The Peregrinating Psychoanalyst (Try Repeating): Chuck and Leah Fisher now in Argentina
N. Szajnberg, MD, Managing Editor
A treat. Chuck Fisher and his wife Leah are taking a six month travel sabbatical. Prior to this break, Chuck spent time with the Acuar of South America on their dream rituals. He generously shares his experiences and photos with International Psychoanalysis readers. Last report was his visit in South Africa on Mark Solms estate. Today, we voyage through tangos, glaciers, water falls in Argentina, and a secret loma steak meal with David and Estella Rosenfeld. (Chuck will send further reports).
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Imagine Leah and me in a comfortable B&B in Johannesburg, South Africa. Weeks earlier we had scheduled a flight from Johannesburg to Buenos Aires – one of the few flights we arranged far in advance. It is now two days before our flight, and it seems time to book a place to stay for our arrival in South America. Our six months of sabbatical travel have allowed us to make plans pretty spontaneously. Finding a place to stay two days in advance is fairly typical for us, but this time the distance and the cultural change are greater than usual.
Using the internet and Skype, we arrange to rent an apartment in the Palermo district of Buenos Aires. After an uneventful flight, which actually seems shorter than its twelve hours, we are in a hired car heading for our apartment. Heeding good advice from Susana and Ricardo Winkel, we safely bypass all airport taxi scams. In fact our sojourn in Buenos Aires is totally safe.
Our apartment in Palermo, high in a building on a leafy street, is a bit reminiscent of Manhattan or Georgetown. We have coffee every morning in a tiny café on the ground floor. The streets are walkable, with restaurants, stores, and gardens all around.
As it happens, on our first night there is an event called Noche de los Museos. All the museums in town are open (and free) all night long. We choose to visit the Museum of Tango. Located in an old mansion, it is full of tango memorabilia. Magnificent tango music is played (and sung) by one group of performers after another. We see no dancing. Of course, the place is so packed with people all night long that there would not have been room for dancing, even if it had been planned on the program. We have learned an important lesson. In Argentina, tango is not just a dance. It is a way of living, and the heart-rending music is as much a part of its expression as the dance, the clothing, the shoes, the tango clubs, and the rituals surrounding every tango event. We somehow manage through our jet lag to stay awake.
A few days later, we spend an evening with David Rosenfeld and his wife Estella. Sue von Baeyer has graciously provided an introduction to the highly esteemed psychoanalyst. David is generous and dramatic in the evening he arranges for us. First we go to a special restaurant for lomo – Argentine steak. David makes us swear not to reveal the name of the restaurant to our North American friends and colleagues. To illustrate how tender the steak is, the waiter cuts it into portions for us using the edge of a spoon. Later, David and Estella take us to a tango club off the tourist track. David says, “This is a very dangerous place. You can’t let anyone hear you speaking English here.” We don’t see any danger, but we do see spectacular dancing – the women improbably balanced and graceful while wearing tango shoes with four inch heels.
The following day, David has invited me to a seminar at his institute, the Buenos Aires Psychoanalytic Association. He arranges to pick me up by taxi. An hour or so before I am to be picked up, Leah and I go out for coffee. As soon as we close the door to the apartment, I realize that I have locked the key inside. I am wearing scruffy clothes, barely fit to wear on the street. We soon learn that the building superintendent has no spare key. The only spare is miles away. Quickly, Leah obtains a referral to a fashionable nearby clothing store where the owners turn out to be a young aspiring psychoanalyst and her husband. In twenty minutes, they outfit me with a cool pair of black jeans, a leather belt, and a tailored shirt – what a with-it psychoanalyst wears to a meeting in Buenos Aires. (Will you recognize me if I show up wearing that at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis or the American Psychoanalytic Association?)
