Nise da Silveira’s Revolution through Affection

Nise da Silveira (1905–1999) was a physician who revolutionized psychiatric treatment in the 1940s, leaving an essential legacy for the history of Brazilian science. Based on the development of humanized techniques and a nonstigmatizing approach to mental health, she achieved unprecedented therapeutic results at the Pedro II National Psychiatric Center (in the district of Engenho de Dentro, Rio de Janeiro), which were recognized, posteriorly, by the international scientific and medical community as pioneering. In December 2022, the public of São Paulo can get to know and delve into her life and work at the show Nise da Silveira: a revolução pelo afeto (Nise da Silveira: The Revolution through Affection), which celebrates and discusses the psychiatrist’s legacy.

The show brings together items from various collections: historical documents including photographs and prints from the psychiatrist’s personal archive, from Brazil’s National Library, and from Brazilian and foreign libraries and universities are shown alongside artworks from the Museu de Imagens do Inconsciente, with a highlight on the artists Adelina Gomes, Emygdio de Barros, Carlos Pertuis and Fernando Diniz, as well as works from Museu Osório César, produced by artists who include Aurora Cursino dos Santos and Ubirajara Ferreira Braga.

Beyond these, there is also a group of works by contemporary artists, such as Lygia Clark and Carlos Vergara, who in part of their oeuvre dealt with the question of the unconscious and delirium. Other artists featured in the show are Alice Brill, Abraham Palatnik, Leon Hirzsman, Margaret de Castro, Rafael Bqueer, Rogério Reis, Tiago Sant’ana and Zé Carlos Garcia.

The show is curated by Estúdio M’Baraká, with consulting from psychiatrist Dr. Vitor Pordeus and from museologist Eurípedes Júnior, who collaborated to develop an immersion along three main axes: being a woman, being revolutionary; context, pain and affection; and Engenho de Dentro: unconsciousness and territory. The show thus proposes an experience that emphasizes the notion of freedom in the treatments proposed by Nise da Silveira and in her own life, while it also approaches the discussion of insanity versus normality that punctuates psychiatric practice.

Nise da Silveira can be considered a revolutionary both in her personal path and in her professional activity. Everything spanning from her decision to forgo motherhood to dedicate herself exclusively to science—in a context when women rarely exercised this activity—to her struggle for the treatment of the mentally ill on an outpatient basis, as well as her introduction of artistic activities in the medical context and her founding of the Museu de Imagens do Inconsciente, are facets of her radicality. She was born into a family of intellectuals, in the city of Maceió, state of Alagoas,(JC1)  in Brazil’s Northeast, and as a child received a humanist education with the presence of music and art, which marked her convictions and attitudes throughout her life. At the age of 16, da Silveira entered the medical college in Salvador, Bahia, being the only woman among 157 male classmates. In the 1930s, she was an activist in the Brazilian Communist Party, but was expelled under the accusation of Trotskyism. In 1936, she was arrested after being denounced for the possession of Marxist books, considered subversive under the Getúlio Vargas government, and spent one year and three months in Frei Caneca Prison. After her release, she lived clandestinely for a time to avoid another imprisonment. In 1944, da Silveira rejoined the public service, now at Hospital Pedro II, in the district of Engenho de Dentro, in Rio de Janeiro’s suburban region, where she took a stand against treatments using electrical shocks, lobotomy and solitary confinement, among other methods, and began the Occupational Therapy Ward, introducing artistic practice as a method of treatment.

Concerning the therapeutic workshops organized with patients of the hospital in Engenho de Dentro, Nise da Silveira states: “One of the least difficult paths I found for accessing the inner world of the schizophrenic person was to give him or her the opportunity to draw, paint or model with total freedom. In the images thus configured we have self-portraits of the psychic situation that are often fragmented and exaggerated, but which are affixed to the paper, canvas or clay. We can always come back to study them. It was by observing them and the images they configure that I learned to respect them as people, and unlearned a lot of what I had learned in traditional psychiatry. My choice was for those workshops.”

It was based on workshops that da Silveira founded, in 1952, the Museu de Imagens do Inconsciente, in Rio de Janeiro, the world’s first museum of its kind—with a collection of images springing from the unconscious, created during treatment processes. Until today, workshops are held that are open to inpatients and outpatients alike, and the museum serves as a center for study and research, besides safeguarding the legacy of Nise da Silveira. It is living proof that the vision of this thinker in the field of mental health went far beyond the medical model—and that affection can be, effectively, revolutionary.