Few things in the realms of the human psyche can prove quite so traumatising as the loss of a high status once enjoyed. The history of Argentina offers a perfect example to counter the naïve yet stubbornly persistent myth of continual progress. But the “decline into silence and doubt” (as lyricist Tim Rice put it in the musical Evita) also finds unsettling parallels in the situation of the Catholic Church today. Perhaps it’s no surprise then that Buenos Aires has the highest proportion of psychoanalysts of any major world city.