised Althusserianism from a Maoist perspective. See his critical review of Althusser’s Para una crítica de la práctica teórica. Respuesta a in Nº 36 of the journal Los Libros. 20 Sciarreta’s letter has yet to be published. See references in Plotkin 2003; Vezzetti 2009.

Historical Materialism 27.4 (2019) 99–125 112 Starcenbaum psychoanalysis by situating it chronologically within the radicalised period fol- lowing the Cordobazo. The politicisation of Argentinian psychoanalysts, she maintained, was comparable to Reich’s fight against fascism, while theoretical attempts to seek connections between Marxism and psychoanalysis recalled the formulations of Fenichel, Fritz Sternberg and Siegfried Bernfeld. Leaving aside subtle differences of a political nature, most of the participat- ing contributors adopted the same tone as announced by Langer in her preface. For example, several Uruguayan psychoanalysts emphasised that historical processes held influence over both analyst and patient and that analysis must therefore extend beyond the confines of the clinical session. Gilberta Royer similarly addressed the figure of the psychoanalyst in terms of their relation- ship with their surrounding social context: the problem of social responsibility as it concerns psychoanalysis, and the subject as a simultaneous product and agent of reality. Langer, for her part, suggested a programme that would situate psychoanalysis and Marxism in a complementary role. On this account, it was possible to overcome the existing psychoanalytic practices that reduced social problems to individual mental phenomena, where the analysand would be re- garded as unable to cope with changes. Gregorio Baremblitt’s two contributions to Cuestionamos were notewor- thy for their attempt to articulate the shared premises of the dissident psy- choanalytic position, derived in large part from the Freudo-Marxist tradition, and the emerging Althusserian formulations. In both ‘El estudio de la obra de Freud’ – written in 1969 with Miguel Matrajt and originally published in 1971 in Cuadernos de Psicología Concreta –, as well as in ‘Psicoanálisis, ideología y política’ – presented as an official statement against the APA in 1971 –, one de- tects a guiding thread connecting a particular reading of Althusser, the decline of the APA, and the advent of dissident psychoanalysis. The mediations pre- sented there, along with the reactions they inspired within the psychoanalytic field, exposed the tensions within the APA-dissident groups, centring, on the one hand, on the Althusserian readings of the Freud-Marx relation, and those emerging from the Freudo-Marxist currents on the other. Appropriately, the article sheds light on the differences and contradictions between the appro- priation of Althusser by dissident psychoanalysts and that of Lacanian groups. Baremblitt’s approach to Freud springs from Althusser’s own reading proto- col put forward in his ‘Freud and Lacan’, investing the Argentine’s critique of institutionalised psychoanalysis with a notably rupturist thrust. For that same reason, the notion that Melaine Klein’s reading of Freud could be superior to that of , or , or that her interpretation could have stimulated the expansion and development of the Freudian cor- pus, is subject to ridicule. Baremblitt and Matrajt considered it impossible to

Historical Materialism 27.4 (2019) 99–125 Marxism, Structuralism and Psychoanalysis 113 determine which reading might constitute progress or regression without hav- ing first outlined a reading theory that could establish the criteria for produc- tivity and rupture in the Freudian corpus. Similarly, the lack of epistemological discussion within psychoanalysis tended to foster confusion regarding its rela- tion to the sciences, its particular specificities, and the application of its the- oretical terms, encouraging a general inability to define the relations among scientific, ideological and political practices. Baremblitt similarly emphasised the naivety of certain strains of psycho- analysis that asserted in vague terms their commitment to transforming . Such commitment, he maintained, was possible only if social reality were an object that was scientifically addressed in terms of its class struc- ture and with the interest of establishing the need for revolutionary change. Similarly, he rejected the notion that the ‘search for truth’ should be the aim of psychoanalytic practice, along with the priority given to the ‘values’ implied by such a search. For Baremblitt, priority had to be given to ideology since psychoanalysis was itself ‘ideologised’ at the theoretical and practical level, and that which is deemed true within the discipline must also be regarded as true beyond it. Baremblitt’s texts offer insight into two particularly salient elements of the dissident-psychoanalytic reading of Althusser: first and foremost, a dis- tinct anti-Lacanian tone. Although Lacan’s interdisciplinary approach and his proximity to Marxism were noteworthy, his reading of Freud, on this account, was cause for concern since it only addressed the ‘scientific Freud’, offering an aristocratic version of Freud characterised by esoteric theoretical postu- lates and excessive erudition. The second element typifying the dissident- psychoanalytic approach is related to Althusser’s reception in Argentina in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In the 1971 edition, Baremblitt and Matrajt deemed it necessary to add a post-scriptum to the 1969 article. While the reception of Althusserianism in conjunction with the APA rupture may have been initially inspired by radical aspirations, the ensuing articulation between Marxism and psychoanalysis in the early 1970s saw the prevalence of theoreticist and scien- tificist tendencies.

