Alberto Fergusson
  |
Alberto Fergusson, M.D. is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst working in Colombia and in the U.S. In 1982, he founded the Institute of Accompanied Auto-analysis. An advocate of the human rights of the so-called mentally ill, he developed “Accompanied Self-Rehabilitation”, also called “Accompanied Auto-Analysis” (AA), a unique alternative to traditional psychiatric treatments. He is the Founder FUNGRATA in Colombia and FAS in Washington DC, innovative institutions that develop therapeutic strategies to accompany so-called mentally ill people. He worked on the concepts of “therapeutic towns” and “mutual recovery”. He has been actively involved in the peace process in Colombia both in the negotiations with the National Liberation Army (ELN) and in the Truth Commission. He has worked as a consultant for the Department of Mental Health in Washington DC and in Middlebury (Vermont) teaching the method of “Accompanied Auto-analysis”. Professor Fergusson is full professor of the Universidad del Rosario (Colombia), where he has created the Center for Psychosocial Studies (CEPPS). He is also founding member of the Colombian group “Aperturas en Psicoanálisis” (“Openings in Psychoanalysis”).
In March 2024, he joins the IAS for a one-month writing residency.
Research Interests
Psychiatry; Psychoanalysis; Accompanied Autoanalysis (Selfrehabilitation); Peacebuilding; Peace negotiation; public policies on mental health.
Applications of Accompanied Autoanalysis (Selfrehabilitation) (AA) in novel scenarios
The method of Accompanied Autoanalysis (Selfrehabilitation) (AA) was developed three decades ago and it was initially used for the treatment of homeless people diagnosed with severe mental illness, who were treated at Fungrata, an antipsychiatric institution established in the town of Sopó, near Bogotá, Colombia. The four basic pillars of AA are: (1) ignorance as a recognition of what we do not know; (2) taking leadership of one’s own process; (3) becoming an expert in oneself; and (4) redesigning one’s life system (Fergusson, 2015b). During the peace negotiations of the Colombian government and the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla group, AA was successfully applied in negotiation scenarios and with a diverse, non-clinical, population. AA proved to be a methodology that allowed constructing dialogue between rivals and on very sensitive topics. The application of AA to non-clinical populations was later successfully applied in different group interventions in the Colombian Truth Commission (2019-2022). With the new challenges the world faces today, some of which are common to both Latin America and Europe (migrations, the Covid-19 pandemic, the rise to power of extremist political groups, amongst other), the aim of this paper is to define possible scenarios in which , the methodology of AA could be applied and, also, through the interaction with academic peers and researchers, to view if there are additions or changes in AA that could be introduced in order to enhance these interventions and make them more successful in these specific scenarios. The paper will provide an updated and synthetic version of the AA method (after the publication of the previous book in 2015), and illustrate its application in concrete peace and memory processes in Colombia, specially seeking non repetition.
Key Publications
Fergusson, A. (2015a). Imaginary letters to Freud and other essays. Bogotá: Editorial Universidad del Rosario.
Fergusson, A. (2015b). Accompanied Self-Rehabilitation. Bogotá: Editorial Universidad del Rosario.
Fergusson, A. & Gutiérrez-Peláez, M. (2022). Sándor Ferenczi. A contemporary introduction. London, UK: Routledge.
 New session of the "Paris IAS Ideas" online talk series, with the participation of Alberto Fergusson (Universidad del Rosario, Colombia / Paris IAS Fellow) |
|
|
