Marie Langer, psychoanalysis and science fiction: a yearning for change.

Abstract

Marie Langer (1910-1987) has been recognised as a key psychoanalyst in the development of Argentine and Latin American psychoanalysis. However, in contrast to the many works devoted to exploring her life trajectory or the varied research on her contribution to institutional or theoretical psychoanalytic discussion, studies on her connection with science fiction (SF) have been anecdotal. Since the mid-fifties, Langer found SF to be a source of theoretical-clinical reflection on psychoanalysis, and a field in which to exercise her creativity by writing SF stories. This article proposes an analysis of Marie Langer's relationship with the SF of her time through an exhaustive review of the literature on this subject. On the one hand, it analyses the interdisciplinary reflections that she established between psychoanalysis and SF, in which she exposed theoretical, clinical, and sociological problems; on the other hand, it examines the literary production of SF that Langer developed in her short stories. This review concluded that her work on SF bears the same hallmark that guided her clinical and institutional relationship with Psychoanalysis: a desire for change.