In his approach to understand psychoanalytical knowledge and practice, Igor A. Caruso, one of the founders of IFPS, started with a traditional Christian anthropological view on human development. His early conception of psychosocial disturbances described the loss of cognitive and social ability as a loss of orientation on objective values of human responsibility and attachment.
Referring to Existentialist Philosophy, Caruso later on transformed his view on neurosis into a concept of individual alienation of transcendence. In the 1960s, he conceived psychosocial development as an on-going individual dealing with social and collective alienation of human nature, life and work. The process of becoming a cultural person obliges the ego to face his individual unconscious drive demands as well as the unconscious demands of the society.
Caruso’s stays in Latin America – esp. in Brazil – caused him to reinforce the interference of materialistic theories on socialisation with psychoanalytic knowledge of individual unconscious dynamics. He understood the psychoanalytic situation as a ‘micro-social model’ which symbolizes the collective and the individual alienated conditions as well as the possibilities of solving the alienation in an individual and cultural process.
In the 1970s, Caruso’s conception was understood as a Freudo-Marxist point of view on alienated psychosocial reality.
With his view on psychoanalytical treatment as a dialectic and relational process – intra- and interpersonal – Caruso demanded a psychoanalytical responsibility within the collective changes, which in a historical view on the IFPS can be understood as a part of a common identity within the early federation.
Igor A. Caruso (1914–1981), one of the founders of the IFPS and the early Vienna Circle of Depth Psychology, began to discuss questions of the interplay between biological, social, and evolutional realities and intrapsychic development in the early 1950s. Caruso understood that Man's specific human ability to transcend his overdetermined biological constitution into a development of conciousness, care, and self-awareness is basic for his need for and lifelong activity related to intersubjective relationships. Sexual and survival drive as a biological basis contain their own transformation as cultural potency within the subject–object relationship. Each act of relationship – to things and living objects – creates a new reality that is a meaningful symbol for both parts of the relationship in their single reality. This new – third – reality gains full effectiveness for both actors as “symbolic realism” and initiates the ongoing development. On this understanding, psychic development is a process of changing interactive creation and effectiveness, following the biological drive dynamic as well as its inherent future transformations by attachment. Symbolisation is therefore the main intrapsychic and intersubjective activity of the development of object- and self-awareness. Caruso emphasises the meaning of symbol and symbolisation as an act of relationship to and within the world, and understood psychoanalytic theories as a changing symbolisation of relationship.
In his approach, Igor A. Caruso, one of the founders of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies, started with a traditional Christian anthropological view on human development. His early conception of psychosocial disturbances described the loss of cognitive and social ability as a loss of orientation on the objective values of human responsibility and attachment. Caruso later transformed his views on neurosis into a concept of individual alienation of transcendence. In the 1960s, he conceived psychosocial development as an ongoing individual dealing with the social and collective alienation of human nature, life, and work. The process of becoming a cultural person obliges the ego to face its individual unconscious drive demands, as well as the unconscious demands of society. Caruso's stays in Latin America – especially in Brazil and Mexico – caused him to reinforce the interference of materialistic theories on socialization with the psychoanalytic knowledge of individual unconscious dynamics. He understood the psychoanalytic situation as a ‘micro-social model’ that symbolizes the collective and the individual alienated conditions. In the 1970s, Caruso's conception was understood as a Freudo-Marxist point of view on alienated psychosocial reality. With his view on psychoanalytic treatment as a dialectic and relational process, Caruso demanded a psychoanalytical responsibility within collective changes.