LAUSR

In 2015 and 2016, the author and four other psychoanalysts from New York City visited Havana and met with the Psychoanalytic Association of Cuba (APDECU), a study group of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS). These meetings provided an important opportunity to learn about psychoanalysis in Cuba, a little known topic. The author discusses the APDECU’s history and its members’ interest in psychoanalysis, describes the trajectory of psychoanalysis since the Cuban Revolution of 1959, and observes how economic, political, and social change has affected this trajectory. Psychoanalytic private practice, as we know it in capitalist countries, ended with the revolution, and psychoanalytically-oriented clinicians are employed by state-run public health institutions. Cuba’s leaders have introduced unprecedented economic change since 2008, resulting in an increasing marketization and privatization of the economy, which they refer to as “updating” or “reforming” socialism. The author explores the impact that economic reform may have on the future development of psychoanalysis and on the professional identity of psychotherapists.