Between modernity and tradition: the formation of a psychoanalytical culture during the Franco dictatorship

INTRODUCTION

A number of authors have pointed to a supposed censoring or rejection of psychoanalysis during the Franco dictatorship in Spain (González Duro, 1978González Duro, E. (1978) Psiquiatría y sociedad autoritaria, España 1939-1975. Madrid: Akal.; Glick, 1982Glick, T. F. (1982) “The Naked Science. Psychoanalysis in Spain 1914-1948”. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 24, pp. 568-571. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/s0010417500010161 ; Castilla del Pino, 1997Castilla del Pino, C. (1997) “La psiquiatría española (1930-1975)”. In: J. M. Castellet, ed., La cultura bajo el franquismo. Barcelona: Anagrama, pp. 79-102.; Carles et al., 2000Carles, F., Muñoz, I., Llor, C. and Marset, P. (2000) Psicoanálisis en España (1893-1968). Madrid: Asociación Española de Neuropsiquiatría.; Druet, 2011aDruet, A. (2011a), “Psychoannalysis in Franco´s Spain (1939-1975): Crónica de una `agonia´anunciada”. In: J. Damousi y M.B. Plotkin, ed., Psychoanalysis and Authoritarism. Nueva York: Oxford University Pres, pp. 153-194.). Psychiatrists such as Antonio Vallejo Nágera and Juan José López Ibor were very critical of the theory that had formed part of the discourse and strategies surrounding sexual hygiene and education embodied in the reforms introduced by Spain’s Republican government in the 1930s (Lévy and Huertas, 2018Lévy Lazcano, S. and Huertas, R. (2018) “From outrage to normalization: Uses of psychoanalysis by the Spanish sexual reform movement (1920-1939)”. Cuadernos de Historia Contemporánea, 40, pp. 33-49). Official scientific discourse in the Franco era distanced itself from the previous theories it considered immoral and exaggerated in terms of the claims they made. Above all however, official thought questioned the validity of ideas that had constituted part of the Second Republic’s scientific corpus.

Francoist opposition to psychoanalysis was generally more a matter of form than content. The exile of the main spokespeople for psychoanalysis, most of whom were associated with the Republic’s reforms, opened up the possibility of ensuring the continuity of a theory that was not only subject to persecution but which also offered ways in which religious psychotherapy, mental hygiene, morality, culture and modern subjectivity in general could be considered (Lévy, 2019Lévy Lazcano, S. (2019) Psicoanálisis y defensa social en España, 1923-1959. Madrid: La Catarata.). Even Catholicism, initially critical of Freud’s pansexualism, offered its own hermeneutic interpretation of psychoanalysis, firstly safeguarding Catholic dogma before reinventing Freudian thought in a manner that was more suitable for religious life. Reflected in this was the interest of the Church, and, in general, of Francoist science, to not be excluded from the onward march of modernity.

We therefore feel that if there is something that still needs to be explained it is not the rejection but rather the characteristics of psychoanalysis’s success. In fact, the constant criticism of psychoanalysis received in Spain did not halt its dissemination but actually fostered an ever more constant and unrestricted presence in specialist circles.

Emerging in Vienna as a medical theory with an associated therapeutic practice, psychoanalysis quickly transcended borders, cultures and societies, moving away from Freud as its originator and Vienna as the epicenter of psychoanalytical thinking. We cannot distinguish a common trend when talking about this process, in which ideas are not absorbed passively but rather act and are acted upon according to the ways of thinking and doing in which they are received. As a number of researchers have indicated (Plotkin, 2001Plotkin, M. B. (2001) Freud in the Pampas. The Emergence and Development of a Psychoanalytic Culture in Argentina. Stanford: Stanford University Press.; Damousi and Plotkin, 2009Damousi, J. and Plotkin, M. B., eds. (2009) The Transnational Unconscious. Essays in the History of Psychoanalysis and Transnationalism. London: Palgrave Macmillan.; Ruperthuz, 2015Ruperthuz Honorato, M. (2015) Freud y los chilenos. Un viaje trasnacional (1910-1949). Santiago de Chile: Pólvora.; Forrester, 2001Forrester, J. (2001) Partes de Guerra. El psicoanálisis y sus pasiones. Barcelona: Gedisa.; Zaretsky, 2012Zaretsky, E. (2012) Secretos del alma. Historia social y cultural del psicoanálisis. Madrid: Siglo XXI.), psychoanalysis coexisted with various social models and intellectual traditions, many of which were considered contradictory, opening up a broad field of lines of reception and reformulation. As Zaretsky argued:

The history of psychoanalysis in different locations shows exactly how Freudian ideas had a life of their own regardless of what was taking place in the supposedly “official” bastions of psychoanalysis (Ruperthuz, 2015Ruperthuz Honorato, M. (2015) Freud y los chilenos. Un viaje trasnacional (1910-1949). Santiago de Chile: Pólvora.). For this reason, in researching this study, we have distanced ourselves from the “official accounts” of the history of psychoanalysis in Spain (Muñoz, 1989Muñoz, M.ª L. (1989) “Contribución a la historia del movimiento psicoanalítico en España: formación de la Asociación Psicoanalítica de Madrid”. Revista de Psicoanálisis de Madrid, special issue, May-November, pp. 121-152, 1993Muñoz, M.ª L. (1993) “Ángel Garma y la historia del movimiento psicoanalítico en España”. Papeles del psicólogo, 56, pp. 66-67.; Pérez-Sánchez, 1984Pérez-Sánchez, M. (1984) “Inicis del moviment psicoanalític a Barcelona”. Revista Catalana de Psicoanàlisi, 1 (1), pp. 229-246.; Anguera, 1998Anguera, B. (1998) “Una contribución a la historia de la psicoanàlisi a Catalunya. La trajectòria de Júlia Coromines Vigneux”. Revista Catalana de Psicoanàlisi. 15 (1), pp. 79-101., 2010Anguera, B. (2010) “Breu historia de la Societat Espanyola de Psicoanàlisi. 50 anys d´existència a la IPA”. Revista Catalana de Psicoanàlisi, 27, (1), pp. 51-63., 2011Anguera, B. (2011) “Notas históricas de la Sociedad Española de Psicoanálisis: pasado y presente”. Temas de psicoanálisis, 1, pp. 1-9.), focusing instead on a history that goes further than references to institutional psychoanalysis or accounts from within the discipline itself.

We agree with Plotkin in his description of psychoanalysis as a “cultural artifact” in the widest possible sense (Plotkin, 2009Plotkin, M. B. (2009) “Psychoanalysis, Trasnationalism and National Hábitus: A Comparative Approach to the Reception of Psychoanalysis in Argentina and Brazil (1910s-1940s)”. In: J. Damousi y M. B. Plotkin, eds., The Transnational Unconscious. Essays in the History of Psychoanalysis and Transnationalism. London: Palgrave Macmillan.), as a multifaceted object as opposed to a psychological theory or a therapeutic technique. We instead refer to a number of practices and discourses that are legitimized by and recognized in a genealogy-real or imaginary-of Freud’s ideas (Plotkin, 2001Plotkin, M. B. (2001) Freud in the Pampas. The Emergence and Development of a Psychoanalytic Culture in Argentina. Stanford: Stanford University Press.).

