{{Short description|Brazilian psychiatrist}} '''Arthur Ramos de Araujo Pereira''' (July 7, 1903 - October 31, 1949) was a psychiatrist, professor, and psychologist<ref name=":0" /> who played a major role in introducing and promoting psychoanalysis in Brazil.<ref name=":1" /> Ramos challenged the White supremacist and eugenic ideologies that Brazilian psychiatrists were adopting in the first half of the 20th century and instead suggested the use of Freudian psychoanalysis to bridge the tensions between Whiteness and Blackness in Brazil.<ref name=":1" />
== Early life == Ramos was born on July 7, 1903, in Alagoas, Brazil.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Gaztambide |first=Daniel José |title=A People's History of Psychoanalysis : From Freud to Liberation Psychology |date=2019 |isbn=978-1-4985-6575-2 |location=Lanham |oclc=1129174275}}</ref> In 1921, Ramos enrolled at the Faculty of Medicine of Bahia, in which he specialized in clinical psychiatry and forensic psychology.<ref name=":2" /> In 1926, Ramos completed his thesis, ''Primitivo e Loucura (Primitive and Madness)'', where he adapted Lévy-Bruhl's theory of dual mindsets, the idea of having a "primitive" mindset vs. a "Western" mindset, for Black Brazilians. Ramos argued that the negative traits applied to Black Brazilians were not a result of genetics, and he suggested that their situations could be changed.<ref name=":2" />
== Career == After completing his studies at the Faculdade de Medicine, Ramos worked as a psychiatric assistant at the São João de Deus Hospital in Bahia. Here, Ramos was able to apply the psychoanalytic approaches he had learned during his studies through psychopathological experiments.<ref name=":2" />
In 1933, Ramos moved to Rio de Janeiro, where he served as the Chief of the Mental Hygiene Service in the Institute of Educational Research for the Rio school system until 1938.<ref name=":2" /> In this position, he conducted psychoanalytically based observations of public school children, identifying that what they had labeled as degeneracy was a learned process that could be improved through improvements in health, culture, and education.<ref name=":2" />
In 1939, Ramos started to take a more scholarly approach to his work, focusing on racial justice activism and collaborating with scholar Melville Herskovits.<ref name=":1" /> Through this collaboration, he had the opportunity to visit and stay in the United States of America, where he toured the country speaking about race in Brazil and racial equality.<ref name=":1" />
Ramos also served as the founder and first President of the Brazilian Anthropological and Ethnological Society.<ref name=":0" /> During his last three months, he served as the head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)'s Department of Social Sciences.<ref name=":0">{{Cite news |date=December 1949 |title=Four Ceremonies Show Measure of Netherlands Support for UNESCO |pages=11 |work=The UNESCO Courier |url=https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000074184 |access-date=March 29, 2023}}</ref>
== Research == During his time at Faculade de Medicina, Ramos was influenced by psychiatrist Nina Rodrigues. Rodrigues argued that Black and mixed-race people were prone to mental illness, criminality, and violence not because of their heritability but instead by genetic atavism.<ref name=":2" /> At the time, the majority of the medical schools in Bahia adopted the ideas of Rodrigues, specifically that Black and mixed-race people were predisposed to crime and insanity.<ref name=":2" /> Ramos and fellow colleagues, influenced by the ideas of Sigmund Freud, contradicted these ideas arguing that this perceived criminality and primitivity were a result of acquired maladjustments, not inherited traits, that were pushed upon Indigenous and Black populations as a product of poverty and structural and racial inequalities.<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal |last=Lange |first=Brad |date=2008 |title=Importing Freud and Lamarck to the Tropics: Arthur Ramos and the Transformation of Brazilian Racial Thought, 1926-1939 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25488071 |journal=The Americas |volume=65 |issue=1 |pages=9–34 |doi=10.1353/tam.0.0006 |jstor=25488071 |s2cid=143899205 |issn=0003-1615|url-access=subscription }}</ref> Ramos research focused on the identifying the diagnostic traits of mental illness and connecting them to crime, separating crime from the inherited traits.<ref name=":2" />
== Published work == While his beginning works focused on the application of psychoanalysis (''O Negro Brasileiro,'' ''O Folclore Negro do Brasi''), his later works shifted to a more anthropological view, focusing on social and human phenomena.<ref name=":3">{{Cite journal |last1=Carneiro |first1=Edison de Souza |last2=Ivy |first2=James W. |date=1951 |title=Arthur Ramos: Brazilian Anthropologist (1903-1949) |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/272324 |journal=Phylon |volume=12 |issue=1 |pages=73–81 |jstor=272324 |issn=0885-6818}}</ref> Many of his works have been translated to English, Spanish, French, and German.<ref name=":3" />
=== Books ===
* ''O Negro Brasileiro'' (1934)<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ramos |first=Arthur |title=O Negro Brasileiro |year=1934 |edition=1st}}</ref> * ''O Folclore Negro do Brasi'' (1935)<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ramos |first=Arthur |title=O Folclore Negro do Brasil |publisher=WMF Martins Fontes |year=1935 |isbn=978-85-60156-11-5 |edition=1st |location=São Paulo |oclc=212883463}}</ref> * ''As Culturas Negras no Novo Mundo'' (1937)<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ramos |first=Arthur |title=As culturas Negras no Novo Mundo |year=1937 |publisher=Edufal, Editora da Universidade Federal de Alagoas |isbn=978-85-7177-752-1 |oclc=905107222}}</ref> * ''Introduçao a Antropologia Brasileira, Volume 1'' (1943)<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ramos |first=Arthur |title=Introdução à antropologia brasileira |publisher=Livraria-Editora da Casa do Estudante do Brasil |year=1943 |oclc=1013929445}}</ref> * ''Les Poblaciones del Brasil'' (1944)<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ramos |first=Arthur |title=Les Poblaciones del Brasil |publisher=Fondo de Cultura Económica |year=1944 |location=México}}</ref> * ''Introduçao a Antropologia Brasileira, Volume 2'' (1947)<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ramos |first=Arthur |title=Introdução à antropologia brasileira |publisher=Livraria-Editora da Casa do Estudante do Brasil |year=1947 |oclc=1013929445}}</ref>
== References == <references /> {{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ramos, Arthur}} Category:Wikipedia Student Program Category:1903 births Category:1949 deaths Category:20th-century Brazilian medical doctors Category:20th-century psychologists Category:People from Alagoas Category:Federal University of Minas Gerais alumni Category:Brazilian folklorists