Acceso usuarios
Francisco Leal
Sigmund Freud used and wrote about cocaine in abundance, and it was the only substance that connected him to Latin America. Freud’s Cocaine Papersare the only theoretical works in which the founder of psychoanalysis refers to Latin America. These references serve exclusively to highlight the benefits of an American product and to try to make that product’s consumption attractive to Europeans. This article analyzes Freud’s Cocaine Papers and focuses on the dif-ferent ways in which the founder of psychoanalysis thought and represented the “dark continent” of psychoanalysis, Latin America, in relation to cocaine, one of the present day’s most anxiety-producing substances. These early works have been incorporated into psychoanalysis’s conceptual foundations in radically different ways. However, his interest in cocaine has seldom been analyzed in connection to Latin America. This study shows the widespread lack of analysis regarding Freud’s Cocaine Papers, the relationship between this drug and the colonial foundations of psychoanalysis.
