López Ibor, Juan José

b. 1908, Sollana (Valencia); d. 1991, Madrid

   Psychiatrist and writer

   López Ibor studied medicine at the University of Valencia, and in 1932, was appointed to the Chair of Forensic Medicine in Santiago de Compostela, becoming professor of Psychiatry in Madrid in 1960. He wrote fourteen books on psychology and was a significant figure in cultural history because of his forays into what he called "collective psychology". His attempts to define and analyse the Spanish character in El español y su complejo de inferioridad (The Spaniard and his Inferiority Complex), which went through five editions by 1960, place him firmly within the ambit of Francoist culture, with its emphasis on essential values, austerity, nationalism, and the identification of Spanishness with Catholicism.

   EAMONN RODGERS