This phenomenon is what the American writer Sherry Turkle has called “psychoanalytical culture” and which is defined by three main conditions: a transnational nature, which takes it beyond the cultural and national limits of its place of origin, even changing the original language in which the message was formulated and transmitted; the capacity to offer objects through which we may consider social reality and the elements of day-to-day life and psychoanalysis’s flexible, multifaceted character, making it an easily appropriable system of ideas, as can be seen in the many adaptations it has undergone which coexist alongside apparently contrary and incompatible theories (Turkle, 1992Turkle, S. (1992) Psychoanalytic Politics: Jacques Lacan and Freud´s French Revolution. New York: Guilford Press.). To these conditions we should add a body of institutions and relayers responsible for spreading the theory through various channels (Damousi and Plotkin, 2009Plotkin, M. B. (2009) “Psychoanalysis, Trasnationalism and National Hábitus: A Comparative Approach to the Reception of Psychoanalysis in Argentina and Brazil (1910s-1940s)”. In: J. Damousi y M. B. Plotkin, eds., The Transnational Unconscious. Essays in the History of Psychoanalysis and Transnationalism. London: Palgrave Macmillan.).

Freud’s ideas were quick to reach Spain, arriving in 1893 (Bermejo, 1991Bermejo Frígola, V. (1991) “La «primerísima» traducción de una obra de Freud”. Revista de Historia de la Psicología, 12 (3-4), pp. 341-344.). Nevertheless, it would not be until the 1920s that they began to be more commonly found, principally in medical texts and scientific literature (Carles et al. 2000Carles, F., Muñoz, I., Llor, C. and Marset, P. (2000) Psicoanálisis en España (1893-1968). Madrid: Asociación Española de Neuropsiquiatría.). Over the course of these years, the attacks on and criticism of a theory that had been controversial from the outset started to act as disseminators, driving Freudian ideas both within the medical community, which was initially interested in new European approaches to the treatment of hysteria and beyond (Lévy, 2019Lévy Lazcano, S. (2019) Psicoanálisis y defensa social en España, 1923-1959. Madrid: La Catarata.). The scant legitimacy which various specialist sectors gave to Freud’s ideas, as well as the hostility of a number of professionals and the offended sensibilities of the most conservative parts of society who were scandalized by his theories on sex, not only failed to thwart acceptance of psychoanalysis but also laid the foundations for the establishment of a psychoanalytical culture in Spain. Areas such as sexual reform, education, criminology, literature and art all included psychoanalytical concepts. Reality could therefore be thought of in Freudian terms, with psychoanalysis going beyond exclusively medical circles, working as a system of ideas and beliefs in which a wide range of everyday aspects could be named and discussed as well as affecting the way people thought about themselves (Turkle, 1992Turkle, S. (1992) Psychoanalytic Politics: Jacques Lacan and Freud´s French Revolution. New York: Guilford Press.).

This increase in interest and the dissemination of ideas concerning psychoanalysis outside a medical context allowed it to act as a bridge between the specialist practices of psychiatry, neurology, medicine, sexology and the right to education on the one hand and popular and elite culture on the other (Illouz, 2007Illouz, E. (2007) Intimidades congeladas. Las emociones en el capitalismo. Buenos Aires: Katz.). The inclusion of psychoanalysis in the Second Republic’s social reform policies, as well as the concurrent appearance of psychoanalytical content in cultural products such as entertainment magazines, graphic humor, novels and popular non-fiction are clear examples of this exchange of ideas between the world of experts and that of lay people. Contrary to what other authors have argued (Druet, 2018Druet, A. (2018) “El caso del psicoanálisis. Misterios detectivesco-freudianos”. In: F. Bravo, ed., Aproximaciones psicoanalíticas al lenguaje literario. Córdoba (Argentina): Eduvim, pp. 261-283.), this did not cease with the advent of Franco’s dictatorship, although the way in which ideas circulated did alter.

This article seeks to develop the main points of the reformulation of psychoanalysis during the early years of the dictatorship before analyzing the presence of ideas on the discipline on various media outlets such as certain Sección Femenina (the women’s branch of the Falangist political movement) magazines or the series of detective novels written by Jaume Ministral in the 1950s. We then reflect on the establishment of a “psychoanalytical culture” in Spain that had its origins in the 1920s and which grew throughout the 20^th century.

NATIONAL-CATHOLICISM AND PSYCHOANALYSIS

In the first decades of the Francoist dictatorship there was a program of political and doctrinal cleansing of Spain’s science and culture. The new State embarked on a process of reorganization of society which eliminated most of the Republican government’s reforms and laws in an attempt to eradicate everything that bore its stamp (Campos, 2015Campos, R. (2015) “Psiquiatría republicana vs Psiquiatría franquista. Rupturas y continuidades (1931-1950)”. Letra internacional, 12, pp. 105-128.). López Ibor announced this in his inaugural speech in 1942López Ibor, J. J. (1942) “La psiquiatría en España en la hora presente”. Actas Españolas de Neurología y Psiquiatría, 3 (1-2), pp. 15-25 to the newly established Sociedad Española de Neurología y Psiquiatría (the Spanish Society of Neurology and Psychiatry) which replaced the Asociación Española de Neuropsiquiatras (the Spanish Society of Neuro-Psychiatrists), founded in 1924 by a number of the main players in the Republican reforms (Huertas, 2017Huertas, R. (2017) “En los inicios de la psiquiatría franquista. El Congreso Nacional de Neurología y Psiquiatría (Barcelona, 1942)”. Dynamis, 37 (1), pp. 23-43.): “Our victorious war of liberation […] has seen the resumption of the good and true Spanish cultural tradition. It has also meant the removal of all that is alien to us and inconsistent” (López Ibor, 1942, p. 15López Ibor, J. J. (1942) “La psiquiatría en España en la hora presente”. Actas Españolas de Neurología y Psiquiatría, 3 (1-2), pp. 15-25).

The purge duly took place, as did the dismantling of the previous secular, modern science and its institutions and staff (Otero, 2006Otero, L. E. ed., (2006) La destrucción de la ciencia en España: depuración universitaria en el franquismo. Madrid: Editorial Complutense.). This cleansing led to a new, Catholic science, free from heresy, one which glorified the new regime and new Catholic man. Francoism abandoned the liberal, modernizing tendencies that had characterized the Republican period in favor of a science that had a decidedly nationalist perspective, that scorned all that was foreign and lauded all that was Spanish. Nevertheless, despite this evident break with the past, there are sufficient arguments that oblige us to think that there were also significant elements of continuity (Campos, 2015Campos, R. (2015) “Psiquiatría republicana vs Psiquiatría franquista. Rupturas y continuidades (1931-1950)”. Letra internacional, 12, pp. 105-128.; Campos and González de Pablo, 2016Campos, R. and González de Pablo, Á., eds. (2016) Psiquiatría e higiene mental en el primer franquismo. Madrid: Catarata.).

During the dictatorship, the inclusion of psychoanalytical ideas within the milieu of medicine and mental hygiene which had had its apogee in the 1920s and 1930s underwent adaptations to the new social model that the regime sought to impose. For psychiatrists who were allied with the Republic, psychoanalysis was at the very forefront of science, above all in its tenets regarding sexuality (Lévy and Huertas, 2018Lévy Lazcano, S. and Huertas, R. (2018) “From outrage to normalization: Uses of psychoanalysis by the Spanish sexual reform movement (1920-1939)”. Cuadernos de Historia Contemporánea, 40, pp. 33-49). The reforms introduced during the Second Republic had included some of the most important ideas in psychoanalysis. However, the overturning of all these changes by the regime also affected psychoanalysis, “not to destroy it but rather to cleanse it of its blind determinism and adapt it to psychological and clinical knowledge” (Vallejo Nágera, 1952, p. 12Vallejo Nágera, A. (1952) “Discurso inaugural”, III Congreso Nacional de Neuro-Psiquiatría. Comunicaciones (Santiago de Compostela, 2-6 July 1952). Madrid: Asociación Española de Neuropsiquiatría, pp. 7-18.)

