MY EYES ON OTHERS

A major figure in mental health who revolutionized psychoanalysis in Portugal

The story of António Coimbra de Matos (1929-2021), physician and major figure in mental health. He was born in 1929 in a fabled village on the Douro River, Galafura. From the top of the mountain, which he climbed on horseback, he admired the landscape and contemplated life and the future. At the age of 10, he went to study in Porto. He enrolled in medical school and chose to work in psychiatry. But he quickly broke away from destiny, embracing psychoanalysis and, in it, his own path – that of the importance of present affective relationships for happiness, not to mourn the past and embrace the future; saying no, the sense of rebelling against depression, and the importance of self-identity, of choices, against the destiny of the identities that family and society build for each of us. He has, in this way, revolutionized psychoanalysis in Portugal.