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Despite its late institutionalization, psychoanalytic theory began to spread in Brazil in the early 20th century. One path of dissemination was through the works and lectures of the most eminent psychiatrists of those days. These important figures in the Brazilian intellectual scene made a peculiar use of the Freudian doctrine, giving it strong pedagogical and hygienic overtones. In this article, I point out the relationship between this mode of interpreting psychoanalysis and the effort made by intellectuals of the First Republic in the construction of a ‘civilizing’ project for the nation. Racial miscegenation, regarded by deterministic theories of the time as incompatible with civilization, was considered one of the main impediments to this project. According to the intellectuals of those days, the problem of miscegenation was rooted in two fundamental characteristics of the Brazilian people: primitivism and an excessive sexual drive. I argue that psychoanalytic theory, through its concept of a broad and pervasive sexuality, on the one hand, and the possibility of its sublimation, on the other, provided a way out of this aporia. In order to support my argument, I use the work of Júlio Porto-Carrero, one of the most prominent promoters of psychoanalysis in the medical milieu of thel920s and 1930s.