La interesante distinción althusseriana entre práctica científica, prác- tica política e ideología, es empleada para postergar indefinidamente la segunda y desvalorizar la tercera en aras de la primera, todo ello a disposición de un auge liberal del psicoanálisis institucionalista que nunca ha sido más intenso y confusionante que ahora [The interesting Althusserian distinction between scientific, political and ideological practices is employed to postpone the second term and cast aspersions

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on the third, all to the benefit of the first, all of which is functional to a liberal surge in institutionalised psychoanalysis that has never been as strong, nor as obfuscating, as it is today].21

Both for their rupture with the APA and for their formulations of the relation- ship between Marxism and psychoanalysis in Cuestionamos, the dissident psychoanalysts came under heavy criticism from other sectors of psychoana- lytic culture during the mid-1970s. Two critiques appeared in the twenty-fifth issue of Los Libros: one, by the Lacanian psychoanalyst Miriam Chorne and the sociologist Juan Carlos Torre, and another by the Lacanian Germán García, under the suggestive titles ‘El porvenir de una ilusión’ and ‘Las aventuras del bien social’, respectively. There, they addressed the dissidents with any num- ber of accusations and epithets: eclecticism, naivety, over-eagerness to assert Marxism and psychoanalysis’ complementarity, grandstanding, vagueness, conceptual substitutions, broadly defined concerns with no corresponding line of inquiry, superficial political positions, and a weak theoretical vocation. Reproachful of the dissidents for effecting a voluntarist displacement, Chorne, Torre and García sought to expose the theoretical blindness lurking behind the empty discourse that sustained the purported link between Marxism and psychoanalysis. Interestingly, it was Baremblitt who took responsibility for formulating a reply to the critique aimed at the dissident psychoanalysts and Cuestionamos. In the twenty-seventh issue of Los Libros, published in July 1972, Baremblitt refuted most of the accusations made by Chorne, Torre and García. However, he agreed that the contributions gathered in Cuestionamos suffered from theoretical vagueness and betrayed a humanist tone. While sharing their an- tihumanist views, Baremblitt remained dubious about a possible articulation between psychoanalysis and Marxism that, in an Althusserian and Lacanian framework, could achieve the level of politicisation that the Lacanian camp considered absent in the discourse of dissident psychoanalysis. Similar to that articulated in the 1971 post-scriptum, he stressed that Lacanianism ran the risk of becoming a brand of ‘psychoanalytic neo-scientificism’, particularly with the existing emphasis on the specificity of psychoanalytic practice and the group’s ‘too-precious Gallicism’.22

21 Langer 1971, p. 138. 22 Baremblitt 1972, p. 15.

Historical Materialism 27.4 (2019) 99–125 Marxism, Structuralism and Psychoanalysis 115

Carlos Sastre and Roberto Harari: Althusser among the Psychologists

Althusser’s reception among psychologists centred on discussions concerning the professionalisation of the discipline. These concerns were reflected in the first issues of the Argentinian Journal of Psychology (RAP) and in on-going the- oretical debates held among psychologists in the first half of the 1970s. In that context, Sastre and Harari emerged as noteworthy figures for their reliance on the Althusserian tradition as a tool in debates with other currents of psycho- analytic theory and practice; among them, the ‘brief psychotherapy’ proposed by Hernán Kesselman, and the psychologist-as-agent-of-change envisioned by Juana Danis. In that intellectual dispute, Sastre and Harari would offer their own theoretical contributions to psychoanalytic culture.23 The general orientation of Sastre’s critique of Kesselman concerned the lat- ter’s attempt to combine national-popular ideology with brief therapy, along with his particular line of questioning about the psychologist’s role within the larger social system. Adopting a position in which Marxism and psycho- analysis are articulated through an Althusserian approach, Sastre’s reading of Kesselman sought to unveil the reality operative behind the latter’s apparent fusion of Marxism, national-popular politics and psychoanalytic theory. After deliberating on Kesselman’s position, Sastre concluded it was little more than a combination of naïve realism, mechanical thinking, a petit-bourgeois idealisa- tion of intellectual work, abstract , and moralism. Having untangled all the elements involved, Sastre could proclaim that Kesselman’s intellectual project was essentially flawed. With respect to the connections between national-popular ideology and brief psychotherapy, Sastre stresses the numerous semantic dimensions in play and the particular strategies involved in asserting relations among such diverse fields. Sastre emphasises how Kesselman draws on concepts from the political field – the ‘national’ or ‘popular’ – only to simply transpose the terms onto the semantic field of psychology without any intervening translation. The same problem arises with Kesselman’s association between ‘popular psychotherapy’ and ‘brief psychotherapy’, given that there was no theoretical ground for that linkage, merely an application of common sense that supposes an equivalence between the ‘popular’ and the ‘mass’. By failing to offer a true translation of elements from disparate semantic fields, and by not capturing the theoreti- cal links between said elements, Kesselman’s proposal for brief psychotherapy

