ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the astonishing popularity of psychoanalysis in Argentina in a complex political context that combines a history of state terror and dictatorships with a robust clinical practice and cultural presence of psychoanalysis. It attempts to find a rationale for the wide appeal of psychoanalysis in violence-plagued Latin American locations and apply the lessons gained to other geopolitical contexts. There is violence in psychoanalysis. It is the violence of paying with jouissance, of yielding a morsel of enjoyment and renouncing to the mixture of pain and pleasure granted by symptoms. The law of desire requires such sacrifice, and in this manner differs from state law. In a country like Argentina in which corruption is rampant, the mafia, unlike in Italy or Japan, has not created a counter-power.