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Freud’s theories had been consolidated as modern scientific and cultural thought which could be used to express the changes that society was experiencing. Its ideas transcended the borders of what it meant to be an expert, entering areas of social discourse and popular culture and stepping into ways of thinking about subjects such as madness, sexuality and criminality. Specialist national magazines and journals had published articles and commentaries regarding this controversial Freudian theory (Druet, 2011bDruet, A. (2011b) “La psychiatrie espagnole et la psychanalyse des années 1910 à la guerre civile: de la presse médicale au discours social”. El Argonauta Español, 8. Available at: http://argonauta.imageson.org/document151.html [Accessed 20 January 2020].)¹ Consider, for example, the articles by the psychiatrist Gonzalo Rodríguez Lafora - Los misterios de la sexualidad (“The Mysteries of Sexuality”), El Sol, January 1, 1918 and ¿Es curable la locura? (“Is Madness Curable?”), El Sol, April 16, 1918 - or by the educationalist Lorenzo Luzuriaga - La educación sexual (“Sexual Education”), El Sol, March 24, 1919, El psicoanálisis y la educación (“Psychoanalysis and Education”), El Sol, March 3, 1919; and Las relaciones amistosas entre los muchachos de uno y otro sexo (“Friendly Relationships between Young People”), El Sol, June 10, 1920. The psychiatrist César Juarros also used psychoanalysis to comment on current affairs, for example, his article Igualdad sexual (“Sexual Equality”) in El Sol, November 27, 1927.. Psychoanalysis had an ever-increasing appeal, with the 1922 publication of Freud’s Complete Works selling over 15,000 copies before the Civil War in 1936 (Ruiz-Castillo Basala, 1972, p. 103Ruiz-Castillo Basala, J. (1972) El apasionante mundo del libro. Memorias de un editor. Madrid: Agrupación Nacional del Comercio del Libro.).

All of these actions further reinforced an artificial relation between ideology and psychoanalysis in which the latter was taken as a progressive discourse, a bulwark of sexual freedom and Republican reforms, confronting the conservative sector which it saw as a danger and a perversion of thought. Nonetheless, we feel that there is nothing in psychoanalysis or in its epistemology that means that it sides with one ideology or another and that, in any event, it is the subject that assigns this political character or affiliation to a social class (Vetö Honorato, 2013Vetö Honorato, S. (2013) Psicoanálisis en estado de sitio. Santiago de Chile, FACSO-El Buen Aire.). In this sense, the identification of psychoanalysis and Republican reform proposed a scenario of political, personal and professional confrontation that was not necessarily relevant to scientific debate in terms of psychoanalytical theory, although it did determine the way that psychoanalysis was to be consolidated in Spain.

In the first years of Francoism, psychiatrists, theologians and doctors criticized and reconsidered psychoanalytical theories on sexuality and its mechanisms and materialism, mainly focusing its attention on its spokespeople. Initial opposition to psychoanalysis was marked by Francoist interest in discrediting psychiatrists and specialists in exile - identified as those who sought to eradicate the new social order - and impose its own political and scientific hegemony. Once everybody’s political responsibility had been cleansed, there was no problem in continuing to reframe psychoanalysis and “rescue” it from its excesses-“(…) An attitude that requires fidelity to our own psychoanalytical past” (Sarró, 1936, p. 426Sarró, R. (1936) “Valor de las nuevas tendencias antropológicas para la psicoterapia”. Archivos de Neurobiología, 16, pp. 405-433.).

In any event, either due to scientific, ideological or professional reasons, psychoanalysis, as was the case with psychiatry and psychotherapy, had to adapt to the new order, one which was strongly autocratic, nationalist and religious. Vallejo Nágera expressed this clearly at the 3^rd National Neuro-Psychiatry Congress in 1952Vallejo Nágera, A. (1952) “Discurso inaugural”, III Congreso Nacional de Neuro-Psiquiatría. Comunicaciones (Santiago de Compostela, 2-6 July 1952). Madrid: Asociación Española de Neuropsiquiatría, pp. 7-18.:

National Catholicism redefined psychoanalytical theories regarding sexuality in order to preserve chastity among the young and defend the Catholic notion of marriage and reproduction as the framework in which sexual relations were permitted (Campos, 2018Campos, R. (2018) “Entre la ciencia y la doctrina católica: Eugenesia, matrimonio y sexualidad en el primer franquismo”. Cuadernos de Historia Contemporánea, 40, pp. 51-71. doi: https://doi.org/10.5209/CHCO.60322 ). Terms such as sublimation and sexual drives continued to be used to refer to an individual’s sexual condition, although they needed to be “purified” and adapted to better suit the new doctrines of Francoism² It should be remembered that the term sublimation was most popular among the psychiatrists, jurists and reformers of the 1920s and 1930s. Where the word was understood to be a mechanism through which destructive unconscious sexual preferences and drives might transmute into products with a recognized social and cultural value, it represented an ideal force for social defense. In this sense, Francoism only had to re-establish what it understood to be “social value” based on its model of the State, leveraging the advantages that sublimation offered in terms of racial hygiene (Lévy, 2019Lévy Lazcano, S. (2019) Psicoanálisis y defensa social en España, 1923-1959. Madrid: La Catarata.).. The legacy of psychoanalysis was therefore recognized, albeit oriented toward a construction that conceptually dispensed with Freud in order to move closer to others such as Jung and Adler, entrusting religion and existential anthropology with the task of “saving” psychoanalysis and putting it at the service of Francoist science. For example, Doctor Fernando Enríquez de Salamanca, a counter-revolutionary Catholic monarchist who was close to the group of intellectuals who wrote for the magazine Acción Española (Campos, 2016Campos, R. (2016) “Autoritarismo y eugenesia punitiva: higiene racial y nacionalcatolicismo en el franquismo, 1936-1945. História, Ciências, Saúde- Manguinhos, 23(1), pp. 131-148. doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.1590/s0104-59702016000500008 ; Huertas, 1998Huertas, R. (1998) “Una Inquisición para un Nuevo Estado: Psiquiatría y orden social en la obra de Antonio Vallejo Nágera”. In: R. Huertas y C. Ortiz, ed. Ciencia y Fascismo. Madrid: Doce calles, pp. 97-110.) stated in his prologue to José de San Román’s Por la Higiene de la Raza (“For the Hygiene of Our Race”) that one of the most important things for man to do was to strengthen his will in order to channel his libido toward social balance and reproduction, thus avoiding falling prey to instinct and the satisfaction of unfettered sexual desire (Enríquez de Salamanca, 1938 pp. VI-VII). San Román meanwhile defended psychoanalysis - above all its theories of repression and sublimation - as mechanisms which could be harnessed to the achievement of the social ideal, which for him meant the “love of one’s neighbor” in the sense of foregoing one’s own satisfaction. In this case, he said, “We have no difficulty in admitting it and applying continence to ourselves, even where it might seem paradoxical to do so” (San Román, 1938, p. 73San Román, J. de (1938) Por la Higiene de la Raza. San Sebastián: Editorial Española.).