Dressed for the occasion, I arrive with David at the institute, a spacious building, converted from a factory, in a now fashionable neighborhood. On a Wednesday afternoon, the place is buzzing. David introduces me to one world famous psychoanalyst after another. Despite the wealth of local talent, the meeting is conducted by electronic hook-up with institutes in Paris and Guadalajara, Mexico. The speaker is Didier Houzel in Paris. His talk, on autistic defenses, has been translated into Spanish. Someone reads the lecture in Spanish, and a written text in Spanish is also displayed on a screen. With these aids, I could pretty well follow what was being said. In the discussion period which follows, a member of the society who is fluent in both French and Spanish provides nearly simultaneous translation of questions, comments, and answers. Didier Houzel is in conversation with analysts in Buenos Aires and Guadalajara. I think the talk is excellent, and it prompts me to think about autistic defenses in new ways. (Now I am sure that you won’t recognize me, between these new thoughts and my Argentinian clothing.)
The following week, Lia Pistener, the president of the society, invites me to attend her seminar, which is also on autistic defenses. Again I am impressed by the high quality of the presentation. This time the electronic hook-up is with another Argentinian psychoanalytic society on the opposite side of the country.
At about this time, a pharmacist tells Leah that we must not on any account miss a visit to the glaciers in Patagonia. After about ten minutes of contemplation, we decide that the pharmacist is right. Soon we are on an Aerolineas Argentinas flight 2000 kilometers south to Patagonia. Our plane touches down in Ushuaia, surely the most beautiful vista of mountain, ocean, and ice that we will ever see. The next day, we trek on Perito Moreno Glacier, wearing crampons on our feet. The ice is anything but flat. We climb hills, peaks, and ridges, while avoiding crevasses and running streams of melt water. The ice is white, but also vivid blue in many places, because the blue wavelengths of light shine through the ice more intensely than the other colors.
Perito Moreno is one of the few glaciers in the world that is not receding. It moves forward about two meters each day, with huge blocks of ice falling into a cold, clear lake at its base. But an equal amount of snow is added to the top of the glacier, many miles away. This state of dynamic flux is referred to as “stability,” giving us a new sense of what it means to say that something is stable. We learn more about these processes at the fascinating ice museum in El Calafate.
On our return to Buenos Aires, we take tango lessons in a venue that also offers psychoanalytic lectures one evening a week. A taxi driver, learning that I am a psychoanalyst, asks if I am a Freudian, a Kleinian, or a Lacanian. We also visit the MALBA, the modern art museum of Buenos Aires. We are charmed by the thoughtful, informed, and witty explanation of the very modern exhibits provided by one of the museum guides. Our long conversation with her at the end of a tour prompts us to invite her to a spontaneous dinner party the following evening.
After Buenos Aires, we travel to Tilcara, a small town in the far north of the country, about 4000 kilometers from Ushuaia. It is located near the border with Bolivia, and is heavily influenced by the traditional cultures of the region. Although Tilcara itself is located at about 8500 feet altitude, we travel over passes higher than 14,000 feet while exploring the region. The cliffs, intensely colored orange, purple, green, and yellow are hard for us to absorb with our eyes. We need to keep looking again and again to confirm what we are seeing.
Before leaving Argentina, we visit Iguassu Falls – actually about 250 waterfalls, arrayed across a rim of rock several kilometers around. We climb on walkways over and around the falls. Then we take a boat ride perilously close to the zone where the largest volumes of water crash into the river. As the boat heads toward the falling water, the boatmen put on heavy waterproof gear and call out, “Se viene la ducha!” which means “Here comes the shower!” After our first encounter with the shower, all of the passengers on the boat begin chanting, “Ducha! Ducha!” clamoring for more. The boat heads into the water three more times, while we passengers shriek and shout with joy.
After drying off at a B&B that night, a short taxi ride across the river takes us into Brazil.
Best Holiday Wishes to All,
Chuck Fisher
Nathan M. Szajnberg, MD
Visiting Professor, Columbia University
Wallerstein Research Fellow in Psychoanalysis, SFCP
Member, Columbia and New York Psychoanalytic Societies
Training Analyst, Israel Psychoanalytic
646-275-7990
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