In these lines I wish to present some reflections on a book which has recently published the Pontifical University of Mexico. This is a book about the relationship between philosophy and psychoanalysis. It arises from the awareness that philosophical work has to take into account the contributions of this psychological discipline. I have written it in co-authored with Dr. Ricardo Blanco Beledo.
I also hope that the presentation of this book will also serve as a tribute to my friend Ricardo Blanco, who passed away in May of this year. This book, which we wrote together, attempts to bring together philosophy and psychoanalysis through hermeneutics. Indeed, as we argue there, it is a profession in which interpretation is very much involved. And hermeneutics is precisely the branch of philosophy that teaches how to interpret. And in psychoanalysis, the main work is that of interpretation.
Interpretation is also used a lot in philosophy. That is why hermeneutics has had a strong place in our days. There has been a hermeneutic turn, but mainly in postmodernity; only there it has been very relativistic, which leads us to seek a proportional balance. A different, moderate hermeneutics is needed.
For this reason, in the book I am talking about, Ricardo Blanco and I propose a specific conceptual instrument, which is analogical hermeneutics. Hermeneutics, because we analyze the process of interpreting, and analogical, because it goes beyond the extremes of univocity and equivocity. Univocal interpretation is rarely attainable, almost never; it is too pretentious. And equivocal interpretation is useless, it is extremely arbitrary. On the other hand, an analogical interpretation can gather aspects of other interpretations, and harmonize them, to obtain a richer meaning.
A univocal hermeneutic aims at completely exact interpretations, which is very difficult to achieve and is rarely achieved. For it, only one interpretation is valid. An equivocal hermeneutic has ambiguous interpretations, which are almost useless. It admits practically all interpretations as valid. Unlike them, an analogical hermeneutic does not aim at the exactness of the univocal, but neither does it collapse into the inexactitude of the equivocal. It proposes what is humanly attainable, a prudent middle ground or mean.
This is what Ricardo Blanco and I have offered to psychoanalysis in our book. We show that this therapeutic discipline has to do with philosophy. For example, with philosophical anthropology, since there is always an underlying conception of the human being; and also with ethics, since we cannot escape the moral responsibility that all rational and free human action has.
As a reminder of my co-author, I will now try to outline some of the work that he and I did. Ricardo Blanco was, at the same time, a philosopher and a psychologist, specializing in psychoanalysis. A good thinker and psychotherapist, he did a lot of good throughout his life. I will talk a little about his biography and bibliography, although incompletely, selecting only what interests me most.
We met at the Universidad Iberoamericana (UIA) in 1982, and since then we have had a very close friendship, spanning more than forty years. When the UIA moved to Santa Fe, he left, but stayed at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), where we continued to see each other, since we were both professors there. And later we founded the Hermeneutics Seminar at the national university.
Ricardo Francisco Blanco Beledo was born in Minas, Uruguay, in 1945. He attended high school at the “JA Lavalleja” High School in his hometown between 1964 and 1966. Later, he entered the “Artigas” Teachers’ Institute (IPA) in Montevideo, where he obtained the title of Professor in Philosophy in 1972. He also completed studies as an intern in Educational Sciences at the same institute.
In 1973, she received an equivalent master’s degree in “Psychological Services” from the Department of Psychological Services of the National Council of Primary and Normal Education of Montevideo.
Due to the political situation in Uruguay, she emigrated to Mexico in 1975. Here she continued her education at the Universidad Iberoamericana (UIA). At this institution, she obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology with Honors in 1983, a Master’s Degree in Guidance and Human Development, also with Honors, in 1981, and a Doctorate in Guidance and Human Development, also with Honors, in 1986.
He specialized in psychoanalysis, which he saw through his philosophical knowledge. We were friends from the moment I met him. He taught psychology at the UIA and philosophy at UNAM. At the latter, he worked at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters and at the Institute of Philological Research, where I founded the Hermeneutics Seminar, and he was one of its pioneers and pillars.
At both the UIA and the UNAM, Blanco taught hermeneutics, and he strongly supported my proposal for an analogical hermeneutics. That is, one that is based on the concept of analogy, and that avoids the extremes of univocalism and equivocism. But we always thought of it as a hermeneutics based on ontology, because without it it is only linguistic, it has no basis in reality. Likewise, we saw it related to ethics, because that is what happens with all significant human action.
I wrote some books on philosophy and psychoanalysis with Ricardo Blanco. He was a psychoanalyst by profession, and thanks to him I taught a year at the Círculo Psicoanalítico de México, specifically on hermeneutics (analogical hermeneutics applied to psychotherapy). That was when José Perrés was the director of the Círculo, but I had already met the founder of that center, Armando Suárez. The latter had invited me to give that class, but he died of a heart attack very soon; so I forgot about it. But Ricardo Blanco mentioned it to Perrés, and that is why I was invited to give that course on hermeneutics. I was only able to give it for one year, because I was loaded with class commitments.