Psychiatry’s organicism in the 1940s did not hinder the incorporation of psychoanalysis within the Francoist redrafting of the discipline, just as it hadn’t troubled it during the Second Republic. Nevertheless, it is true that it was to have much less practical importance, relegated to a more descriptive and philosophical level than clinical. Even so, and above all from the 1950s onward, a number of writers from the Catholic world turned their attention to the usefulness of such knowledge in the lives of Catholic men and women. Even the Augustinian Father César Vaca considered its use in seminaries. In 1951 his Psicoanálisis y dirección espiritual (“Psychoanalysis and Spiritual Direction”) was published, with a second edition following in 1954. The book proved to be the start of the publishing house’s Biblioteca de Psicología del Director Espiritual (Library of the Psychology of Spiritual Direction”) collection, dedicated to works introducing psychology to seminarists and priests in order that they might use them as guides in matters of conscience. In his prologue to the first edition, Vaca wrote that “psychoanalysis has its roots in the materialism of the last century, paving the way for the spiritual turbulence of this. It serves as a kind of bridge between two opposing approaches, while also bringing together disperse matters of discussion in the various sectors of human science” (Vaca, 1954, p. 8Vaca, C. (1954) Psicoanálisis y dirección espiritual. Madrid: Religión y Cultura.). For Vaca this meant “baptizing” Freudianism (Vaca, 1954, p. 426Vaca, C. (1954) Psicoanálisis y dirección espiritual. Madrid: Religión y Cultura.), incorporating all that might be of value to Catholic spiritual life: “What we might call `the theology of sin´, a subject that was of great concern to Saint Augustine, can find in psychoanalysis an instrument with a wealth of enlightenment and contribution” (Vaca, 1954, p. 32Vaca, C. (1954) Psicoanálisis y dirección espiritual. Madrid: Religión y Cultura.). His book was praised by López Ibor and enjoyed the support of the magazine Eclessia (Vereda, 2001Vereda, F. (2001) “Algunas claves para estudiar la revisa Ecclesia entre 1941-1954”. Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia, 10, pp. 95-100) which added a short note in the inside cover to all “directors of souls” and, in general, anybody who is interested in the subject, recommending that they investigate “through this safely orthodox guide, the science and applications of Freudian psychoanalysis” (Vaca, 1954Vaca, C. (1954) Psicoanálisis y dirección espiritual. Madrid: Religión y Cultura.).

The Jesuit priest Pedro Meseguer was another of those who were most prolific in the Catholic reformulation of psychoanalysis. He wrote numerous articles for Razón y Fe (“Reason and Faith”), a magazine for Jesuits that has been published without interruption since 1901. The role of this magazine in the dissemination of ideas regarding psychoanalysis in the Catholic world was crucial, with its frequent references to the theories of Freud, Adler and Jung, among others. In 1957Meseguer, P. (1957) “La sublimación freudiana y nosotros”. Razón y Fe, t. 156, fasc. 5, n. 718, pp. 295-312., Meseguer attended the 7^th International Catholic Congress on Psychotherapy and Clinical Psychology in Madrid, at which a large number of important theologians, psychiatrists and psychotherapists from the Catholic milieu in Spain and abroad were present. Chaired by López Ibor, the event featured Father Agostino Gemelli, president of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and rector of the Catholic University as honorary president. Gemelli was a political and religious authority on psychology and Catholicism (Pasqualini, 2016Pasqualini, M. (2016) “Un enigma llamado Agostino Gemelli: catolicismo, fascismo y psicoanálisis en la Italia de entreguerras”. História, Ciências, Saúdade- Manguinhos, 23 (4), pp. 1059-1075. doi: https://doi.org/10.1590/s0104-59702016005000005.). It is no coincidence that the prologue that replaced the original by the philosopher and essayist José Ortega y Gasset in the reprint of Freud’s Complete Works in 1948 based itself on Gemelli in order to establish the compatibilities between psychoanalysis and Catholicism, convincing the Francoist authorities and avoiding possible censorship (Druet, 2006Druet, A. (2006) La psychanalyse dans l’Espagne post-franquiste (1975 1985). Paris, Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne, doctoral thesis.; Bermejo, 1993Bermejo Frígola, V. (1993) La institucionalización del psicoanálisis en España en el marco de la API, 2 vols. Valencia: Universitat de València, doctoral thesis.)

The main promoter of these congresses was the French philosophical writer Maryse Choisy, one of the figures who fought most for the implementation of psychoanalysis within Catholic circles. She also suggested the creation of an Institute of Catholic Analysts through which psychoanalysts recommended for their scientific work and their faith might undertake training analysis (Ohayon, 2006Ohayon, A. (2006) Psychologie et psychanalyse en France. Paris: La Découverte.). She had in fact been a patient of Freud’s in 1925, although she interrupted her analysis until the mid-1940s when she restarted under René Laforgue and Maurice Bouvet (Roudinesco, 1994Roudinesco, E. (1994) Histoire de la psychanalyse en France. Paris: Fayard, 2 vol.). Choisy, Gemelli and López Ibor had all based themselves on Pope Pious XII’s address at the 5^th International Congress on Psychotherapy in 1953 in Rome, at which it was felt that he had opened the door to a calm, critical study of Freud’s work (Ohayon, 2006Ohayon, A. (2006) Psychologie et psychanalyse en France. Paris: La Découverte.; Desmazières, 2011Desmazières, A. (2011) L´inconscient au paradis. Comment les catholiques ont reçu la psychanalyse. Paris: Payot.).

The 7^th International Catholic Congress on Psychotherapy and Clinical Psychology in 1957 was therefore an opportunity for intense debate and reformulation of Freud’s theories within Catholicism, highlighting as well the existence of a network of international collaboration between psychotherapists, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts and members of religious orders. Spanish writers such as Padre Barbado, Padre Vaca, Padre Meseguer, Sarró, López Ibor, Vallejo Nágera, Pelaz, Rojas, Rof Carballo, Otaola, Bofill, Zamora and Pertejo - the latter four members of the group that in 1959 would constitute Spain’s first psychoanalytical society - and those from further afield, like Choisy, Father Dempsey, Carusso and the Catholic psychoanalysts Henri-Nodet and Durand, spoke in favor of a religious psychotherapy that would incorporate these new scientific ideas in order to better understand and orient the modern conscience toward the Catholic way of life. Freud’s psychoanalysis was the common ground which practically all took as their point of reference. In general, the aim was to cleanse Freudianism of its materialism, reshaping it to make it compatible with the principles of scholastic philosophy founded in Thomistic thought.

For Catholicism, said Padre Meseguer in his address to the Congress, it is very difficult to accept the Freudian idea that moral conduct, culture or religion are the result of a “sublimated libido”³ Freud had expressed this idea in The Future of an Illusion, published in 1927 (1981 [1927]Freud, S. (1981 [1927]) “El porvenir de una ilusión”, In: Obras Completas, t. 3, translation by Luis López Ballesteros. Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, pp. 2961-2992.).. According to Thomistic philosophy, the efficient cause of the spiritual is always superior to its effect, meaning that it cannot be of a material order. It would be an aberration to think that sexual matters can be passed on to religion, as “the cause of the spiritual effect is in the spirit”, from which stemmed the need to Christianize psychotherapy (Meseguer, 1957, p. 310Meseguer, P. (1957) “La sublimación freudiana y nosotros”. Razón y Fe, t. 156, fasc. 5, n. 718, pp. 295-312.). This was a controversial matter that transcended the critique of psychoanalysis and which in some ways foreshadowed the disagreements that the Catholic Church had with evolutionists throughout the 20^th century (Florensa, 2013Florensa, C. (2013) “Breaking the silence: palaeontology and evolution in La Vanguardia Española (1939-1975)”. Dynamis, 33(2), pp. 297-320. doi: https://doi.org/10.4321/S0211-95362013000200002 ).

