RASCOVSKY, ARNALDO (1907-1995)

Arnaldo Rascovsky, an Argentinean physician and psychoanalyst, was born in Córdoba, Argentina, on January 1, 1907, and died on May 1, 1995.

He graduated from the Medical School of the University of Buenos Aires when he was 22 years old, and became a pediatrician, much interested in neurology, endocrinology, and psychosomatic medicine. He became acquainted with Freudian ideas in 1936 and started his personal analysis with Angel Garma, who came to Argentina in 1938. Rascovsky was one of the pioneers of psychoanalysis in Argentina and in Latin America. He was the co-founder of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association in 1942, first director of the Revista de Psicoanálisis, still appearing more than 50 years later in 2005. He was twice president of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association and then honorary member of this association. He was the co-founder and president of COPAL/FePAL (Latin American Psychoanalytic Federation), founder and president of Filium (Interdisciplinary Association for the Study and Prevention of Filicide) and several times president of the Society of Psychological Medicine, Psychoanalysis and Psychosomatic Medicine, a branch of the Argentine Medical Association.

Rascovsky made important contributions to the understanding of the emotional troubles related to psychosomatic disease. His most original contribution to Psychoanalysis was his study of early psychic development and his theoretical and clinical approach to fetal psychism (El psiquismo fetal, 1960). The papers on feminine psychology written in collaboration with his wife Matilde Rascovsky (also a psychoanalyst) threw new light on the complex phenomena taking place in different moments of the feminine life cycle.

His numerous writings deal with the psychoanalytic understanding of psychosomatics, the conceptualization of fetal psychism from the metapsychological point of view, and the understanding and prevention of filicide (El filicidio, 1973; La Universalidad del felicidio, 1986). A gifted communicator, his lectures on television and radio stimulated psychoanalytic thought throughout Latin America. He is the author of more than 50 psychoanalytic papers and several books. He knew how to address parents, pediatricians, teachers, and the community in general in defense of childhood, mother-father-child relations, and to condemn sadism in teaching, and filicidal behavior.

He was a training analyst and teacher of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association and full member of the International Psychoanalytical Association. He is considered to be one of the main pioneers of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Movement, highly cultivated, gifted, and generous in his teaching.

Elfriede S. Lustig de Ferrer

See also: Argentina; Colombia; Federación psicoanalítica de América latina; Revista de psicoánalisis .

Bibliography

Rascovsky, Arnaldo. (1956). Beyond the oral stage. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 37,4.

——. (1960). El Psiquismo Fetal. Buenos Aires: Paidós.

——. (1973). El Filicidio. Buenos Aires: Orion.

Rascovsky, Arnaldo, et al. (1971). Niveles profundos del Psiquismo. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana.

——. (1986). La universalidad del filicidio. Buenos Aires: Legase.