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Contemporary Argentinian psychology has a unique characteristic: it is identified with psychoanalysis. Nonpsychoanalytic theories and therapies are difficult to find. In addition, there is an overt antiscientific attitude within many psychology programs. How should this be explained? In this paper, we claim that a philosophical history of psychology can shed new light on the development of Argentinian psychology by showing that early Argentinian psychoanalysts held positions in the newborn psychology programs and a distinctive stance toward scientific research in general and psychology in particular. In the absence of an explicit and articulate philosophical position, psychoanalysts developed an implicit meta‐theory that helped shape the context that led to the institutionalization and professionalization of psychology in Argentina. Although we do not establish or even suggest a monocausal link between their ideas and the current state of Argentinian psychology, we do claim that their impact should be explored. Finally, we discuss some limitations of our study and suggest future complementary investigations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on the paper "Affect and the Therapeutic Action of Psychoanalysis," by Victor Manoel Andrade. It explores the nature of therapeutic action, particularly, the role and importance of the affective encounter in therapeutic change, and cognitive development. It establishes that emotional memory is one aspect of implicit, rather than explicit, memory.

This paper deals with the influence of maternal representations during pregnancy on the subsequent mother-infant relationship and the infant's style of attachment at 1 year of age. Psychoanalytic thinking, beginning with Freud to the most recent contributions, has considered the great importance of the mental dynamics between parents and children to which empirical research according to Bowlby's theoretical perspective has contributed, The current research project was planned in order to study the intergenerational processes. Starting during pregnancy, the woman was interviewed specifically to study maternal representations of herself as a mother and of the future baby. When the child was 1 year old, the style of attachment was studied during the Ainsworth Strange Situation paradigm and, at the same time, the mother was given the Adult Attachment Interview. Case studies are presented to illustrate, from the clinical point of view, the mental dynamics during pregnancy and the influence on the style of attachment of the baby. The clinical implications are discussed especially in terms of the fantasies in pregnancy and their relevance for the subsequent mother-infant relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship—as represented—is proving to be of growing value in our thinking about clinical problems such as ‘intergenerational transfer.’ It is also an extremely positive influence in our thinking about how the interpersonal world is remembered, abstracted, and lived. Yet, the nature of a ‘represented relationship’ remains unclear. This paper is an attempt to clarify some of the problems and areas for needed study regarding this concept. The mother's representation of her infant and of the people in her own life who have played ‘maternal roles’ will be taken as the model. First, we will explore the richness and complexity of these representations and conclude that, for clinical purposes, different modes are used to simplify this richness and render it therapeutically useful. Three models will be discussed. The first is the distortion model which measures the distance between the mother's subjective experience of her interaction or relationship with another and some objective, observable ‘reality.’ The model of overdetermining themes is a second model, largely the inspiration of psychoanalysis but inclusive of Bowlby's theory of attachment. Here psychobiological and/or psychodynamic themes organize the clinical material. Finally, a coherence model is discussed. Here the motive is goodness of the narrative construction rather than the historical ‘truth.’ A second issue discussed is the capacity to represent dyads vs. triads and actual vs. second-hand narrated relationships. These issues arc crucial for notions not only about the nature of such representations but also their limitations in understanding family interactions and relationships, i.e., where many members are concerned. A third issue concerns the nature of the subjective experience for a mother when a representation of her infant or herself in relation to the infant is ‘activated.’ There exists here an unknown typology of experience. Finally, we will discuss what all of the above have to contribute to our further understanding of the nature of represented relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]