ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book argues that psychoanalytic principles can be applied with beneficial results to clinical work with Latino patients who are affected by poverty. It examines the efficacy of psychoanalysis in so-called “Hispanic ghettos” by providing evidence that psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy can be successfully practiced in the barrios. The book explores how in Argentina psychoanalysis, which was aligned with the Left, was adopted not just by clinicians but also by intellectuals and artists whose political affiliations were anti-fascist and anti-establishment. It outlines the hegemony of the medical model on psychiatric diagnosis and some of its alienating effects on subjectivity. The book provides an integration of cultural difference, race, class, and identity into transference-focused psychotherapy. This psychoanalytic treatment for borderline personality disorder uses a systemic lens borrowed from liberation psychology to address socioeconomic and political inequality.
