Horus Vital Brazil (1926-2005)

On the evening of October 14th 1989, hundreds of psychoanalysts and students of psychoanalysis left the Copacabana Palace Hotel Conference Room in Rio de Janeiro; Horus Vital Brazil could be proud of an accomplishment that had taken him so much effort and dedication over a number of years: the organization of the IFPS's VIII International Forum of Psychoanalysis. As the President of this Forum, for Horus this event represented the crowning of his dedication and commitment to the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies since its early beginnings. He had been a member of the Federa-tion's Executive Committee from 1975 to 1984, on which he was highly respected and made a great number of friends. The VIII International Forum of Psychoanalysis attracted more than one thousand participants, and it was one of the largest psychoanalytic conferences ever held in Brazil.

Horus was born in 1926 in São Paulo, graduating in medicine in 1949. His path as one of the pioneers of psychoanalysis in Brazil is entwined with the history of the Iracy Doyle Psychoanalytic Society (SPID) itself. This Society had been founded in 1953 in the city of Rio de Janeiro, under the name of Instituto de Medicina Psicológica (Institute of Psychological Medicine). Its founder, Dr Iracy Doyle, had been trained as a psychoanalyst at the William Alanson White Institute, in New York. After Iracy Doyle's sudden death in 1956, Horus went to New York, where he continued his education and training as psychoanalyst. He returned to Brazil three years later to help re-found the Institute of Psychological Medicine, which was later renamed after Iracy Doyle.

In his speech on the occasion of SPID's 50th anniversary celebration in 2003, Horus made reference to the “enduring effort in sustaining pluralism and in facing theoretical and practical issues in Psychoanalysis” this effort had been a defining characteristic of SPID, a Society created “under the influence of theoretical advances that suggested a ne