23 For more on RAP and the discussions around the role of the psychologist, see Plotkin 2003; Carpintero and Vainer 2004; Vezzetti 2004.

Historical Materialism 27.4 (2019) 99–125 116 Starcenbaum lacked in any scientific underpinning that could assure the emancipatory ef- fects of said proposal. Sastre applied a similar approach with regards to Kesselman’s advocacy for a psychology capable of combatting the dominant social system. This was re- futed on two fronts. On one hand, Sastre maintained that it masked the petit- bourgeois idealisation of intellectual work, since the role of intellectual work was not conceived here in conjunction with other social roles. On the other hand, Sastre noted that Kesselman’s insinuation of the political into psychol- ogy never went beyond the professional sphere. As far as Sastre was concerned, while the psychologist could contribute to the overall orientation of political tasks, the most effective political adscription for a psychologist is their mem- bership within a political group that combats the social system as a totality. On that point, Sastre criticised Kesselman for trafficking in mythic stereo- types about the and imposing misconceptions about the relation between social class and mental disease. The conceptualisation of the proletar- iat reflected in Kesselman’s brief therapy, Sastre argued, maintained a mystical image that was more reflective of nineteenth-century visions of the working class. It appeared that Kesselman relied ‘más en la literatura tremendista que producía hace treinta años el grupo de Boedo que en la investigación científica [more on the alarmist literature produced by the Boedo group thirty years ago than any scientific research]’.24 According to Sastre, scientific discourses could not be structured around stereotypes or prejudgements; instead, judgement assumes the status of a science when it is produced in a theoretical context that exceeds common sense and only after having performed the necessary analysis of a concrete situation.25

24 Sastre 1969, p. 92. 25 In response to Sastre’s criticism, Kesselman replied that readings of Althusser as applied to the field of mental health effectively acted as a kind of colonialism, accusing those who advocated Althusserism, like Sastre, of theoretical terrorism. For more on his theoretical contributions, see Kesselman 1972a and 1972b. Problems related to the assimilation of Althusser can also be found in the work of León Rozitchner. As argued in his Freud y los límites del individualismo burgués published in 1972, Althusserianism had become in the hands of Argentinian intellectuals an exercise in regression that only strengthened the tendency of the Argentinian left to conceive of politics in terms of a subjectless rational- ity. In that same sense, Rozitchner’s work on Freudian texts was not associated with any ‘scientific work’ so much as it was postulated as a text with a subject. That is to say, a text written in the first person where the problems under discussion are not only the prob- lems of others but also the writer’s own. Conceived in that manner, Rozitchner attempted to counteract the effects produced by intellectuals then focused on science and discourse, which implied an object of analysis located outside oneself and a distancing of the other.

Historical Materialism 27.4 (2019) 99–125 Marxism, Structuralism and Psychoanalysis 117

In the first half of the 1970s, Sastre sought to problematise the link between Marxism and psychoanalysis, as well as that between professional psychologi- cal practice and revolutionary political activity. The two lines of enquiry were equally informed by the Althusserian tradition. The better part of Sastre’s work was devoted to problematising the pro- cesses through which sciences are constituted, justified and socially in- scribed, tracing that movement through an Althusserian lens that included contributions by Althusser’s disciples, such as Alain Badiou, Michel Fichant and Michel Pécheux. The general coordinates of that reading tended to ques- tion traditional ways of conceiving the relation between theory and prac- tice within the Marxist tradition, wherein, in its dominant version, political practice constitutes the true test of historical materialism as a theory. Sastre, by contrast, makes evident in his theoretical work that his own rejection of the privileged role for political practice is superseded by his endorsement of concrete research, where ideological structures and act as the justification for theory. According to Sastre, it is only through the carefully considered relation between science and politics that it is possible to avoid reverting to politicism – whereby political practice tends to substitute for sci- entific practice –, as well as scientificism, in which political consciousness is represented as scientific. Based on the Althusserian theoretical understanding of ideology – particu- larly focusing on the insight that ideology not only precedes science but also self-perpetuates beyond and despite science –, Sastre contemplated the of Marxism and psychoanalysis and determined that both scientific fields were subject to an ideological onslaught. Unable to ignore or exclude them, the pre- vailing ideology set about their dissolution. Marxism and psychoanalysis had thus been rendered virtually unrecognisable as scientific discourses by a series of ideological operations:

