In 2016, Jorge Ahumada, a 76-year-old psychologist in Buenos Aires, suddenly became famous: His photograph was featured on the covers of popular magazines and he was interviewed in newspapers. His celebrity came about after President Mauricio Macri, who had been inaugurated in December 2015, revealed that he had been undergoing psychoanalytic treatment for the last 25 years with Ahumada. Macri had started analysis in 1991 when, as a young entrepreneur and a member of one of Argentina’s wealthiest industrialist families, he was kidnapped. Traumatized by this experience, Macri started twice-a-week “ultra-Freudian” psychoanalytic therapy, an approach that focuses on sexuality and the unconscious. After his patient became the president of Argentina (Macri had previously been chief of the government of Buenos Aires), Ahumada decided that their routine should proceed as usual. He refused to hold sessions in the presidential mansion, so Macri continued his treatment at the psychoanalyst’s office.
Of course,...
