Calibán: psychoanalysis in a Latin American key

Calibán, RLP is the official journal of Fepal, Latin American Psychoanalytical Federation, an organization composed of 19 Brazilian and 23 Spanish speaking psychoanalytical societies, along with 4 Brazilian study centers and 8 ILAP Study Group.

Calibán, RLP appeared as a vehicle for the dissemination of psychoanalysis’ ideas and practices in Latin America, respecting and representing the region’s theoretical and clinical diversity. The journal’s project and editorial policy are coherent with a scientific proposal that is both creative and expressive of the Latin American reality.

Calibán intends to stimulate reflection and debate regarding issues pertinent to psychoanalysis within contemporary’s scientific, cultural, social, and political context. Moreover, it is a publication interested in the fruitful exchange with the psychoanalysis produced in other latitudes and with other fields of knowledge. On its pages, Calibán intends to dialogue with the humanities and with diverse lines of thinking in order to encourage wide debate and include psychoanalysis in the contemporary subject’s problematizations. Based on Freud’s idea that artists are one step forward, the latter are also invited to question our journal’s themes, including via each issue’s graphic design.

The journal’s name is an anagram of canibal (cannibal) and was inspired by Shakespeare’s character in The Tempest. He is a savage who is incapable of correctly speaking the “official” culture’s language, precisely Europe’s view of the new world’s native peoples until not long ago.
Tradición / Invención – Revista nº 5 de Calibán

The choice of this name for Fepal’s journal generates a fitting irony, since Calibán still represents the colonized but, this time, with our own voice, distant from a mere repetition of the ideas coming from Europe. It takes the anthropophagic metaphor about “devouring” what comes from the colonizing culture and adding to it tones from our own roots and the legitimacy of a hybrid culture aware of the psychoanalytical work in and from our continent. This is the strength of psychoanalysis, which leaves traces everywhere it goes by generating fruits particular to each native land. In Calibán, we emphasize the great cultural richness present in Latin America’s psychoanalysis.


Caliban RLP is published in Spanish and Portuguese, in print and digital versions. We also offer an English translation of the full issue in digital format.