Both psychiatry and psychotherapy, said López Ibor in his opening address to the Congress, had to undergo a “Copernican revolution” in order to move from the natural sciences to anthropological sciences in order to understand the essence of man, in sickness and in health, incorporating a dynamic interpretation of personality that owed a great deal to psychoanalysis (López Ibor, 1957, p. 26López Ibor, J. J. (1957) “Discurso inaugural”. Conducta religiosa y salud mental. Actas VII Congreso Católico Internacional de Psicoterapia y Psicología Clínica, 10-15 September 1957, Madrid.)

Alongside this movement of specialists from the Catholic milieu, one of the most important thinkers in the dissemination of psychoanalysis in scientific and cultural circles during the dictatorship was the Catalan psychiatrist Ramón Sarró. In his youth he had travelled to Vienna to study under Freud, undergoing analysis with Helene Deutsch. In 1927, without having finished his training at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Association, he broke of this analysis to return to Spain. He subsequently dedicated a large part of his scientific to critiquing and reformulating Freudian psychoanalysis in order to make it compatible with a more spiritualized and integral image of man, without completely ignoring the somatic perspectives on which he based his arguments. Precisely for this reason, he dedicated significant time and money to the study and dissemination of psychoanalysis from his position as chair of psychiatry at the University of Barcelona, which he had held since 1950.

In 1958 he chaired the 4^th International Congress on Psychotherapy in Barcelona. This event was probably the most important such convention held during the Franco era. As well as the leading figures from Spanish psychiatry and psychotherapy, it attracted a broad representation of experts from all over the world such as Henry Ey, Binswanger, Bleuler, Viktor Frankl, Franz Alexander, Eugène Minkoswski, Medard Boss, Erwin W. Strauss, Arthur Jores, Igor Carusso, Jacob Lévy Moreno, René Diatkine and the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who kept in touch with Sarró, returning in Spain once more in 1972 (Druet, 2014Druet, A. (2014) «La psiquiatría española y Jacques Lacan antes de 1975». Asclepio, 66 (1). doi: https://doi.org/10.3989/asclepio.2014.10 ). At the inaugural conference, Sarró argued, as López Ibor had done at the 1957López Ibor, J. J. (1957) “Discurso inaugural”. Conducta religiosa y salud mental. Actas VII Congreso Católico Internacional de Psicoterapia y Psicología Clínica, 10-15 September 1957, Madrid. Madrid congress, that the central aim of the event was a “psychosomatic revolution” in Spanish medicine that would start by breaking away from Freud’s psychoanalysis in favor of existential anthropology and phenomenology (Dalmau, 1958, p. 571Dalmau Ciria, M. (1958) “El profesor Sarró y el IV Congreso Internacional de Psicoterapia”. Revista de Psiquiatría y Psicología Médica de Europa y América Latinas 3 (7), pp. 569-581.)⁴ See La Vanguardia, September 2, 1958, p. 17.. Nevertheless, the word “revolution” would finally disappear from conference addresses as it displeased the political authorities, with whom they had to take the necessary precautions (Druet, 2014Druet, A. (2014) «La psiquiatría española y Jacques Lacan antes de 1975». Asclepio, 66 (1). doi: https://doi.org/10.3989/asclepio.2014.10 ).

Throughout the congress, the psychoanalytical concept of transference was brought up on various occasions. It was said to have revolutionized medicine by putting the patient’s experience and their interpersonal relation with their doctor at the forefront. For example, Rof Carballo outlined this idea in his address which cited Medar Boss and Gustav Bally, two representatives of modern psychotherapy whose work was characterized by their defense of the view that Heidegger and Freud’s thinking was based on the same foundations, meaning that it was not necessary to break away from them or complement one’s work with the other’s (Rof Carballo, 1959Rof Carballo, J. (1959) “Transferencia y coexistencia”. Revista de Psiquiatría y Psicología Médica de Europa y América Latina. 4 (2), pp. 104-124.). The Russian psychoanalyst Igor Caruso defended a similar position in his speech “Analytical technique as existential technique” (Caruso, 1959Caruso, I. A. (1959) “La técnica analítica como técnica existencial”. Revista de Psiquiatría y Psicología Médica de Europa y América Latina, 4 (3), pp. 171-174.), while Spain’s Luis Martín-Santos also spoke in favor of the complementary dichotomy between instinct and existence or between Jaspers and Freud, seeking recourse in the thinking of Jean-Paul Sartre (González de Pablo, 1998González de Pablo, Á. (1998) “El sentido de la enfermedad en la obra de Luis Martín-Santos”. Asclepio, 50 (1), pp. 79-102. doi: https://doi.org/10.3989/asclepio.1998.v50.i1.352 )

Francoist psychiatry and Catholic psychotherapy criticized psychoanalysis and German philosophy, the foundations on which his concept of man and the world was built. On this mission, Freud’s drive theory was rejected-Homo natura as López Ibor had conceived the idea-in favor of a new concept that took, among other ideas, Jaspers’ phenomenological system, Binswanger’s phenomenological-existentialist criteria-which explained the schizophrenic patient’s being starting from Freud and Heidegger-or Minkowski’s phenomenological notions (González de Pablo, 1987González de Pablo, Á. (1987), “Sobre la génesis del orden psiquiátrico en la posguerra española: La implantación de la psiquiatría de Heidelberg en España”. Revista Asociación Española de Neuropsiquiatría, 7 (23) pp. 633-647.).

The centrality of these two congresses-the 7^th International Catholic Congress on Psychotherapy and Clinical Psychology in 1957 and the 4^th International Congress on Psychotherapy in 1958-allows us to analyze the effective presence that psychoanalysis had on Francoist scientific culture on both a strategic level and the political-social weight of those attending. The Catholic reformulation of science transformed Freudian ideas. Various authors made real efforts to safeguard the way in which these ideas would continue to form a part of psychotherapy. The cleansing of psychoanalysis was articulated around overcoming instinct through the spirit, without renouncing the tenets of biology nor submitting to dogmatic idealism. Even the psychiatrists who came from an orthodox Freudian background who founded the Sociedad Luso-Española de Psicoanálisis (the Portuguese-Spanish Psychoanalysis Society) in 1959 had to adapt their focus to the requirements of this new context.

PSYCHOANALYSIS IN THE CULTURAL OUTPUT OF FRANCOISM

The Francoist censorship apparatus “created” an image of a model society, with the articles on the roles of gender and questions relating to sexual education that had filled magazines in the 1920s and 1930s disappearing from popular publications. Catholicism permeated all values, all education, and all popular customs and traditions, modelling the social order on the standards of Catholic morality. Along with the traditionalist thesis of Acción Católica, Falangist ideas of political-social revolution, which in the early years of Francoism held greater weight, defined an evolution in which models of progressive, technocratic and liberal economics were gradually adopted, in continuous conflict with traditionalist “myth” (Jumilla, 2007, p. 6Jumilla, J.A. (2007) “La Política Social franquista. Del organicismo social al Estado autoritario del Bienestar [1939-1977]”. La Razón Histórica. Revista hispanoamericana de Historia de las Ideas, 1, pp. 3-11.).

From the 1950s and 1960s onwards, above all, these changes in the regime’s economic policy allowed the appearance of new channels of mass circulation and consumption of information in which the use made therein of expert discourse, mainly from the field of psychology, is noteworthy. We highlight this to show the existence of a process of “psychologization” of society, in which psi knowledge was included in a number of cultural settings, functioning as intermediaries between the subject and the world and between the subject and themselves (Rose, 1998Rose, N. (1998) Inventing Ourselves. Psychology, Power and Personhood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.; Ruperthuz, 2017Ruperthuz Honorato, M. (2017) “Freud para todos: psicoanálisis y cultura de masas en Chile, 1920-1950”. História, Ciências, Saúde-Manguinhos, 24, pp. 121-141. doi: https://doi.org/10.1590/s0104-59702017000400009 ).

