Anna Veronica Mautner


Anna Veronica Mautner was a Brazilian psychoanalyst, writer and a Professor at the University of São Paulo.

Life

Mautner was born in 1935 in Pest County in Hungary, moving to Brazil at the age of three. Her mother, Rosa, was a feminist and Jewish communist who arrived in Brazil as war was declared in 1939. She was brought up in Lapa where her family ran a hairdressing business.
Mautner was a Zionist and feminist. She became a professor of social psychology at University of São Paulo which is where she had studied social science. She did not became a psychoanalyst until the 1980s but she was to have a long career. She was an associate member of the Sociedade Brasileira de Psicanálise de São Paulo.
In 2000 she became a columnist for the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper. She wrote a point of view for Psicologia where she discussed how recognition of people's skills is a powerful driver for achievement. She noted that not everyone desires this as she said that there is not enough for everyone at the top of a pyramid. A shape that allows this is not a pyramid but a cobblestone.
In the last year of her life, Regina Favre, arranged for the publication of her last book which was an anthology of her work explaining her success. Mautner died in São Paulo in 2019 of multiple organ failure.

Private life

Mautner had three children and at the time of her death five grandchildren.

Works include