Daniela Schulthais is a Brazilian-born psychoanalysis practitioner based in New York City. She holds a postgraduate degree in Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Studies from Pontifícia Universidade Católica (PUC-RS), one of Brazil’s foremost institutions for psychology and mental health studies. Her work there focused on gender studies, complex trauma, and contemporary family configurations, culminating in a final thesis that explored motherhood as a site of inner tension, especially within contemporary culture, while also engaging with studies of sexual dissidence and intersectional thought.
She is currently pursuing a Master’s in Mental Health, deepening her clinical training while continuing to explore the cultural and historical forces that shape identity, relational life, and emotional life. Her background in branding and editorial informs her interest in the semiotic and social dimensions of subjectivity, as well as the symbolic systems that mediate our relationship to the world.
Her current work centers on the intersection of psychoanalysis and cultural studies, with a particular interest in the intergenerational transmission of trauma and the unconscious effects of collective history on individual experience. She sees the social contract, the ways we live with one another and with our environment, as nested in the deepest corners of the unconscious. The repressed residues of our social contract are often just as alive in the consulting room as the echoes of one’s mother.