An interview with Irismar Reis de Oliveira, Section Editor for Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy

How did you first become interested in psychotherapy? My decision to become a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst dates back to the early 1970s, a few years before I entered medical school at the age of 21. At that time, I had read all the books written by psychoanalysts Karen Horney and Erich Fromm. However, my interest in psychological literature had started during adolescence, when I was lucky enough to be introduced to Arthur Harry Chapman, an American psychiatrist who used to write psychotherapy books, and who decided to migrate to my hometown, Vitória da Conquista, in Brazil. Thus, just out of adolescence, I had the privilege of discussing with a renowned American scholar about my intention of enrolling in medical school and becoming a psychiatrist and psychotherapist. His work (e.g., [1,2]) relied clearly on the ideas of Harry Stack Sullivan, the founder of the interpersonal movement in psychotherapy. Also importantly, I was exposed to autogenic training–a relaxation technique developed by the German psychiatrist Johannes Schultz–as a client in the late 1960s, when I was still a teenager. However, during my medical course, I lost interest in psychiatry and, at its conclusion, I applied for a residency in cardiology, after which I had a 2-year clinical practice working in this specialty. At that time, I also joined the Department of Pharmacology at the Federal University of Bahia, in Salvador, Brazil, as an assistant professor. Unfortunately (today I would say fortunately), cardiology did not fulfill my professional and personal expectations, and the original idea of becoming a psychoanalyst came to mind again. So, I registered at a psychoanalysis-training institute and started personal analysis, having read most of Freud’s books at that time. My psychoanalysis training would continue in 1983, in Paris, where I completed a 4-year residency in psychiatry. Initially and simultaneously with my psychiatric training at Sainte-Anne Hospital in Paris, I resumed personal analysis and followed a psychoanalysis university course during which I was trained in Lacanian psychoanalysis for 2 years. So, both personal analysis and psychoanalysis training in Brazil and in France summed up 5 years, after which, still living in Paris, I decided to focus on clinical psychiatry and psychopharmacology. In 1987, I received certification as a specialist in psychiatry from the Faculté de Médicine Cochin Port Royal, University of Paris V. Returning to Brazil in 1988, I resumed teaching and started research activities at the Department of Pharmacology, at Federal University of Bahia, where I would remain until 1996. In 1995, I had received a Ph.D. in neuropsychopharmacology, and in 1996 I joined the Department of Neurosciences and Mental Health at the same university, as an associate professor. In 1998, I rediscovered psychotherapy and registered for the first extramural cognitive therapy course by the Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy and Research (now the Beck Institute for Cognitive Behavior Therapy) being held in Brazil. The year 2000 was a turning point in my professional life because I: (1) received a certification in cognitive therapy from the Beck Institute, in Philadelphia; (2) joined the Academy of Cognitive Therapy (http://www. academyofct.org) as a founding fellow; (3) became full professor of psychiatry at the Department of Neurosciences and Mental Health, Federal University of Bahia; and (4) became head of the psychiatry service at the university hospital. I was gradually shifting clinical practice, teaching, and research interests from an exclusive biological and psychopharmacological focus to an integrative focus linking psychopharmacology and psychotherapy [3]. A multicenter randomized clinical trial (RCT) of topiramate and cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) in the treatment of binge-eating disorder was the first result of this shift [4]. I did not realize at the time that I was also going in the direction of the already existing psychotherapy integration movement. Correspondence: [email protected] Departamento de Neurociências e Saúde Mental, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Salvador, Brazil