¿Cómo reconocer, siquiera, la obra de Marx en ese izquierdismo humani- sta, en esas disquisiciones políticas abstractas que pretenden derramarse desde su extracción liberal y pequeñoburguesa hasta la clase trabajadora en nombre del marxismo? ¿Qué ha quedado de la obra de Freud en esa fenomenología moralista de la conducta que orienta las diversas prácticas pedagógicas y adaptacionistas que ejercen la mayor parte de los que se llaman psicoanalistas? [How can one even recognise Marx’s work amidst the humanist leftism and abstract political disquisitions that purport to drape their liberal and petit-bourgeois lineage over the working class in the name of Marxism? What remains of Freud’s work, in that moralist

Historical Materialism 27.4 (2019) 99–125 118 Starcenbaum

phenomenology of behaviourism that guides the pedagogical and adap- tationist practices of those who call themselves psychoanalysts?]26

Attempting to unmask psychology as a pseudoscientific and ideological field, Sastre set himself the task of revealing a network of intersecting ideological discourses in the very place that psychology asserted its scientific integrity. At the point of intersection, Sastre identified philosophical, political and profes- sional ideologies, adding that there was a resistant ideological core holding the network together. Sastre trained his critical analysis on this core, where, on his view, psychoanalytic theory fuses with phenomenological theory and Marxist humanism. Sastre honed-in on the psychoanalytic tradition of con- crete psychology, regarded as a crossbreed of phenomenological traditions and a mutilated version of Marxism, as well as the tradition that Sastre called a ‘psychopathology of the alienated man’, a cross between humanistic Marxism and psychoanalytic perspectives. Across his scathing critique of Politzer, José Bleger, Fromm and Marcuse, Sastre likewise reasserted the value of Althusser in unusual terms for the era, insisting on the latter’s importance for theoretical exercises:

Lo que Althusser viene a decirnos resulta tan claro una vez producido que nos parece un sueño el oscuro panorama ideológico en el cual nos debatíamos antes de su lectura [What Althusser has to say becomes so clear that the dark ideological panorama of former debates feels like a dream].27

In the case of Harari, his polemic with Danis revolved around the opposing manner in which either figure understood the relation between psychologist and psychoanalysis and, particularly, the nature of the theoretical object and psychoanalytic practice. In a text that suggestively opens with epigraphs by Marx, Lévi-Strauss and , Harari focused on Danis’s reduction- ist homology between psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts. Harari argued that by considering both terms as homologous, a logical and conceptual confusion was perpetuated, insofar as the formulations around the psychologist’s profes- sion cannot be disassociated from the reality of psychoanalysis as a science, and as a science with a specific object of study: the unconscious. It was the definition of the unconscious as the object of psychoanalysis that allowed Harari, through his polemic with Danis, to draw on Althusser’s

26 Sastre 1975, p. 65. 27 Sastre 1975, p. 152.

Historical Materialism 27.4 (2019) 99–125 Marxism, Structuralism and Psychoanalysis 119

‘Freud and Lacan’. Harari bemoans Danis’s confusion concerning the object of psychoanalysis; where Danis identified that object as ‘the human being under treatment’, Harari warned that such a notion betrayed a failure to understand the theoretical knowledge upon which psychoanalytic practice is possible. Taking the cure as the object of psychoanalytic practice was, Harari argued, tantamount to distorting the relation between theory and practice:

Propósito [la cura] únicamente viable si los conceptos que fundamentan su práctica han sido rigurosamente demostrados, en tanto, como cualqui- er ciencia, el psicoanálisis faculta el ejercicio de una práctica por la exis- tencia de una teoría, de la que aquella es un momento subordinado [The purpose [the cure] is feasible only if the concepts supporting its practice have been rigorously demonstrated, since psychoanalysis, like any other science, enables a practice based on theory to which it is subordinated].28

