Políticas psicoanalíticas (I): Controversias en la Historiografía del Movimiento Psicoanalítico desde la Sociología del Conocimiento y los Estudios Sociales de la Ciencia

Considered in the context of the critical historiography of psychology, the historiography of psychoanalysis is characterized by certain anti-scientific practices of historical research. With the aims of characterizing such practices, linking them with the history of the psychoanalytic movement and highlighting the richness of sociological studies on psychoanalysis specifically in the context of psychologists’ education in Argentina, this paper analyzes certain specific controversies in psychoanalytic historiography. Social historiography of science and the Empirical Programme of Relativism are first characterized. After briefly addressing the epistemological problem regarding the relationship between psychoanalysis and psychology (see Annex), some exemplars of the hagiographic and celebratory practices that have become problematic when reconstructing controversial historical issues in psychoanalysis are then described and analyzed through a qualitative content analysis in historical perspective on secondary historical sources. We conclude on the existence of peculiar practices in historical researches on Freudianism, including the edition, censorship and retention of primary sources, ad hominem attacks toward revisionists, and the naturalization of psychoanalytic theory to the point of causing recursions and psychologisms. Such findings will be recovered in the forthcoming second part of this essay, where we aim to link the aforementioned historiographical practices to those that were used to close psychoanalysis own historical controversies.