Between Freud and Umbanda: Therapeutic constellations in Buenos Aires, Argentina

Abstract

Focusing on the city of Buenos Aires and its metropolitan area, and emphasizing folk perceptions over public discourse, this article shows the complexities inherent to the concept of therapeutic culture, as well as the idea of the self, in Latin America. The city of Buenos Aires is a privileged area for carrying out a research project like ours, because it can be considered as an extreme case in Latin America. In the last decades there has been a massive diffusion of psychoanalysis in the city, to such a degree that, today, Buenos Aires is widely assumed to be the world capital of psychoanalysis. However, using both quantitative and qualitative evidence, the article shows that even in a psychoanalyze city like Buenos Aires, modern therapies are intertwined in a complex universe of therapeutic practices both secular and religious.