Novels, comic books, pocket editions, self-help books and movies, all designed for mass dissemination and consumption, all accessible to differing economies and social classes, have at one time or another tapped into psychoanalytical ideas. It is thus important to translate this success within a clear sales strategy that turns psychoanalysis and the psychological discourse in general into a consumable object.

In his article Paradójicos reaccionarios: la modernidad contra la República de la Comunión Tradicionalista (“Reactionary paradoxes: modernity against the Republic of the Traditionalist Communion”), Francisco Capistegui proposed the concept of a “defensive modernity”, a “conservative modernization” and a “reactionary modernization” which help us to describe this process as “the adaptation of the system to the changes produced by mass society, but without this establishing values, which would have to be those maintained from tradition” (Capistegui, 2012, p. 5Capistegui, F. J. (2012) “Paradójicos reaccionarios: la modernidad contra la República de la Comunión Tradicionalista”. El Argonauta español, 9. Available at: http://journals.openedition.org/argonauta/1409 [Accessed 15 January 2020].). In other words, ideas, the media and modern technologies were used as a way of maintaining the status quo and finally incorporated as part of tradition (Louzao, 2011Louzao Villar, J. (2011) Soldados de la fe o amantes del progreso: Catolicismo y modernidad en Vizcaya (1890-1923). Logroño: Genueve Ediciones.), as could be seen in Sección Femenina magazines such as Y, Medina and later Teresa.

Such magazines gave rise to an internal paradox by projecting a series of feminine ideals, many of which contradicted the “official” model of women as wives and mothers, looking after the home and their children (Rosón, 2016Rosón, M. (2016) Género, memoria y cultura visual (materiales cotidianos, más allá del arte). Madrid: Cátedra.). Meanwhile, the use of magazines as political propaganda channels of ideological dissemination reflects this tension between two rhythms, traditionalism and modernity, in which leakage toward hegemonic discourse could be detected, exemplifying the distance between and resistance to the ideal of what should be and what it actually was.

The appearance of psychoanalytical ideas in such popular platforms was not, however, a new development in the 1950s and 1960s. Since the 1920s, a range of cultural output had incorporated psychoanalytical terms within its pages. This was the case with a number of literary works such as Sinrazón (“Absurdity”) by Sánchez Mejías (1928), Las Adelfas (“The Adelphi”) by the Machado brothers (1928) and La Túnica de Neso (“The Shirt of Nessus”) by Juan José Domenchina (1929) (Druet, 2013Druet, A. (2013) “La introducción del psicoanálisis en la literatura española a través de su representación”. Asclepio, 65 (2). doi: https://doi.org/10.3989/asclepio.2013.14 ), as well as other publications for mass audiences like the so-called “suggestive”⁵ As Serge Salaün wrote, this “suggestiveness” was initially a way of depicting eroticism in the theatre. Little by little, it grew out of this restraint to describe all kinds of eroticism in literature, behavior, customs etc. (Salaün, 2001, p. 218). In her book Culturas del erotismo en España 1898-1939 (“Cultures of Eroticism 1898-1939”), Maite Zubiaurre analyzes this phenomenon that she describes as an “erotic invasion” that makes “explicit reference to the sudden proliferation of “risqué” material from the end of the century until well into the 1930s” (Zubiaurre, 2015.p. 18). and satirical magazines⁶ Here we refer to the use that magazines such as Algo, semanario ilustrado enciclopédico y de buen humor, (“Something - An Illustrated Humorous Encyclopedic Weekly”, 1929-1938); Buen Humor, semanario satírico (“Good Humor - A Satirical Weekly”, 1921-1931); Gutiérrez, semanario español de humorismo (Gutiérrez - A Spanish Humor Weekly”, 1927-1934) and Gracia y Justicia. Órgano extremista del humorismo popular (“Wit and Justice - An Extremist Organ of Popular Humor”, 1931-1936) made of psychoanalysis., in which scientific matters rubbed shoulders with humorous and erotic content. In all these publications, psychoanalytical theory became a popular subject matter, with the figure of the psychoanalyst, often represented by Doctor Freud, portrayed as a personable character who was the butt of jokes and the object of curiosity.

It is possible to establish a continuity between these cultural products and the use of psychoanalysis during the Franco era in popular publications. We can see the effective cultural inclusion that psychoanalysis experienced in Spain, which translated into the incorporation of psychoanalysis thought into everyday reality, transcending its doctrinal use in the process. Nevertheless, it is important to point out that in order to ensure that these ideas are effective requires them to have been backed by the country’s scientific authorities.

For example, in 1938, the Falange’s Sección Femenina magazine Y (“And”) published an article by the playwright Enrique Jardiel Poncela. The writer fiercely criticized any woman who was not a Falangist who had emerged thanks to “the vast forces of our race”. Such a woman, claimed Jardiel, was one that had understood “the mission of man-as-man, of woman-as-woman and that of woman-as-supporter-of-man” (Jardiel, 1938, p. 37Jardiel Poncela, E. (1938) “Mujeres verdes, mujeres rojas, mujeres lilas, mujeres grises, y mujeres azules”. Y, 6-7, pp. 37-38). For other women, Jardiel went into great detail, with a barrage of personal attacks aimed at, among others, those who were “(…) Republicans who admire the talent and physical beauty of Azaña. Those who aspire to be “film stars”. Those who read Freud and are concerned about psychoanalysis. Feminists, pedants and Lady-Know-it-Alls from the worlds of science and philosophy. Divorce enthusiasts who think they are going to find a better husband (…) etcetera, etcetera.” (Jardiel, 1938, p. 36Jardiel Poncela, E. (1938) “Mujeres verdes, mujeres rojas, mujeres lilas, mujeres grises, y mujeres azules”. Y, 6-7, pp. 37-38).

The reference to Freud in the description of the young, left-leaning woman represented the identification of psychoanalysis with the progressive policies of the Second Republic, in which women played an important part in politics, winning a number of rights such as the right to divorce and the right to vote. Psychoanalysis had scientifically defended the majority of these reforms and, above all, the “new” sexual morality that Jardiel attacked in his article (Lévy and Huertas, 2018Lévy Lazcano, S. and Huertas, R. (2018) “From outrage to normalization: Uses of psychoanalysis by the Spanish sexual reform movement (1920-1939)”. Cuadernos de Historia Contemporánea, 40, pp. 33-49). This identification employed the rhetoric of the construction of a female profile that clearly stood in opposition to the vision of femininity put forward by the Falange. It is important to cite the year in which Jardiel’s article was published - 1938, the year in which the magazine was founded and also in which the project to build the models of reference on which the philosophy of the Sección Femenina was launched (Rosón, 2016Rosón, M. (2016) Género, memoria y cultura visual (materiales cotidianos, más allá del arte). Madrid: Cátedra.). However, it was also the year in which the framework of the future Francoist state began to take shape, in which, as Vallejo Nágera was to defend, Spain had to turn away “from the ‘International League for Sexual Reform’ as our racial policies differ significantly. Professional circumstances highlight the intimate drama of a sadly famous propaganda of sexual education which invites the careful selection of sexual educators without abandoning sex education to visionaries and cultists” (Vallejo Nágera, 1938, pp. 60-61Vallejo Nágera, A. (1938) Política racial del nuevo estado. San Sebastián: Editorial Española.)

