Reflections on the Role of Ortega y Gasset in the Reception of Psychoanalytic Theory in Hispanic Culture

Abstract

It is only justice to emphasize the importance of the work of José Ortega y Gasset in the introduction and dissemination in Spanish and Latin American of Sigmund Freud’s ideas. It is easy to see that it is not, in this case, a detail of its rich intellectual biography that is often put in evidence, and much less about whose motives have been considered in depth with the issue requires. However, both the importance of his work, as his intellectual boldness –in a cultural context in which the Catholic tradition weighed so marked at that time–, to which must be added the pioneering nature of its findings, deserve featured. Beyond this, it is worth being highlighted the value’s assessment of psychoanalysis as a method, both in its therapeutic as its research orientation. Also deserves attention to see how evolves its valuation of the Freud’s work, as you know the problems of implementation of their ideas.