Horacio R Etchegoyen

Horacio R Etchegoyen

1919 - 2016





Dear Colleagues,

I have the sad task to announce to you that Dr. Horacio Etchegoyen passed away on 2 July, at the age of 97, surrounded by his family and close friends in Buenos Aires.

Horacio Etchegoyen was a great master of Psychoanalysis, and the first Latin-American President of the IPA from 1993 to 1997.  He was the President of the Asociaciòn Psicoanalitica de Buenos Aires (APdeBA) from 1977 to 1978.

Besides his institutional charges and activities, his fame all over the world was due to his widely acclaimed book “The Fundamentals of
Psychoanalytic Technique” (“Fundamentos de la Técnica Psicoanalitica”), translated into many languages and recommended by many training institutes as an educational text.

Etchegoyen was analyzed in Argentina by Heinrich Racker and in London by Donald Meltzer; he had supervisions with Enrique Pichon Riviére, Marie Langer, Leon Grinberg and José Bleger, and then with Herbert Rosenfeld and Hanna Segal.  The richness of his educational process gave rise to his particularly wide and deep psychoanalytic view, thanks to his personal capacity to combine and to integrate those many extraordinary sources in a harmonious way.

We all had the benefit of experiencing him as a great IPA President and we owe a profound debt of gratitude to him for his immense contribution to the development of psychoanalysis and of our institution. His legacy will live on in our international community, on so many levels: scientific, institutional, educational and, more widely, cultural. His personal traits of integrity, cordiality, correctness and depth of thought made him a highly respected and widely appreciated figure all over the world. 

His international mentality allowed him to develop very effective contacts and relationships with psychoanalysts also in North America and Europe, building up an extremely fertile dialogue with them.  Personally, I remember his unforgettable lessons on analytic theory here at the Bologna institute, which he visited among the other institutions across Italy. He was instrumental in bringing IPA to the local societies in an era in which international contacts were still an exception.

On a personal level, I can bear witness (as can many other colleagues) to what a welcoming and kind person he was, a real gentleman and a warm colleague.

We will all remember him with sincere admiration and affection.


Stefano Bolognini
IPA President

 


It was with heartfelt sadness that we all learnt of the death of our dear colleague, Horacio Etchegoyen.

Undoubtedly, the sense of loss will be felt on both a personal and professional level, and this is no exaggeration, throughout the world.

Horacio was a beloved and caring husband, father and grandfather and a person who somehow managed to be firm but also warm and compassionate. He was passionate in his interests, be it psychoanalysis, current affairs and politics or football.

A teacher, a passionate advocate of Psychoanalysis, a great reader, a subtle clinician, a maestro: these are just some of the authentic ideas that spring to mind when remembering our dead colleague and friend and, for me personally, much valued mentor.

He was a profoundly ethical man and believed that psychoanalysis is an ethical discipline.

He was   the first Latin-American President of the IPA and helped in no small way to put the region on the map.

We must now work to process the loss and pay homage to the maestro in the best way possible: learning from his work and maintaining within each of us the spirit in which he carried out the vocation for Psychoanalysis, that we hold dear.

Virginia Ungar
President-Elect


Video Interviews with Dr Horacio R Etchegoyen

  • Video interview conducted in 2011 with then IPSO Vice-President Adela Escardo.
  • Video interview by the Melanie Klein Trust, with Virginia Ungar and Catalina Bronstein.