As we have argued throughout this study, once purged of its links to the Republican government’s reforms, psychoanalysis could be seen as a useful point of reference as far as Francoist interests were concerned, as can be seen in the evolution of magazines published by the Falange’s Sección Femenina.

In 1954, this Section launched Teresa, Revista para Todas las Mujeres (“Teresa - A Magazine for All Women”), which was published monthly until 1975 (Durón, 2015-2016Durón Muniz, V. M. (2015-2016) “Aproximación a la revista TERESA (1954-1975)”. Universidad de Sevilla, journalism degree final project.). Its pages featured profiles of the ideal woman-moral, intellectual, elegant yet austere. To this end it used vignettes and illustrations together with a simple, accessible language in an indication that the magazine was part of the social group it was aimed at (Menéndez, 2013Menéndez Menéndez, M. I. (2013) “Tipología de la prensa femenina. Una propuesta de clasificación”. Estudios sobre el mensaje periodístico, 19 (1), pp. 191-206. doi; https://doi.org/10.5209/rev_ESMP.2013.v19.n1.42516 ). The publication’s interest in psychological matters, together with the use of a language that expressed “feminine” emotions and sensibility, was also evident in its sections, which the Diario de Zamora de la Falange Española de la J.O.N.S (Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista-Councils of the National-Syndicalist Offensive) echoed in the following words:

In April 1954, the magazine published an article entitled Psicoanálisis. Freud, el psicoanálisis y la religión (“Psychoanalysis - Freud, psychoanalysis and religion”) by Carolina Zamora, one of the first female psychoanalysts in Spain. In her piece, Zamora stated the following:

Zamora defended a conciliatory position between Catholicism and psychoanalysis. She supported the existence of a Catholic psychoanalysis movement, which gave a certain weight to her argument. As she would do following her address to the 7^th International Catholic Congress on Psychotherapy and Clinical Psychology in 1957 which we mentioned in the foregoing section, she aimed her criticisms toward those who vilified psychoanalysis without having any idea of the scope of its therapeutic possibilities. Nevertheless, it should be added that, as well as espousing psychoanalysis as a form of Catholic psychotherapy, in this case she was expressly addressing women, the main readers of this magazine. Zamora therefore used an inclusive language, leaving it clear that she was one of these women, that she shared their reality, their vision of the world. This had the effect of emphasizing the closeness which increasingly characterized such magazines and which could be useful as a marketing strategy.

In these circles, psychoanalysis moved toward a psychology based on counseling, family orientation, healthy married life and vocational discovery. It is interesting here to note that a number of the titles published by the publishing house Iberia focused on self-help, translating the work of foreign writers with frequent allusions to psychoanalytical ideas. By way of example, we might cite El insomnio vencido. El arte de dormirse fácilmente a pesar del ruido, las preocupaciones o el dolor (“Overcoming insomnia - the art of sleeping well despite noise, worries and pain”, 1930Oudinot, P. and Jagot, P. C. (1930) El insomnio vencido: el arte de dormirse fácilmente a pesar del ruido, las preocupaciones o el dolor (translation by Juan Aguasca). Barcelona: Iberia.) by the French doctor P. Oudinot and Paul C. Jagot which enjoyed many reprints in Spain and Latin America until the 1990s, ¡Aflojad los nervios! - originally entitled “Release from Nervous Tension”-by David Harold Fink, (1951)Fink, D. H. (1951) ¡Aflojad los nervios! Barcelona, Madrid, Buenos Aires-México and Rio de Janeiro: Salvat. and the 1957 publication of the book by the Costa Rican author Lilia Ramos ¿Qué hace usted con sus amarguras? Lecciones de psicoanálisis aplicables a su vida cotidiana, (“What can you do about your bitterness? Lessons from psychoanalysis applicable to everyday life”, 1957Ramos, L. (1957) ¿Qué hace usted con sus amarguras? Lecciones de psicoanálisis aplicables a su vida cotidiana. Madrid-México-Buenos Aires: Aguilar.). These publications confirm the acceptance of a culture of consumer psychology that had transnational channels of circulation and exchange, in which, despite the specific characteristics of each country, could nevertheless be identified as having elements in common (Ruperthuz and Lévy, 2017Ruperthuz, Honorato, M. and Lévy Lazcano, S. (2017) “Triunfar ante la vida relámpago: Saberes psi en clave de autoayuda en Chile y España (1940)”. Psicoperspectivas, 16 (3), pp. 121-136. doi: https://doi.org/10.5027/psicoperspectivas-vol16-issue3-fulltext-1037 )

Another genre that increasing featured allusions to Freud and psychoanalysis in order to create its characters was that of the comic book. With their dissemination of ideas that intertwined words and images, comics were an extremely popular narrative element during the Franco era (Porcel, 2012Porcel Torrens, A. (2012) “Marta y el complejo. La recepción popular del Psicoanálisis en el franquismo”. Revista de la Asociación Española de Neuropsiquiatría, 32 (113), pp. 165-180.). It was once again a women’s magazine, Florita (1949-1961), which in 1952 published the comic strip Marta y el Complejo by the artist Miguel Ripoll Guayadol, with text by the pseudonymous Ramy. The comic strip told the story of a process in which the initial confidence of the protagonist, Marta-a woman who had a sleeping problem and recurring nightmares-in the treatment prescribed her by her psychiatrist (with clear reference to psychoanalysis, with the couch, analysis of dreams and the use of the term “complex”, which was used to characterize Marta’s condition) concluded with the woman’s rejection of the doctor and his depiction as a madman bereft of any sense of logic.

The appeal invoked by the figure of the psychoanalyst, half-way between a mad genius and a somber scientist, also inspired the creation of a series of detective stories that Biblioteca Oro - part of Molino, the largest publishing house specializing in popular novels in the post Civil War period (Cornellà, 1999Cornellà, J. (1999) “El món novelesc de Jaume Ministral”. Revista de Girona, 194, pp. 84-88.) - published throughout the 1950s in which the main character was Doctor Ludwig Van Zigman, an avowed “disciple of the Austrian professor, Sigmund Freud” (Lartsinim, 1949, p. 3Lartsinim, J. (1949) El caso del psicoanálisis. Barcelona: Molino-Biblioteca de Oro, 256.). Written by Jaume Ministral under the pseudonym J. Lartsinim, the series ran to six titles in total, which sold for eight pesetas each. There were: El caso del psicoanálisis (“The Case of the Psychoanalyst”, 1949Lartsinim, J. (1949) El caso del psicoanálisis. Barcelona: Molino-Biblioteca de Oro, 256.), La señorita de la mano de cristal (“The Woman with the Glass Hand”, 1950Lartsinim, J. (1950) La señorita de la mano de cristal. Barcelona: Molino-Biblioteca de Oro, 265.), El caso de la grafología (“The Case of the Handwiting Analyst”, 1951Lartsinim, J. (1951) El caso de la grafología. Barcelona: Molino-Biblioteca de Oro, 278.), El Doctor no recibe (“The Doctor is not Receiving Patients”, 1952aLartsinim, J. (1952a) El Doctor no recibe. Barcelona: Molino-Biblioteca de Oro, 285.), Sencillamente una cinta de máquina (“Simply a Typewriter Ribbon”, 1952bLartsinim, J. (1952b) Sencillamente una cinta de máquina. Barcelona: Molino-Biblioteca de Oro, 292.) and La pista de los actos fallidos (“The Clue of the Freudian Slips”, 1953aLartsinim, J. (1953a) La pista de los actos fallidos. Barcelona: Molino-Biblioteca de Oro, 300.).

