Helí Rafael Morales Ascencio, PhD, 2020
/The pioneering work of Dr. Morales addressed the lack of institutional psychoanalytic work aimed at low-income people in Mexico and illustrates how intersecting psychotherapy and activism can help survivors of violence and their families. He founded the Social Foundation of Psychoanalysis whose analysts provide care for victims of sexual violence and relatives of the 177,884 missing women in Mexico. One in three Mexican women are reportedly experiencing physical or sexual violence. The Foundation’s psychoanalytic listening clinics in Mexico City, Cuernavaca, Morelia, Puebla, and Oaxaca receive people without financial resources or hurt by sexist violence in response to the epidemic levels of physical or sexual violence. The Foundation has established a new and rare relationship between the state and psychoanalysis helping to implement support for rape victims through the Attorneys' Office for Sexual Crimes in Mexico City.
Dr. Morales also authored Another History of Sexuality as well as seven other books, and presented Psychoanalysis with Art at the Prado Museum in Madrid and the Museum of Fine Arts in Mexico. He has also worked with other psychoanalysts to create a new training proposal for analysts carried out in different cities of Mexico and which includes three topologically linked dimensions: social ink of study, supervised clinical practice and personal analysis.
Founder of the Social Foundation of Psychoanalysis in Mexico City, Mexico, Dr. Morales is also a founding member of two other psychoanalysis movements that include The Lacanian Analytical Network and the School of the Psychoanalytic Letter.