PARES | Spanish Archives

Identification

Type:

Person

Preferred form:

López Ibor, Juan José (1906-1991)Other forms

Fechas de existencia:

Sollana (Valencia, España) 1906-04-22 - Madrid (España) 1991-04-22

History:

Spanish psychiatrist.

Born in 1906 in Sollana (Valencia). Son of the school teacher Miguel López Marco, and brother of Miguel and Vicente López Ibor. At the age of 14, he entered the college Beato Juan de Ribera in Burjassot, and later on, he studied Medicine in Valencia's University, where after meeting Freud, he discovered his passion for psychiatry. He obtained his doctorate in Madrid's Central University in 1930, with the thesis Las neurosis traumáticas en medicina legal, and expanded his formation in psychiatry in European universities (Munich, Paris, Zurich and Berlin) thanks to a scholarship of the Valencian deputation.

In 1932, he started his teaching career as a Legal Medicine professor in Santiago de Compostela, then passing through Valencia, where he worked with Juan Peset Aleixandre (1886-1941). In 1940, he was named Psychiatry teacher in Ramón y Cajal Institute (CSIC) and boss of the Neuropsychiatry service of the General Hospital of Madrid. In 1952, he got the professorship of Psychiatry in Salamanca's University, and in 1960, the same in the Complutense University, where he directed the Psychiatry and Medical Psychology Department until his retirement in 1976.

Founder of the Society of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy and of the Spanish Society of Psychiatry, this last one together with Antonio Vallejo-Nágera, López Ibor has a great influence in the psychiatry development in Spain, but also at international level. He chaired the IV World Congress of Psychiatry in Madrid in 1966, and was secretary and president of the Psychiatry World Association. His great labour was rewarded in 1951, when he joined the Royal Academy of Medicine, and in 1959, with the award of the Grand Cross of the Civil Order of Health, and in 1966, with the Grand Cross of the Order of Civil Merit; he was also named doctor honoris causa of several university centres.

He was founder and director of the magazine Actas Españolas de Psiquiatría, subsequently renamed as Actas Luso-Españolas de Neurología y Psiquiatría, and wrote numerous works, among which are: Lo vivo y lo muerto del psicoanálisis. Hacia una nueva psicoterapia ( 1933), La agonía del psicoanálisis ( 1945) , Las neurosis como enfermedades del ánimo ( 1966) y Freud y sus ocultos dioses ( 1976), between others. Between the years 1965 and 1970, he collaborated with the editorial Gredos, directing the collection 'Biblioteca de Psicología y Psicoterapia'. He also founded with Pedro Laín Entralgo and Francisco Marco Merenciano, the magazine Norma .

Married to Socorro Aliño Testor, with whom he had twelve children, between them there was Juan José López-Ibor Aliño (1941-2015), who followed his steps and founded the Foundation Juan José López-Ibor, which holds in its custody the personal library of Juan José López Ibor.

He passed away in Madrid in 1991.