Aleksander Luria, el Shostakovich de las neurociencias

Resumen

Aleksander Luria, the Shostakovich of neurosciences

Aleksander Romanovich Luria is the best known (along with Lev Vigotsky) of the twentieth century Russian Psychologists. As a young man he adheres to Psychoanalysis, corresponds with Freud until 1927, and settles the Russian Psychoanalytic Society. In 1928, due to political dictations, he is force to renounce and to criticize his psychoanalytic positions and to follow the official Pavlovian paradigm. In 1950, he was again obligated to “self-criticize” his epistemic stance in Neurosciences. His position held a two-fold style in the making of science: “normal” and “romantic,” the latter the one he wish for, leaving two passionate examples of clinical cases filled with detailed descriptions: one amnesic by cerebral lesion and one hiperamnesic. (One very close, according to his own words, to J. L. Borges’ “Funes el memorioso”.) It is sustain here that, besides the real existence of both cases, those presentations are larvae forms of an autobiography where Luria shows the “memory dangers” in an oppressive regime that force him to abandon in public his theoretical and clinical standpoints, the same ones he never cease to adhere in private. In this sense, a comparison can be made with Dmitri Schostakovich, the musician who lived two parallel artistic existences, an “official” and obedient one, as well as one “authentic”, where it is shown a concealed disobedience.

Key words: Luria, Neurosciences (history of), Psychoanalysis, Freud, censorship, memory, oblivion, amnesia, hiperamnesia, Soviet Psychology.