Interview with Marina Calvo

tribute to Silvia Bleichmar

Abstract

Psychoanalyst Marina Calvo, daughter of Silvia Bleichmar, offers an intimate and reflective account of her mother’s life and intellectual journey, with whom she shared not only family ties but also a deep engagement with psychoanalysis. Throughout the interview, Marina highlights central aspects of Bleichmar’s thought, particularly her unique conception of the psyche and the process of subjectivation, with an emphasis on primal repression understood as a structural condition tied to the inscription of constitutive marks in the subject. She also emphasizes Bleichmar’s ethical and clinical commitment, marked by a consistent effort to question psychoanalytic practice through a non-dogmatic listening attentive to each individual’s singularity. For Marina, the psychoanalysis envisioned by her mother is rooted in neogenesis, the possibility of generating something new, thus opening space for transformation even in the face of repetition. It is, therefore, a living psychoanalysis, resistant to theoretical rigidity and committed to the transformative potential of the analytic process.