In Harari’s critique, the emphasis on the unconscious as the object of psycho- analytic practice assumed two dimensions that are associated with the role of the psychologist. Research into the unconscious was the component that scientifically validated and legitimated the psychologist’s task, the only prac- tice that guaranteed an adequate relation between the professional and the patient. Failing to centre their research on the unconscious, the differentiation between the psychologist and the patient falls away, and the feedback with the patient would be rendered empty and superfluous since the material pro- duced by the patient would circulate without any supplementary elaboration on the part of the psychologist. Furthermore, Harari maintained that the con- cept of the unconscious had to be wrested away from the phenomenological approach, instead subject to a reading in which the unconscious could incor- porate rules, regulations and systems. In this way, the postulate of man as a symbolic animal could enable the scientific interpretation of the underlying sign, the unmasking of the conflict between desire and the . In 1973, the publisher Nueva Visión published the volume El rol del psicólogo, compiling contributions on the political, professional and academic dimen- sions of the psychologist. Harari’s text, entitled ‘El objeto de la operación del psicólogo’, advances a form of self-criticism and an expansion of his polemic with Danis. Harari’s text offers a glimpse into several elements concerning the psychoanalytic tradition active within the circles of Althusserism. Harari’s problematisation of such topics as the object of psychoanalysis, the constitu- tion of psychoanalysis as a science, the psychologist’s practice, and subjectivity

28 Harari 1970, p. 150.

Historical Materialism 27.4 (2019) 99–125 120 Starcenbaum and ideology, are all articulated in connection with Althusser’s thought or with writers belonging to the Althusserian tradition in France – Fichant, Pécheux and Badiou – or from Latin America, including figures such as the Chilean Marta Harnecker, or the Argentines Saúl Karsz and Armando Sercovich. By the early 1970s, Harari’s work had amounted to a systematic treatment of psychological procedures, where criticism of traditional approaches was combined with the broad guidelines for a unique programme all his own. His proposal came in a straightforward manner, where the idea was:

fundar para el psicólogo un operar encuadrable en los términos de una práctica científica estricta basada en la ontología y en la epistemología materialista, desechando los discursos seductores y demagógicos con que nos tiende celadas por doquier la ideología dominante en nuestro medio profesional [to design an operative method for the psychologist that could be framed within the strictest scientific practice based on an ontological approach with a material epistemology, excluding seductive and demagogic discourses that the prevailing ideology has constructed to hold us captive in our professional field].29

With that proposal, Harari adopted a critical position with respect to the main ideological discourses permeating professional psychological practice. Harari traced in fascinating detail how the prevailing ideology found its way into ev- erything from conservative traditions, like that represented by practitioners of conditioning methods, up to and including the revolutionary traditions such as that which encouraged the integration of Marxism and psychoanaly- sis. While the former were rendered invalid on account of their reactionary intentions, the former involved a more complex series of considerations tak- ing into account its revolutionary aims. For Harari, the fusion of Marxism and psychoanalysis was comparable to the most reactionary tendencies in the psy- choanalytic tradition insofar as the purported revolutionary fusion was char- acterised by extreme naivety and messianic tendencies. Lacking a foundation in scientific work, the articulation of Marxism and psychoanalysis could not effectively transcend the ideological domain. As the title of his text suggests, Harari’s intervention concerns the object of psychoanalysis. Here, there is a discernibly more intense and complex prob- lematisation of the problem than in his critical review of Danis. Here, through a much more thorough interrogation of psychological procedures, Harari draws out the polysemy of the very term ‘object’ within the philosophical tradition,

29 Harari 1973, p. 200.

Historical Materialism 27.4 (2019) 99–125 Marxism, Structuralism and Psychoanalysis 121 and proceeds to develop its problematisation in psychoanalytic practice. In this regard, his critique extends beyond Danis to the entire tradition that the latter represents, namely, Politzerian concrete psychology and its local recep- tion through Bleger. Employing an explicitly Althusserian perspective, Harari argues that by construing ‘real and concrete human beings’ as the object of psychoanalytic practice, one is either reinforcing a liberal ideology or simply ignoring the subject’s dual determination, through the structure of the uncon- scious and through the . Harari’s work in the early 1970s was equally concerned with the problem- atisation of ideology. His work at the time highlighted the importance of ap- prehending ideology through an Althusserian perspective, even dedicating special attention to the topic as it was debated within the Althusserian tra- dition, where his own reading played off the Althusserian understanding of ideology as much as that of other authors working within the Althusserian tradition. Harari’s work recalls the effects of recognition/misrecognition pro- duced by ideological representation, reaffirming that distorted representa- tions are inherent to any social structure. Likewise, he asserts the productivity of analysing ideological syntagmata, an analytical perspective that allows for:

el pasaje desde la consideración epistemológica de la ideología hacia su inserción en la materialidad de la subjetividad [the shift from an episte- mological approach to ideology, to its incorporation into the materiality of subjectivity].30

