The renowned psychoanalyst doctor who was trained in the classrooms of the UNR received the highest title awarded by the institution.
La Universidad Nacional de Rosario awarded the title of Doctor Honoris Causa to Emiliano Galende, doctor, psychoanalyst, teacher and researcher at universities in Argentina, Uruguay, Chile and Spain.
The event, which took place in the University Cultural Space filled with colleagues, family members and friends of the honoree, was chaired by the General Secretary of the University Guillermo Montero and the godmother of the doctoral student, the Dean of the Faculty of Psychology Soledad Cottone.
“I feel part of this house of studies. It is here where I was born to the profession and sowed the first seeds of all my work”, said Galende who graduated from the Faculty of Medical Sciences of the UNR in 1965. He recalled that his first job opportunity was a replacement in the middle of the Entre Ríos mountain for attend to a semi-rural population and there "I discovered that I was really a doctor, that what I had studied at the Faculty helped me to listen to people and help calm their problems."
When he returned to Rosario, he started working at the Agudo Avila Psychiatric Hospital as head of practical work. He was in a ward with 14 beds occupied by patients who had lived there for more than ten years. “When I saw the medical records they had the name, the origin, the date of hospitalization, some basic psychiatric semiology and the medical prescriptions, but I couldn't know who these people were and it was not easy to talk to them. The only thing they told me was when do I leave Doctor? ”, He recounted.
He continued with the anecdote: “After dinner, the internees would meet in a small room to drink mate, smoke, and chat. I joined the group and discovered that everyone there was talking and asking the same question: how did you get here?” He confesses that in each one there was a terrible story that had nothing to do with the data in the medical records. “That definitely marked my life and led me to start this profession because I had no doubt that my future would be related to that question: What makes a person upset their life so much, lose meaning, be unable to maintain a bond with the other while who fears or mistrusts. How do you get there?
The dean of the Faculty of Psychology Soledad Cottone defined Emiliano Galende as "a worker in the field of mental health" because he recovers his affiliation with the history of the fight for human rights. She maintained that at the age of 24, when he began his experience in psychiatry, he questioned himself about the knowledge that the diagnosis provides regarding the specific person who reports his discomfort.
“Mobilized by this question, he begins to inhabit the hospital at a time when patients recover their words, talk about their lives and, without a doubt, dedicate all your professional work to answering that initial question. Since then, he has worked questioning the devices of power and the universal sense of knowledge that fragments, prescribes and normalizes the human being”. He highlighted his sensitivity as a professional trait and his recognition of the dimension of otherness in the other who suffers, which accompanied him on his journey through the field of mental health.
The Secretary General of the UNR Guillermo Montero, expressed his joy that this University, where Galende was trained professionally, is the one who gives him this recognition.
"In times when intolerance and hatred grow, the medicalization of illnesses, the stigmatization of difference, our greatest commitment is to open doors, generate networks that resist fragmentation processes, create conditions for life without asylums," he claimed. In this sense, he mentioned that a great advance was the promulgation of the national mental health law in 2010 and that Galende was "an unwavering defender of the premises of this law." “We want a University that works for the integral health of our population. Thank you very much for your fight, for your commitment and for your generous militancy”, he concluded.
A life dedicated to mental health
Emiliano Galende is a doctor, psychoanalyst, teacher and researcher at universities in Argentina, Uruguay, Chile and Spain. He is a Consulting Professor at the National University of Lanús and directs the Honorary Advisory Council of the Master's and Doctorate in Community Mental Health of said university.
Director of the Mental Health and Community Magazine, Editions of the National University of Lanús. Founding member of the Maristan Network (Universities of London, England; of Granada, Spain; Nova de Lisboa, Portugal; Mayor of San Simón, Bolivia; Federal of Porto Alegre, Brazil; of Concepción, Chile and National University of Lanús-UNLa- , Argentina). Consultant Member of iPsi (Centre for attention, teaching and research in Mental Health), Barcelona, Spain.
He is the author of Psychiatry and Society (1975), Psychoanalysis and Mental Health (1989), History and Repetition (1992), Of an uncertain horizon (1997), The Interpretation (author and compiler, 1997), Sex and love (2002), Mental suffering (with Alfredo Jorge Kraut, 2006), Psychopharmaceuticals and Mental Health. The illusion of not being (2008) and Knowledge and practices of Mental Health (2015).
Journalist: Victoria Arrabal/Photographer: Karen Roeschlin