During his conference on sexual conflict, given at the in Luso-Spanish Congress of Associations for Progress of Science, and published in 1921, Egas Moniz explained his use of the analytic method and device (the couch) to present the study of two clinical cases. He also discussed the principle of free association, association of ideas and the interpretation of dreams. Moniz was a neurosurgeon known primarily for his studies on prefrontal leucotomy, and was the first author to refer to and use psychoanalysis in Portugal. Like Freud, Moniz analyzed two cases in the literature in support of the analytical method: the case of Júlio Dinis in 1924 and that of Camilo in 1925. Nevertheless, his work on leucotomy, which earned him the Nobel Prize in Physiology in 1949, appears to have cast a shadow on his contributions to psychopathology.
Egas Moniz; infantile sexuality; sexual perversions; psychoanalysis; dream interpretation