Ines Hercovich

Activist, Agnostic, Concerned citizen, Idea generator, Jewish, Parent, Scientist, Writer/Editor

I was born in September 1946 in the city of Buenos Aires. I attended the Universidad de Buenos Aires where I got my degree as Sociologist. While I was studying I got married (to a psychoanalyst) and had my first child. After finishing my career I entered the Escuela de Psicología Social and got my degree as Social psychologist. At that time I worked as secretary and editor for various well known psychoanalysts. I was an activist at the university but then I was one of the starters of the feminist movement in Argentina. In 1978 I was hired by the Ministerio de Salud Pública de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires where I was in charge of an area called Programación in the Dirección General de Políticas y Planes. I stayed there for five years and then, my life changed as I applied for a scholarship to start working on women's issues and received one from the University of Stockholm, Swedish Agency for Research Cooperation, a scholarship that was granted to me for 10 consecutive years. I also received, this time for six years, another scholarship from the Institute of Social Studies, Ministry of Foreign Affairs from the Netherlands.The subject of my inquiries was sexual violence against woman, a subject totally denied by that time. I focused my work on rape committed on adult women. I analyzed the elements present in the representations of rape in lawyers, judges, attorney; medical doctors, nurses and psychologists, people in general and compared them with the elements present in what the victims said about their experience and how they said it. To do this I used different techniques for Speech Analysis.This helped me understand why women are so reluctant to denounce or even talk about their violation and also to ask for help. It came out to be that social representations of a victim of rape pretend they were helpless, totally invalid on one side, or else they "asked for it", were active and responsible, actually guilty. Neither one of the alternatives has anything in common with the experience of rape as it is lived by the victims. Therefore it is impossible for most of the professionals to help them the way these women needed to be helped. So I found SAViAS the first organization to help them from a totally different stand. I also trained people at various hospitals. This continued up to 1995. On 1997 I published a book called El enigma sexual de la violación and I'm still publishing different articles on this matter in different books and magazines. During all those years I was invited to several international meetings on women and health and gave lectures in several countries such as The Netherlands, The Philippines, Uruguay, Mexico, Chile and, of course, Argentina. After writing the book and having discovered that I love to analyze speech, I started my career as coach for people who want to write and also as translator from English into Spanish. These are my main activities at present. In all these years I had two more children, became a widow and now I have four grand children.

I'm a member of two discussion groups where we read philosophers as if we were discussing in person with them, trying to discover and get rid of academical blind spots.

1) There is always another way of interpreting the same situation. Always choose the most benevolent one. On many occasions, if you were wrong, it is very possible that you turn up side down the events and the intentions.2) If you want to help somebody, please, ask him/her first if he/she wants to be helped and in which way. One never knows better than the other person what is good for him/her.

Research - Arts/Culture/Education

My son was one of the organizers of the first TEDx held in Buenos Aires. Since then, he and his group organized 10 events, one better than the other. I'm incredibly proud of him. Last year he suggested me to organize one and here I am.

staying alive!!!