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Décio Soares de Souza was born on January, 7, 1907, in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul. He was the son of Octávio Lisboa de Souza – a preeminent person in the local medical profession and full professor in clinical medicine at the Porto Alegre Medical School – and of Zilda Soares de Souza. He got his degree in medicine in 1929 at the Medical School of Rio Grande do Sul, presenting the thesis “Precocious Dementia and Schizophrenia”, which was approved with honors (getting a grade 10). He became a full professor in clinical psychiatry, a position he held until 1950. He then transferred to London, in order to specialize in psychoanalysis. At the Institute of Psychoanalysis of the British Psychoanalytic Society, after five years of training, he received the title of Adult and Child Psychoanalyst.
Between his graduation as a medical doctor and the beginning of his analytic training, he took several extension courses at the university and internships at the Saint’Anne and Salpetrière hospitals in Paris; at the Mount Sinai Hospital he took the Advanced Course in Clinical Neurology; at Columbia University, he took courses in Neuroanatomy, Neuropathology and Educational Psychology, as well as in Mental Hygiene; at the Psychoanalytic Institute, in New York, the Metapsychology course; at the School of Social Research, the Psychology of Personality course.
Since the beginning of his professional life, Décio de Souza was interested in psychiatry and neurology, which at that time were studied in related courses. At the year of his graduation , Décio was already an intern at
the Assistance to Psychopathic Patients service. In 1930 he was appointed as staff psychiatrist at the Assistance to Psychopathic Patients, where in 1938 he was promoted, by merit, to chief of division. In 1932, he was an assistant to the 15th Ward of Clinical Neurology. On that same year, he became professor at the Psychiatric Clinic of the Porto Alegre Medical School, becoming the clinical head in that same