Marialzira Perestrello: woman of vanguard and pioneer of psychoanalysis

• Grant number: 14/18045-3
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Duration: February 01, 2015 - January 31, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Jorge Luís Ferreira Abrão
• Grantee: Jorge Luís Ferreira Abrão
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Letras (FCL-ASSIS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Assis. Assis , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Psychoanalysis began to be disseminated in Brazil from the 1920s, by precursors that propagated Freudian discipline in different cultural contexts, such as education, law, literature and psychiatry. In the mid-1940s, emerged an effective clinical practice through professional pioneers who underwent psychoanalytic training abroad, and the institutionalization of the psychoanalytic movement, with the creation of Psychoanalytic Societies to form psychoanalysts in the country. Among the pioneers of psychoanalysis in Brazil, there is a female presence, not only by the pioneering nature of acting, but also for the leadership and influence exerted, among which are: Virginia Bicudo in Sao Paulo, Zaira Martins in Rio Grande do Sul and Marialzira Perestrello in Rio de Janeiro. Thus, the psychiatrist Marialzira Perestrello, after completing her training at the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association in 1948, constitutes the first woman qualified as a psychoanalyst to exercise clinical practice in Rio de Janeiro and, in 1957, participated in the founding of the Brazilian Psychoanalytic Society of Rio de Janeiro. Thereby, this research aims to carry out a biographical study of the psychoanalyst Marialzira Perestrello that allows inserting her work in cultural and kinetic Brazilian contexts in the twentieth century. As methodological support it was used the foundations of the researches in historiography of psychoanalysis to execute a qualitative study of a historical nature that will employ oral resources, through interviews with the biographee as well as professionals, relatives and friends who knew her during her professional career, documentary sources, by survey at the institutions in which she worked and analysis of her extensive theoretical work in books, newspapers and magazines. Thus it will be possible to trace a biographical profile of the psychoanalyst that articulates her professional practice with scientific and cultural context of the twentieth century, as a woman and psychiatrist. (AU)