"Psychoanalysis in El Barrio" shows the experience of Latino psychoanalysts in the United States

Psychoanalysis in El Barrio features interviews with ten Latino analysts (whose heritage is from a variety of Latino cultures) as well as students. It uniquely shows some of those communities in Philadelphia, New York City, and Texas and Interviews Latinos in the street on their thoughts about therapy. And it discusses issues of dulture, bias, language and transference that occur for Latino analysts and their patients. The video challenges psychoanalysts to understand the culture and economic circumstances of Latinos in the United States and to bring psychoanalytically informed therapy to them. It Is a consequence of conferences held by the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR) and the Clinical Psychology Department of The New School.

Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing (PEP Web) has made an important film available without subscription on their website.

Watch Psychoanalysis in El Barrio online here.

CHRISTOPHER CHRISTIAN: The documentary you're about to see emerge from two important conferences held in New York City co-sponsored by IPTAR and The New School. The first conference was Latin American Contributions to Psychoanalysis held in March of 2013. The second conference was Psychoanalysis in El Barrio, held a year later. Both conferences capture complexities of working across issues related to culture, class, immigration, language, ethnicity, and race. And they challenge the not uncommon notion that Hispanic patients who are affected by poverty could only benefit from psychotherapies that relied on very concrete interventions. In these joint ventures, IPTAR and The New School manage to recapture the progressive ideals once embodied in Freud's free clinics.

PATRICIA GHEROVICI: Now we're going to take a trip that is a nice experiment in socioeconomical change, because in a 10 minute ride, we will be able to go from well-off middle-class bustling business, nice, comfortable middle class homes on to an area of post-industrial Philadeliphia with abandoned factories, some of them have been reclaimed as living space with nice loft. At the end of the 18th century, Philadelphia was one of the biggest industrial cities in the world. Many people in Puerto Rico were recruited to come and work, attracted by this by then, very [? byrun ?] factory activity that no longer exists.

And now if you look at the setting, it looks like a relic of the past. Then we'll see the collapse of the welfare state with abandoned projects. And we'll make a left there, and that will be the Bloque de Oro-- Golden Block is the heart of the neighborhood. Man-made palm trees to give you memories of beautiful, tropical settings. And the Golden Block sidewalks have this yellow swirl painted onto the ground to comemorate the dream of getting reach quickly in America.

Like many of my patients, I am an immigrant. And when I came here, I didn't feel that comfortable doing clinical practice in English, and I found the possibility of working with the Hispanic community of North Philadelphia. And I use the word Hispanic-- and maybe we could talk about that-- purposely. I discovered a vibrant community that lives in very precarious condition that survives in very difficult and challenging situations. I would hear every day at the clinic, every report of a death. Every single day.

And this major thoroughfare is where that building across the street is the clinics was called then Centro des [INAUDIBLE] and it was the first place I worked at for almost five years, as my title there was Staff Psychologist and that's where I discovered the neighborhood, the community, and the possibility of psychoanalysis in the Barrio.

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See also

"Black Psychoanalysts Speak" a film about race, culture, class and the unrealized promise of psychoanalysis