The books I wrote with Ricardo Blanco were the following: with him alone, Hermeneutics, Psychoanalysis and Literature (Mexico: UNAM, 1990), as well as Facets: Psychoanalysis, Psychology, Philosophy and Hermeneutics (Mexico: Pontifical University of Mexico, 2024); with him and his wife Ada Luz Sierra, Hermeneutics and Analogy in Psychoanalysis. A Psychological Approximation (Mexico: UNAM, 2011); and Topics of Hermeneutics and Psychoanalysis (Mexico: Ed. Torres Asociados, 2015).
In the book that the Pontifical University of Mexico has just published, we have tried to use some ideas from psychoanalysis for philosophical reflection. For example, one cannot ignore the unconscious part of the human being, which intervenes in his actions; however, this does not annul freedom. Also, the time has passed when this psychological current totally rejected religion; there are many of its practitioners who are believers. In addition, interpretation is used in this school, and the special theory that we propose in these works: analogical hermeneutics, has already been applied in psychoanalytic therapy, with considerable benefit.
Ricardo Blanco and I have had the firm conviction that analogical hermeneutics is useful for psychoanalysis. Simply because Freud had been very analogical. At first he wanted to be a univocalist, that is, a positivist, like his teacher Brücke and his friend Fliess, both doctors. And the scientists of that time tended to stick to positivism. But Freud read the romantics (Goethe and Schiller), who were quite equivocal. Well, by combining both forces, he became an analogist.
Furthermore, analogical hermeneutics fits very well with psychoanalysis, because Freud had conceived his proposal as a discipline of interpretation; and, furthermore, he gave it a character that went beyond univocity, with its openness, and equivocity, with its desire for scientificity. Therefore, he proposed a kind of analogical interpretation: it had the openness of equivocity, but with the seriousness of univocity. That is the analogy.
Blanco also carried out extensive work in support of analogical hermeneutics. I can highlight these eight books of which he was the coordinator: Contexts of analogical hermeneutics (Mexico: Ed. Torres Asociados, 2006); Analogical hermeneutics, communication and multiculturalism (Mexico: Ed. Torres Asociados, 2007); Analogical hermeneutics, philosophy, psychology and pedagogy (Mexico: Ed. Torres Asociados, 2007); Analogical hermeneutics and contemporary culture (Mexico: Ed. Torres Asociados, 2009); Analogical hermeneutics and philosophical criticism (Mexico: Ed. Torres Asociados, 2009); Praxis of analogical hermeneutics (Mexico: Ed. Torres Asociados, 2010); The model of analogy and some scientific disciplines (Mexico: Ed. Torres Asociados, 2010); Hermeneutics Docens, Hermeneutics Utens (Mexico: UNAM, 2011). Many essays on this interpretative instrument were collected in them.
This was the result of the work he did from 2006 to 2011, during his stay at the Hermeneutics Seminar that we founded at the Institute of Philological Research at UNAM, from which he retired. He was an excellent guide for those of us who were there at that time. We had discussions with him about hermeneutics and psychoanalysis. All of this fostered our creativity for research.
Ricardo Blanco always supported analogical hermeneutics, which I launched in 1993 and which has been cultivated and developed for more than thirty years. He applied it, above all, to psychoanalysis, an area in which others found this conceptual tool useful. But he also helped organize round tables and colloquia about it.
Already in his professional theses or dissertations, for his master’s degree in human development and his doctorate in psychology, he established the relevance of hermeneutics for psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. In these practices, interpretation takes place, and it is interpretation that intervenes to modify behaviors and to achieve curative change. He was, therefore, one of the leading figures of hermeneutics in our circles. Later, he insisted, supporting me, that analogical hermeneutics was appropriate for psychoanalysis, by its very essence.
Ricardo Blanco also worked in pedagogy, specifically in the Department of Didactics (DIDAC) at the Universidad Iberoamericana. The result of his research was the book Docencia universitaria y desarrollo humano (University Teaching and Human Development) (Mexico: Alhambra Mexicana, – UIA, 1982). For both therapy and pedagogy he used Eugene Gendlin’s Focusing method. He maintained correspondence with this psychologist, and received praise from him.
Everything was converging towards the application of analogical hermeneutics to psychotherapy. I had launched this philosophical proposal of analogical hermeneutics after multiple dialogues with him. He always supported me in the creation and development of this piece of Mexican philosophy. It is an example of how philosophy needs dialogue, that it is in friendly conversation that philosophical creativity arises.
Now, analogical hermeneutics is a whole movement. It has been recognized as Mexican by the historian of philosophy in Mexico Guillermo Hurtado; it has been recognized as Latin American by the Latin Americanists Mario Magallón and Juan De Dios Escalante; and the eminent Canadian hermeneutist Jean Grondin has said that it is worldwide.
In all these endeavors and works, projects and achievements, Ricardo Blanco and I were companions, colleagues and friends. We often had to face opposition to our ideas, but we overcame them with courage and determination. He was always supportive of me. That is why I want to pay him this tribute, in a very heartfelt and cordial way. He was a great academic and psychotherapist, but, above all, an excellent friend.