Harari’s emphasis on the unconscious nature of ideology implied a corrective to other approaches within the Althusserian constellation: Badiou,31 who lost faith in the possibility of articulating Althusserianism with psychoanalysis; Karsz,32 who undermined the primacy of codes in Aparatos Ideológicos del Estado (AIE) [Ideological State Apparatuses]; or Rancière,33 who associated the Althusserian concept of ideology with theoreticism and scientificism.34

30 Harari 1973, p. 212. 31 Badiou 1967, pp. 438–67. 32 Karsz 1974. 33 Rancière 1970, pp. 319–57. 34 Harari sent this text to Althusser, who sent a written reply on 29 October 1972. In that letter, reproduced in El objeto de la operación del psicólogo in 1976, Althusser deemed Harari’s text ‘un notable trabajo [a remarkable work]’, praising him for having recognised that ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’ offered a connection with Freudian concepts and was cause for him to continue reflecting on ideological syntagmata, which could assist him in theorising ideology and the unconscious.

Historical Materialism 27.4 (2019) 99–125 122 Starcenbaum

Conclusion

The ambiguous relation between Marxism and psychoanalysis in Althusser’s work, along with the confluence of different traditions in the Argentine psy- choanalytic culture of the 1960s and ’70s, gave way to divergent readings of the Althusserian tradition that emphasised particular elements of that tradition and organised their reading based on the given interpretative community’s particular characteristics. These basic parameters have been employed in order to frame the three reception paths for Althusser’s work in the psychoanalytic culture of the 1960s and ’70s. In the first of these, Althusserianism was subject to reception by Masotta and the emerging Lacanian tradition in Argentina. There, it was shown how the articulation between readings of Althusser and Lacan was co- terminous with the attempt to resituate Lacan’s work in the psychoanalytic tradition. On that account, this reading of Althusser contributed to the mi- gration of Lacanian theory from a phenomenological and existentialist per- spective towards structural Marxism. The prevailing articulation between Althusserianism and Lacanianism, particularly centring on the idea of theo- retical practice, helped to overcome the dilemma confronted by Masotta in the mid-1960s, where structuralism rather than existentialism proved to be more productive for intellectual work, although more difficult in terms of assuming a defined political position. In the second case, the present work studied the mediations between Althusserianism and Freudo-Marxism taking place during the APA’s rupture, as well as the development of dissident psychoanalysis, whose readings provided the basis for tensions between Freudo-Marxist and Lacanian groups. Likewise, focus was placed on the possible articulations between a reading of Althusser and the purported complementarity of Marxism and psychoanalysis, illus- trated through references to Althusser alongside works by Fromm, Reich and Marcuse in the publications of psychoanalytic groups. As shown here, this reading of Althusser produced a rectification of his figure at the precise mo- ment that his influence had tended to assume a theoreticist and scientificist tenor. Similarly, these groups’ adoption of Althusser, particularly evidenced by Baremblitt’s and Matrajt’s texts, was criticised by Lacanian groups who re- garded their reading of the relation between Marxism and psychoanalysis as tending towards voluntarism and humanism. In the third and final case, it was shown how two psychologists participated in discussions around the academic, political and professional dimensions of psychology during the 1960s. In that context, Sastre and Harari employed an

Historical Materialism 27.4 (2019) 99–125 Marxism, Structuralism and Psychoanalysis 123

Althusserian reading to address the scientificity of psychoanalysis and the ob- ject of psychoanalytic theory and practice. That approach informed both psy- chologists’ rejection of national-popular psychotherapy as well as the construal of the psychologist as an agent of change. In the early 1970s, both psychologists continued to problematise multiple aspects of psychoanalytic culture by em- ploying the tools provided by Althusserianism. In the case of Sastre, empha- sis fell on the problematic related to the constitution, justification and social character of psychoanalysis as a science, along with the specific theoretical and scientific practice of the psychologist. By contrast, Harari focused on the object of psychoanalysis and the problematic of ideology.

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