Cinco claves preliminares para el estudio del psicoanálisis (lacaniano) en la España del segundo franquismo y la transición

This article identifies and proposes five key elements to be taken into account in analysing the reception and development of psychoanalysis in Spain under the later Franco regime and during the Transition: 1) the absence – or very limited presence – of psychoanalytic points of reference in psychiatric production during the 1950s and 1960s; 2) the connections between psychoanalysis, anti-psychiatry and structuralism; 3) the importance of the arrival in Spain of Oscar Masotta, and his ‘lay’ psychoanalysis, in consolidating a psychoanalytic discourse and practice outside the IPA; 4) the influence of Argentinian psychoanalysts who came to Spain following the coup d’etat in their country; and 5) the importance of the Revista de la Asociacion Espanola de Neuropsiquiatria in disseminating and communicating psychoanalysis. These five keys group together situations and processes which have been studied to varying extents, but which it seems essential to consider as a whole in order to obtain an overall view of the process. We conclude that relations between psychiatry and psychoanalysis, the circulation of knowledge, and the socio-political and cultural context, etc. explain, among other things, the characteristics of the reception and development of a post- Freudian psychoanalysis in which the Lacanian position predominated over other approaches and schools.