Virgínia Leone Bicudo: Google celebrates 112th birthday of Brazilian psychoanalyst

Happy Birthday Virgínia Leone Bicudo!!!

Today Google celebrates the 112th birthday of Virgínia Leone Bicudo, the renowned Brazilian psychoanalyst and socialist with a fascinating doodle. She is the first non-physician to be recognized as a psychoanalyst, becoming essential for the construction and institutionalization of psychoanalysis in Brazil.

Virgínia Leone Bicudo was born on November 21, 1910 in São Paulo. She was the daughter of Italian immigrant Giovanna Leone and descendant of enslaved blacks Theophilo Bicudo. After Medical schools denied his application on the basis of his skin color, her father decided to invest in his children’s education.

Virgínia Leone Bicudo prioritized studying at a young age. In 1930, she graduated from Escola Caetano de Campos. She completed a course in public health education at the Instituto de Higiene de São Paulo in 1932 before taking a job as a psychiatric attendant. She quickly earned a promotion and worked as a supervisor in the Infant Oriented Clinic in São Paulo.

Virgínia Leone Bicudo was a pioneer in dealing with the study of racial relations as the theme of her Master's dissertation in 1945. Her dissertation was the first postgraduate work in Brazil that focused on race relations. This earned her an invitation to participate in a UNESCO research project analyzing race in different countries. Her research concluded Brazil was not a racial democracy, which contradicted her advisor’s beliefs, and caused her work to go unpublished.

After returning to Brazil, Virgínia Bicudo was treated like an imposter in academic circles because she did not have a medical degree. She moved to London in 1959 and studied with some of the most prominent psychoanalysts of the time. She transmitted lectures to Brazil through the BBC to publicize her work.

Virgínia founded the Institute of Psychoanalysis of the Brasília Society of Psychoanalysis in 1959 after returning to Brazil. She also hosted “Our Mental World,” one of Brazil’s most popular radio programs, while writing a column in the newspaper under the same title. Bicudo’s efforts and resilience laid the groundwork for generations of women psychoanalysts to come.

Leone Bicudo died in 2003 at the age of 93. Google today honors her 112th birthday by dedicating a doodle.

Sources: Google doodles, Wikipedia