Abstract
Maria Rita Mendes Leal died on 18 April 2019 aged 97. She had been a training and supervising member of the Portuguese Society of Group Analysis and, since 2015, its Honorary Member. She was also a prominent professor and scientific researcher on child psychological development and education at the Psychology and Education Sciences Faculty at the Lisbon Classical University since 1980.
In 1960 she initiated her personal training with Professor and Dr. Eduardo Luís Cortesão, introducer of group analysis to Portugal in 1956. In 1961, she was accepted as a full member of the British Psychological Society. In 1964, she became a full member of the Portuguese Group Analytic Society (SPG).
During this period, she travelled to London and visited the Tavistock Clinic through a personal invitation from Professor John Bowlby, who expressed his affinity with her proposed psychotherapeutic intervention: ‘dialogic relationship’ psychotherapy practised at the consultation rooms at the Centro de Paralisia Cerebral ‘Calouste Gulbenkian’ (Lisbon).
Meanwhile, she developed a group analytic concept: the ‘Internal Relational Matrix’, very much valued by Foulkes, Cortesão and followers. This conceptualization was presented at the Group Analytic Panel and Correspondence (former version of the Journal Group Analysis) in 1968.
During this period she presented on the ‘mutually contingent exchange’ (similar to Malcolm Pines’ ‘mirroring’ concept).
Meanwhile, she had been very much involved in GAS projects. From 1972 to 1975 she was awarded Masters and PhD degrees in comparison education by London University, under the guidance of Professor Mildred Marshal, former collaborator of Charlotte Buehler. There, she was approved with distinction and praised by the jury with a recommendation for publication of her research work: Socialization Processes in the young child, which focused on the initial development of the social relationship capacities in children, and how the mind structures are at the pre-symbolic level.
In 1976 she was invited to integrate with the GAS London Management Committee. In 1981 she was awarded the Foulkes Prize.
In 1983, Malcolm Pines published one of her articles Why Group Analysis works in his book The Evolution of Group Analysis (Pines, 2000).
In 1992, she started a collaboration with the Editorial Board of the Portuguese Group Analytic Society’s Journal: Grupanálise.
In 1993, she published a book which was co-edited with the Portuguese Society of Group Analysis: Grupanálise: um percurso, 1963–93 (Leal, 1994).
She belonged to the International Advisory Panel of the International Journal of Group-Analytic Psychotherapy (Group Analysis) for more than 20 years. She was the elected President of the Portuguese Group Analytic Society from 1995 to 1997. In 2015 she became an Honorary member of SPG, attending its scientific and training events until 2018.
Leal was born in Rome in 1921. She was the youngest daughter of two children from Augusto Mendes Leal and Maria de Barros e Sá Mendes Leal. Until the age of 12, her family did not stay in the same place for more than two years because of her father’s professional obligations—he belonged to the diplomatic department of the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The family lived in Rome twice (1921–1923 and 1925–1928); in Washington twice (1923–24 and 1928–1930), as well as France, England and Switzerland. During their stay in Washington she attended the Montessori Basic School (1928–30). Afterwards when she returned to Portugal, she attended the German School (Lisbon) from 1938–1939.
In 1940, she started her professional life, as a child educator, at the Queen Elizabeth School which followed the Montessori orientation, under the guidance of Miss Lester. Meanwhile, as a working student, she entered the Humanities Faculty of the Lisbon Classical University and achieved her diploma in philosophical and historical sciences while she was attending graduated studies in pedagogy and education administration (1940–45).
In 1950–51, after her recovery from a rheumatic disease in her vertebral column, she worked for several publishers, mainly as a translator and text editor (1951–55).
In 1960 she achieved her PhD in Philosophical and Historical Sciences focusing modern concepts of dynamic psychology correlating them with Late Middle Age philosophical thought: ‘A unidade psicológica da pessoa humana segundo Santo Agostinho’ (1960), where she emphasized her questioning of the essential basis of the interpersonal relationship.
She was invited to become a Second Docent at the Humanities Faculty at Lisbon Classical University to run philosophical anthropology in the Philosophy Department and also in the Pedagogy and Education Administration Department.
Between 1958 and 1973, she became Head Principal for Education and Learning in another very old social work institution: Casas de Asilo da Infância Desvalida.
During the Portuguese Revolution (1974/75), she accepted an invitation to become an Invited Docent at the Instituto Sedes Sapientiae from Pontifícia Universidade Católica (São Paulo/Rio de Janeiro) to teach dynamic psychology and to supervise children and adult psychotherapies.
In 1980, she returned to Portugal on being invited to assume the scientific and pedagogical co-ordination of clinical psychology at Lisbon Classical University. There, she ran several scientific projects: Psychological Consultation of the Child and Adolescent, Research in Clinical Psychology and several Case Studies. In 1981, she was elected President of the Scientific Council of Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences and accessed to the highest degree in Docent Career (Professora Catedrática).
In 1991, she became an Emeritus Professor, remaining linked to scientific research and clinical supervision.
She wrote several books and chapters on child and adolescent development and group analytic psychotherapy.
‘The fundamental is the pursuit of what is the relationship with the other, the search to find oneself’ (Maria Rita Mendes Leal).