Brazilian Psychology

In this brief commentary on the excellent text by Dr. Cooper, I try to dialogue with the reality of South African psychology, based on its similarities with Brazilian psychology.

I first highlight the fact that Brazil is a country with a little more than 500 years (513) of history, and during almost 400 of those years it lived under a regime of Black slavery. Today, it is the second most unequal country among the G-20 countries, only ahead of South Africa. Alongside a powerful economy, the sixth largest economy in the world today, exists a society oppressed by poverty and inequality, where 70.8% of the extreme poor are Blacks. As in South Africa (Cooper, 2013), this disequilibrium is the main challenge the country needs to confront.

The Black population represents 50.7% of the Brazilian population— 96.7 million people according to the 2010 census. In 2009, the average per capita household income for families headed by Whites was double that observed for families headed by Blacks (Paixão, 2010). The probability that a White person will reach higher education is 2.5 times greater than that for a Black person—21.3% for Whites vis-à-vis 8.3% for Blacks. The mortality of Black children is almost three times greater than that for White children (Paixão, 2010). In Brazil, psychiatrists were the first psychologists and they brought the country the psychology that was being practiced in Europe, just as occurred in South Africa (Cooper, 2013).

Starting in 1890, only 2 years after the abolition of Black slavery, institutions such as asylums and psychiatric hospitals began to appear to shelter a large mass of recently freed ex-slaves who found themselves abandoned in the streets, since there was no compensation at the end of slavery. The psychiatric hospitals were places of exclusion, of confinement, and mainly of extermination of the predominately Black population, where mortality reached 80% to 90% of those interned (Patto, 1997). During this period, bodies that congregated psychiatrists, such as the Brazilian Mental Hygiene League, in Rio de Janeiro, defended the sterilization of “degenerates,” who in reality were those excluded from the current social order. They also defended the idea that marriages should be guided by eugenics and the sequestration of people (Bento & Carone, 2002). Even though the psychology profession had been regulated in 1962, a little before the military coup in the country, the profession was not threatened, as occurred with others, by the military dictatorship that devastated Brazil for decades (from 1964 to 1985). Psychology assumed the biological model striving to sustain the capitalist production mode that was supported by the authoritarian governments, adapting to the dictatorial context, in a manner similar to the connections established by psychology with apartheid in South Africa (Cooper, 2013).

In spite of this context, many Black psychologists, starting in the middle of the last century, demonstrated, through their studies, Eurocentrism in the concepts and methodologies of Brazilian psychology and the impact of racism on the identity and subjectivity of the Black population (Bento & Carone, 2002). It should be highlighted that the psychology profession in Brazil is essentially female (91%), and 65% of women psychologists are between 26 and 45 years of age. The areas of concentration for the profession are clinical (55%), organizational (17%), and educational (11%; Cambauva, Silva, & Ferreira, 2008). The university course lasts 5 years, and the last year is dedicated to practical internships in hospitals, schools, and companies.

Over the past decade, the Brazilian Psychology Board has been challenged by Black psychologists and has started timid actions, such as campaigns showing the impact of racial prejudice on health, and has prepared, in the past decade, guidelines for psychologists of different areas to help them deal with institutional racism. Psychologists have been meeting nationally, and they held the first national meeting of Black psychologists in 2010. The second meeting will take place in 2013.

Starting in 2003, Brazil had a law that required the teaching of the history of Africa and African descendents in Brazil and all schools, including universities, need to address this topic. The creation of a specific discipline within psychology courses that can acknowledge the complex situation we are focused on is more than opportune.