"A. Z."

"A. Z." is the pseudonym used by the author of "Tratamiento psicoanalítico de un caso de neurosis compulsiva" (Psychoanalytic treatment of a case of compulsive neurosis), a text published in Peru in 1919 in Revista de psyquiatría y disciplinas conexas (Review of psychiatry and associated disciplines).

The first account of psychoanalytic treatment ever published in Spanish, this case history concerned a thirty-year-old patient with a curious "intermittent obsession related to double vision produced by a strabismus resulting from incorrectly performed tenotomies; an obstinate attachment to the false (unclear and deflected) image perceived by the eye affected. The subject felt subjectively attracted by this sensation." Having tried in vain to relieve his malaise in Europe the patient undertook a course of treatment with the author, who came to the conclusion that the patient persisted in seeing the false image in order to avoid confronting the fantasies that derived from his perverse infantile polymorphism.

There is strong evidence to suggest that "A. Z." was the dermatologist Carlos Aubry (1882-1996), a physician known to have been so eccentric and unmercenary that he died penniless, having refused to accept payment from his patients. Valdizán (1923) states in his Diccionario : "Apart from his specialty [dermatology], he mastered several psychological disciplines, as witnessed by his contribution to the Review." Aubry confined himself to reports and never published another article in the Review. His thesis (1906) dealt with the reflex of convergence, and the use of striped projection to illustrate double vision.

Álvaro Rey de Castro

See also: Obsessional neurosis; Peru.

Bibliography

A. Z. (1919). Tratamiento psicoanalítico de un caso de neurosis compulsiva. Revista de psyquiatría y disciplinas conexas, II (1), p. 22-25.

Rey de Castro,Álvaro. (1991). Freud y Honorio Delgado: una aproximación psicoanalítica a la prehistoria del psicoanálisis peruano y sus escuelas. El múltiple interés del psicoanálisis—77 años después, Talleres de Artes Gráficas Espino, p. 203-237.

Valdizán, Hermilio. (1923). Diccionario de medicina peruana. t. I, Lima, Talleres gráficos del asilo "Víctor Larco Herrera," p. 346.