Estanislao Zuleta, A Self-taught Psychoanalyst
Estanislao Zuleta’s name is not very famous outside Colombia, although this philosopher and psychoanalyst has been appointed UN advisor and has achieved considerable cultural influence. He left us a set of texts and lectures that continue to be the subject of study for future generations.
One of the most interesting aspects of Estanislao Zuleta’s trajectory is that he was a self-taught person who rejected formal education. It also made orality its main means of communicating knowledge. Therefore, more than texts, most of his work is made up of lectures, many of them transcribed.
Estanislao Zuleta primarily analyzed politics, education and power relations in Latin America. His approach was fundamentally ethical. He was sympathetic to the theses of Freud and Lacan, but gave his own interpretation to their ideas. This is one of the characteristics of psychoanalysis: it is said that there are as many psychoanalysis as there are psychoanalysts.
The beginning of Estanislao Zuleta
Estanislao Zuleta was born in Medellín (Colombia) in 1935. His family had a clear orientation towards books and culture. The father died in a plane crash when he was just 5 months old. This accident was very famous and left a very strong mark, because Carlos Gardel, the tango idol, was on the same plane.
During his youth, Estanislao Zuleta decided to leave school because he considered it an instrument that stagnated his abilities instead of enhancing them. Since then, a self-taught training process began that never ended. He was seduced by the teachings of the ancient Greeks, Nietzsche, Marx and Freud. He combined these great strands of thought in a very particular way.
His great mentor was Fernando González, known as ‘El Brujo de Otraparte’. This Colombian thinker was characterized by his intelligent reflections and for scandalizing the conservative society of the time, in addition to encouraging free thought and free expression. Estanislao Zuleta was perhaps his most famous disciple.
The plenitude of the philosopher and psychoanalyst
Despite not having a formal academic background, Estanislao Zuleta was a university professor for most of his life. In 1980, the University of the Valley (Cali, Colombia) awarded him the title of Doctor Honoris Causa in Psychology. Upon receiving this award, Zuleta delivered one of the most famous speeches he ever delivered. It was called “The Praise of Difficulty” and it became a famous text that inspired many generations.
His personal life was not exactly a monument to order and moderation, quite the opposite. His excesses with alcohol were famous, as well as sleepless nights and conversations with poets, writers and intellectuals until dawn.
Despite everything, one of his great virtues that everyone always highlighted was his rigor in reading. He gave her a privileged place in education, politics and thought. One of his best known and most appreciated works is, precisely, the ‘Essay on Reading’. In it, the psychoanalyst exalts not only the fact of reading, but the fundamental importance of digesting what is read.
The daily life of a vibrant work
Estanislao Zuleta frequented bars and cafes. There he sat and never turned away anyone who wanted to join him in conversation. Another of his essays makes an apology for conversation, as he was an excellent representative of this art. He proposed that, when exchanging ideas with someone who thinks differently, the only ethical behavior is to seek all the arguments that allow us to agree with the interlocutor, instead of contradicting him. If these arguments are not found, you can quietly continue with your way of thinking.
He believed that with psychoanalysis it was possible to change the world, and he ventured into various psychoanalytic-type reflections applied to society. One of his most interesting works is ‘On the Idealization of Individual and Collective Life’. In it, he shows that trying to build “social paradises” only leads to creating authoritarian societies, in the name of perfection.
One of his great friends, Jorge Vallejo, wrote a biography of Estanislao Zuleta a few years after his death. It received the title of ‘ The Rebellion of a Bourgeois’. In it, we glimpse a man full of contradictions, but with limitless lucidity and generosity.
Currently, there is a current of thought dedicated exclusively to studying his work. He is a thinker who, although not that famous, is worth knowing and analyzing.
