Both Alphonse and Josephine, his parents, disowned their bourgeois origins, embracing progressive ideas and a rebellious attitude to cultural norms of the time, both were fans of "rebel" poetry such as Rimbaud and Baudelaire, with strong socialist convictions and rejected racism and sexist stereotypes that prevailed at the start of the 20th century.

Thus, they had to move to Corrientes, a city on the Paraná River, with permanent flood and forest environment, a place where he spent his childhood.

He began his practice as a psychiatrist at the El Asilo de Torres (Tower Asylum), located in the vicinity of Luján, Buenos Aires.

Later, he moved to Buenos Aires, where he would work in another sanatorium and as a journalist in the newspaper La Crítica ("The Critique") (1930–1931), in this period he became interested in poetry, paying particular attention to the French Poète maudit and Isidore Ducasse.

When he finished his studies, he began working at the Hospice of Mercy, now known as Interdisciplinary Psicoasistencial Hospital "Jose Tiburcio Borda", a place which played professionally for 15 years.