Estanislao Zuleta, A Self-taught Psychoanalyst
The name of Estanislao Zuleta is not as well known outside of Colombia, despite the fact that this philosopher and psychoanalyst served as an advisor to the UN and had a considerable impact on culture. In any case, he left a set of writings and conferences that continue to be the object of study for the new generations.
One of the most interesting aspects of Estanislao Zuleta’s career is that he was self-taught. He rejected formal education. He also made orality his main means of communicating knowledge. For this reason, more than writings, the bulk of his work consists of lectures, many of which were transcribed.
Estanislao Zuleta analyzed, primarily, politics, education, and power relations in Latin America. His approach was fundamentally ethical. He was a follower of the theses of Freud and Lacan, but he contributed his own interpretation to their postulates. This is a feature of psychoanalysis: it is said that there are as many psychoanalysis as there are psychoanalysts.
The beginnings 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 the boy was just 5 months old. This accident was very famous and left a very strong mark , since Carlos Gardel, the idol of tango, was on the same plane.
During his youth, Estanislao Zuleta decided to drop out of school, as he considered it an instrument that stagnated abilities, instead of enhancing them. Since then, a self-taught training process began that never ended. He was seduced by the postulates of the classical Greeks, Nietzsche , Marx and Freud. He combined in a very particular way these great strands of thought.
However, his great mentor was Fernando González , the so-called “Philosopher of Otraparte”. This character was a Colombian thinker who was characterized by his sharp reflections and by scandalizing the conservative society of his time. Also for promoting free thought and free expression. Estanislao Zuleta was, perhaps, his most notable disciple.
The fullness of the philosopher and psychoanalyst
Despite having had no formal academic instruction, Estanislao Zuleta was a university professor for most of his life. In 1980 the Universidad del Valle awarded him an honorary doctorate in psychology. Upon receiving this award, Zuleta gave one of the most famous speeches he has ever made. It was called The Praise of Difficulty and it became a famous text that has enlightened entire generations.
His personal life was not exactly a monument to order and measure. Quite the opposite. His excesses with alcohol were famous. The late nights and the gatherings with poets, writers and intellectuals until dawn.
Despite everything, one of the great virtues that everyone always highlighted was his thoroughness in reading. He gave it a preferential place in education, politics, and thought. One of his best known and most appreciated works is precisely the essay On reading . In it he exalts not only the act of reading, but the fundamental importance of digesting what is read.
Everyday life of a vibrant work
Estanislao Zuleta frequented bars and cafes. He sat there and never rejected anyone who wanted to accompany him to talk. Another of his essays makes an apology for the conversation and he was an excellent representative of that art. He proposed that in exchanging ideas with someone who thinks differently, the only ethical thing is to look for all the arguments that allow the interlocutor to be right, instead of upsetting him. If these arguments are not found, one can calmly continue with his way of thinking.
He believed that with psychoanalysis the world could be changed and he ventured several reflections of a psychoanalytic type, applied to society. One of his most interesting works is On the idealization of individual and collective life. There 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, made a biography of Estanislao Zuleta, some years after his death. It is entitled The rebellion of a bourgeois . In it you see a man full of contradictions, but with limitless lucidity and generosity. Currently there is a thought center, dedicated exclusively to studying his work. He is one of those thinkers, not so famous, that, however, is worth knowing and analyzing.
