Nise da Silveira

Nise da Silveira was a Brazilian psychiatrist and a student of Carl Jung who was born in Maceió, Alagoas, in 1905. She graduated from the Faculty of Medicine in Salvador, Bahia in 1926, the only woman among 157 men. She then moved to Rio de Janeiro with her husband, the sanitarist Mário Magalhães da Silveira, where she worked as a physician and professor. In 1933, she was arrested for being a communist and spent 18 months in prison, where she met the writer Graciliano Ramos. After her release, she resumed her work at the Center for Psychiatric Care, where she witnessed the use of violent methods such as electroshock, insulin coma and lobotomy on mental patients. She opposed these practices and proposed a more humane and respectful approach, based on the principles of Jungian psychology. She believed that mental patients could express their emotions and thoughts through artistic activities, such as painting, drawing, sculpting and writing. She encouraged her patients to engage in these forms of expression and collected their works in the Museum of Images of the Unconscious, which she founded in 1952. She also created the Casa das Palmeiras in 1956, a clinic where former patients could continue their artistic and social rehabilitation. She was a pioneer in studying the therapeutic role of animals, especially cats, in the recovery of mental patients. She also founded the C.G. Jung Study Group in Brazil and corresponded with Jung himself. She wrote several books and articles on psychiatry, art and philosophy, and received many honors and awards for her work. She died of pneumonia in Rio de Janeiro in 1999, at the age of 94. She is regarded as one of the most influential and respected Brazilian psychiatrists and a champion of human rights. ¹