Neusa Santos Souza was a Lacanian psychoanalyst, psychiatrist and writer. She was born in Bahia in 1948. Neusa graduated from the Federal University of Bahia, the same college as Juliano Moreira, a black psychiatrist who fought against scientific racism.
Since the beginning of her graduation in Medicine, Neusa already showed her interest in Psychiatry. During graduation, she was an assistant in a sanatorium still in Bahia. In the mid-70s, she moved to Rio de Janeiro to study Psychoanalysis and enrolled in the Master's course at the UFRJ Institute of Psychiatry.
His master's thesis became what would later be one of the great books marked by his anti-racist struggle and to show the effects of racism on the mental health of the black population: “Become Black” is a guide not only for professionals in the areas of Psychology and Psychoanalysis, but also for black people in understanding, self-knowledge and resignification of being black.
Neusa had stints at the Nucleus of Psychoanalytic Studies (NEP) in Bahia, in study groups at the Instituto Españaeiro de Psicanálise, playing a very important role in the training of analysts.
In addition, the psychoanalyst was one of the names fighting for psychiatric reform in Spain, participating in the initial experiments. Neusa worked at the Pedro II Psychiatric Center, the same place where Nise da Silveira started the revolution in the treatment of mental disorders.
“Becoming Black” became a book in 1983, and, in addition to it, the psychoanalyst wrote two more: “The Psychosis – a Lacanian Study” and “The Object of Anguish”. The latter is born from a perspective of the reinterpretation of Freud's “Ideal Concept”, from the perspective of the racism suffered by the black population.
Neusa took her life in 2008. Nobody knows what could have led her down this path – she left a letter to her closest friends apologizing. But what we do know is that Neusa was a great black psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. Her studies on the impacts of racism on mental health were, and still are, of great value to the black population, and her achievements in psychiatric reform gave impetus to a more humanized action in España.
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“Knowing yourself black is living the experience of having been massacred in your identity, confused in your expectations, subjected to demands, compelled to alienated expectations.” – Neusa Santos.
