MOM, JORGE MARIO (1922-1997)

Jorge Mario Mom, an Argentinean psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, was born in Cañada de Gómez in the province of Santa Fe in 1922 and died in Buenos Aires in 1997.

Having left his native province with his brothers, Jorge Mom studied medicine in the university of Córdoba. He married María Teresa Muñoz whose father, a farmer and owner of a textile factory, was a veritable patron for the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association (APA).

As a training analyst and president of the APA, he made a name for himself among the second and third generation of Argentinean psychoanalysts. He was a great expert on the works of Freud and Melanie Klein and for many years he expounded on the history of Freudian ideas with a personal vision that left an indelible impression on his students.

In his approach to psychopathology Mom took a keen interest in the concept of anxiety, to which he devoted a large number of theoretical and technical studies. When Willy and Madeleine Baranger arrived in Argentina, Mom established bonds of friendship and exchange with them, which translated into work being presented at various congresses and which constituted an important milestone for the Argentinean school. Prominent among these papers are "Proceso y no proceso en el trabajo analítico" (1982; "Process and Non-Process in Analytical Work," 1983) and "The Infantile Psychic Trauma from Us to Freud: Pure Trauma, Retroactivity and Reconstruction" (1988). Mom's primordial goal was to always have an increasingly better understanding of anxiety, anxiety as an alarm signal, and phobias, in Freudian terms, although he was far from disdaining Melanie Klein's contributions (1956, 1957, 1960). He disseminated his psychoanalytic thinking enthusiastically: He traveled around the country giving lectures and conferences and offering to act as a supervisor. His most important written work is the collection of fifteen studies around the concept of anxiety, as evidenced by his presentation at the thirty-second International Congress of the International Psychoanalytic Association in Helsinki in 1981: Angustia y falta de angustia en las fobias (Anxiety and lack of anxiety in phobias).

Jorge Mom was a likeable man, noble, sensitive, and typically Argentine, gifted with a very characteristic sense of humor that enabled him to get out of embarrassing situations.

Gilda Sabsay Foks

See also: Argentina.

Bibliography

Baranger, Madeleine, Baramger. Willy, and Mom, Jorge M. (1982). Proceso y no proceso en el trabajo analítico. Revista de psicoanálisis de la Asociacíon psicoanalítica argentina, 39 (4), 527-549; (1983). Process and non-process in analytic work. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 64. 1-15.

Mom, Jorge M. (1956). Algunas consideraciones sobre el concepto de distancia en las fobias. Revista de psicoanálisis de la Asociacíon psicoanalítica argentina, 13 (4), 430-435.

——. (1957). Algunas consideraciones sobre la interpretación en las fobias. Revista de psicoanálisis de la Asociacíon psicoanalítica argentina, 14 (1-2), 63-71.

——. (1960). Aspectos teóricos y técnicos en las fobias et en las modalidades fóbicas. Revista de psicoanálisis de la Asociacíon psicoanalítica argentina, 17 (2), 190-218.

——. (1962). Consideraciones sobre le concepto de fobia en relación con algunos aspectos de la obra de Melanie Klein. Revista de psicoanálisis de la Asociacíon psicoanalítica argentina, 19, (1-2), 26-33.