In the first of these, the publisher introduced the series by stressing how innovative the plot of the story was in the following words:

The plot centers on a crime which leads Doctor Van Zigman to psychologically investigate those implicated in order to analyze the motives behind their actions and thus uncover the clues that help him to solve the case. The encounter with the crime thus always appears as a fortuitous event, which allows the detective to present “psychological facts” through the medium of modern psychology (Porcel, 2019Porcel Torrens, A. (2019) “Van Zigman y el caso Ministral. Difusión del psicoanálisis en la literatura popular de posguerra”. Norte de salud mental, vol. XVI, nº 60, pp. 99-107.). As Ministral said in one of his novels, the crime as such was of little interest to him. His intention was to tell his readers who the characters he was presenting were and why they acted one way or another (Lartsinim, 1953aLartsinim, J. (1953a) La pista de los actos fallidos. Barcelona: Molino-Biblioteca de Oro, 300.). Reading Freud, Ministral wrote, had led him to think that “the investigation of a neurosis was every bit as exciting as the search for a criminal” (Lartsinim, 1953a, p. 3Lartsinim, J. (1953a) La pista de los actos fallidos. Barcelona: Molino-Biblioteca de Oro, 300.). By way of example of this, he based his final psychoanalytical novel on Freud’s The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, which had inspired him to “write a novel based on mistakes, omissions, blunders, lapses etcetera - Freudian slips in other words. These symptomatic actions that we all commit everyday without deeming them important yet which reveal so much to those who know how to read them” (Lartsinim, 1953a, p. 4Lartsinim, J. (1953a) La pista de los actos fallidos. Barcelona: Molino-Biblioteca de Oro, 300.)

The usefulness of psychoanalysis in the study of criminality had been extended by writers such the judge César Camargo, the lawyer Luis Jiménez de Asúa, the psychiatrist Emilio Mira and the psychoanalyst Ángel Garma in the 1920s and 1930s. During the Franco era, manuals on legal psychiatry had also appeared that alluded to such procedures (Lévy, 2016aLévy Lazcano, S. (2016a) “Delitos inconscientes. Psicoanálisis y teoría penal durante la Segunda República española”. Culturas Psi/Psy Cultures, 6, pp. 34-64., 2016bLévy Lazcano, S. (2016b) “Prevenir, rehabilitar y sancionar. La incorporación de las ideas psicoanalíticas a la psiquiatría forense. 1930-1950”. In: R. Campos y Á González de Pablo, ed. Psiquiatría e higiene mental en el primer franquismo. Madrid: La Catarata, pp. 145-174.). Jaume Ministral recovered such thinking and used it to create the plots for his novels. Analysis of transference, the interpretation of dreams and word association experiments are accurately described. In the case of this latter phenomena, Ministral even knew how it had been adapted in a judicial context, complemented by the use of barbiturates (Lévy, 2016bLévy Lazcano, S. (2016b) “Prevenir, rehabilitar y sancionar. La incorporación de las ideas psicoanalíticas a la psiquiatría forense. 1930-1950”. In: R. Campos y Á González de Pablo, ed. Psiquiatría e higiene mental en el primer franquismo. Madrid: La Catarata, pp. 145-174.). Under the pseudonym of Lartsinim, Ministral also published a book on psychological matters as part of the Molino publishing house’s Manuales Prácticos (“Practical Manuals”, 1953bLartsinim J. (1953b) ¿Qué es la Psicología? Barcelona: Molino.) promoting the popular dissemination of such ideas.

Together with the references to Freud’s work, Ministral’s detective novels also included critical accounts of Adler’s thinking and descriptions about disorders and psychiatric treatment that went some way beyond orthodox psychoanalysis. He was in fact well aware of critiques of psychoanalysis and thus, probably as a precaution, limited his sexual casuistry to when his protagonist and narrator of the stories explained his deductions. One of his novels (1952bLartsinim, J. (1952b) Sencillamente una cinta de máquina. Barcelona: Molino-Biblioteca de Oro, 292.) was even set in Barcelona, where Doctor Van Zigman had been invited by a Spanish psychiatrist by the name of López Perera. Ministral portrayed this latter character as a Catholic psychiatrist who defended prayer and work in the treatment of his patients. However, at the same time, Ministral perfectly imagined the psychoanalysis that Von Zigman professed, as López Perera had invited the Dutchman to Barcelona to treat a case of anxiety neurosis using psychoanalysis (Porcel, 2019Porcel Torrens, A. (2019) “Van Zigman y el caso Ministral. Difusión del psicoanálisis en la literatura popular de posguerra”. Norte de salud mental, vol. XVI, nº 60, pp. 99-107.).

The references to the unconscious and the characters’ deep-lying complexes and Freudian slips were attractive elements for literature, art and cinema, For example, Hitchcock’s Spellbound, which premiered in 1945 and Nido de Víboras de Anatole Litvak’s The Snake Pit (Porcel, 2019Porcel Torrens, A. (2019) “Van Zigman y el caso Ministral. Difusión del psicoanálisis en la literatura popular de posguerra”. Norte de salud mental, vol. XVI, nº 60, pp. 99-107.). In general, the idea of mystery, the unveiling of what had been hidden, formed a part of psychoanalysis’s power of seduction as well as its commercial hook. See for example how the Catalan textile company Meyba used psychoanalysis to sell its pajamas. On 29 November, 1957, La Vanguardia published this advert in which, alongside an illustration of Freud with a serious, defiant expression is the text:

CONCLUSIONS

Throughout the early years of Francoism, psychoanalysis underwent a process of political cleansing and doctrinal redrafting in which its tenets were redefined based on the principles of Francoist psychiatry. As we have seen, medical conferences, psychiatric texts and religious magazines were all busy conceptually adapting theory - eradicating any relation to positivism and scientific materialism - and establishing limits with the knowledge that psychoanalysis had been at the forefront of avant-garde thought during the Second Republic. From the perspective of a humanistic and phenomenological understanding of humankind, in which Freudian drive was eradicated from the center of the explanation of moral conduct, Francoism availed itself of all the ideas from psychoanalysis that had been useful, ensuring the necessary circumstances were in place for their dissemination. The changes to the regime’s social and economic policy actually lead to a greater visibility for psychoanalysis in the most popular areas of culture through the mass media. It was in this process that psychoanalytical ideas entered the public realm, organizing and implementing truths regarding people and everyday life (Rose, 1998Rose, N. (1998) Inventing Ourselves. Psychology, Power and Personhood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.). In this way, reality could be considered from a Freudian perspective, even by people who had never lain on a psychoanalyst’s couch or had any contact with their therapeutic methods. Nonetheless, it should be remembered that in order think about the effectiveness of these methods, they still had to have previously had a social and cultural trajectory in which their legitimacy had been compromised as scientific knowledge.

Bearing all this in mind, we have sought to highlight a journey in which a kind of psychoanalysis “available to all” was defined which since the 1920s and 1930s (and taking off in the 1950s and 1960s due to Spain’s developmentalism and economic openness) provided new methods and ways of thinking and representing men and women. This process responds to a greater phenomenon in which the expansion of a psychological language which, through the use of psychoanalytical ideas, established a vehicle for new ways of understanding the reality and experiences of subjects (Rose, 1998Rose, N. (1998) Inventing Ourselves. Psychology, Power and Personhood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.), transcending the merely therapeutic and, within this construct, withstanding the ideological and political tensions of Francoism.