Virgínia Leone Bicudo

Virgínia Leone Bicudo (November 21, 1910 – 2003) was a Brazilian sociologist and psychoanalyst, the first non-physician to be recognized as a psychoanalyst, becoming essential for the consolidation and institutionalization of psychoanalysis in Brazil. In the field of sociology, she pioneered the study of race relations as the theme of her master's thesis in 1945.

Early life Virgínia was born in São Paulo in 1910. She was the daughter of Italian immigrant Giovanna Leone and the descendant of enslaved Black men Theophilo Bicudo. Giovanna was the babysitter of the raised daughter of colonel and senator Bento Augusto de Almeida Bicudo, Theophilo's godfather. With the support of Colonel Bicudo, Theophilo became an employee of the Correios and Telégrafos, and later rose in the institution until he reached the position of director of a São Paulo branch.

Virgínia studied at the Escola Normal Caetano de Campos, in the Luz neighborhood. After the Normal School, she took a course on sanitary education at the Hygiene Institute of São Paulo, in 1932. After graduating, she became an employee of the School Health Service Board of the Education Department, teaching hygiene classes in schools in the state of São Paulo, where she became interested in sociology. She started a course in social sciences at the Escola Livre de Sociologia e Política in 1936.

In 1945 she earned a master's degree in sociology from the Escola Livre de Sociologia e Política, defending the dissertation Estudo de atitudes raciais de pretos e mulatos em São Paulo, the first post-graduate work in Social Sciences in Brazil to deal with race relations. Her dissertation was recently republished and has as merit the refusal of racial formulations of biological nature to think of race as a social category.

She was one of the first black female university professors in Brazil, teaching at the University of São Paulo, Santa Casa, and the Free School of Sociology and Politics.

Psychoanalyst Virgínia Bicudo was the first psychoanalyst without medical training in Brazil. She began her analysis with Dr. Adelheid Lucy Koch, the first analyst accredited by the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) in Brazil. She wrote columns in the press defending her ideas on the social function of the psychoanalyst and took part in the foundation of the Psychoanalysis Society of Brasilia. She also collaborated in the creation of the Revista Brasileira de Psicanálise (RBP). In a 2004 editorial, this journal referred to her as "one of the first Brazilian psychoanalysts with international publications".

Books

BICUDO, Virgínia Leone. Nosso Mundo Mental. São Paulo: Instituição Brasileira de Difusão Cultural, 1956. BICUDO, Virgínia Leone. Comunicação não-verbal como expressão de onipotência e onisciência. Revista Brasileira de Psicanálise, São Paulo, vol.37, n.4, 983–992, 2003.