São Paulo – Brazilian psychiatrist Augusto Cury, a phenomenon in the publishing market with more than 40 million books sold in Brazil, plans to take his biggest step yet toward Arab countries, a region where he has ancestral roots. In addition to publishing ten titles for Arab readers, Cury aims to launch in the United Arab Emirates one of his boldest initiatives in the era of artificial intelligence: a digital clone designed to deliver training, powered by his theories and tools.
Cury spoke to ANBA about the project. The psychiatrist is the author of more than 70 books, many of them bestsellers, and including the Arab editions, he will soon have titles published in over 90 countries. Addressing themes such as mental health and emotional management—and more recently digital intoxication—the Brazilian’s works have become a phenomenon in recent decades among those seeking success and better psychological well-being. One of his most famous books, Nunca desista de seus sonhos [Never give up on your dreams], argues for the importance of having dreams to maintain emotional health and build a meaningful life.
Despite the broad international reach of his work and having traveled to Dubai several times, Cury admits he had not yet carried out a major initiative focused on Arab countries. A grandson of immigrants from Lebanon, the writer is enthusiastic about the possibility of partnering with the United Arab Emirates, seeing it as a way to reach more people. “One of my goals with the UAE is to create my digital clone so that my training programs can be accessible to people all over the world,” he told ANBA.
The platform is under development and is being evaluated for launch with sponsorship from and in partnership with UAE-based funds, according to writer and lawyer Clemens Villas Boas, who is involved in the project and mediates discussions with the Arab country’s government. The idea is for the platform to offer training across multiple areas, delivered through Augusto Cury’s digital clone, covering all the fields in which he personally works.
“He (the clone) will have access to all my private training programs, all my lectures, and all my books, and will answer questions from parents, teachers, employees, executives, young people, and pre-teens,” Cury explains. The clone will be an artificial intelligence imbued with the psychiatrist’s ideas and understanding. “We are testing it, and it’s impressive—it goes through my portfolio and provides the answers,” he adds.
My dream is to have the UAE at the forefront of protecting humanity’s mental health, across all peoples and cultures.
Augusto Cury
“My dream is to have the UAE—the first country to have a Ministry of Artificial Intelligence—at the forefront of protecting humanity’s mental health, across all peoples and cultures,” Cury says. The project envisions selling training programs, but at much lower prices than those offered in person. The psychiatrist also wants free access codes to be distributed to public school teachers and for the platform to include a free social project to combat suicide, depression, and anxiety.
Just as he works on this front, Cury also lectures and writes on many other themes related to the mental and emotional sphere. Among the most topical are accelerated thinking syndrome and the harmful effects of excessive digital exposure. “Thinking is good, thinking with critical awareness is great, but thinking too much, without emotional management, is a bomb against mental health,” he says. According to Cury, a seven-year-old child in today’s society has more information than a Roman emperor, which undermines concentration and the pleasure of learning.
“Accelerating the construction of thought exhausts the brain, generates irritability, a low threshold for tolerating frustration, anguish, anxiety, and difficulty in turning small things into a spectacle before one’s eyes, giving rise to the era of emotional beggars,” he says. “I am a solitary voice saying that never before have so many stimuli been produced to induce pleasure through the internet, video games, broadcast and cable television, sports, music, and literature—yet never has the human being been so unhappy, so dissatisfied, so anxious, and so depressed,” he adds.
Emotional management is central to Cury’s approach. “The ‘self,’ which represents the capacity for choice, critical awareness, and autonomy, must manage emotion—it has to challenge, disagree with, and confront every disturbing thought,” he says, adding that emotional health cannot be negotiated away because of rejection, offense, criticism, or exclusion. “Just imagine if all children and adolescents in the world learned just this one tool: my peace and my emotional health are non-negotiable, they are worth gold,” he says. “If they learned that, we would prevent thousands of suicides.”
Cury expects the projects in the Arab world—both the books and the digital platform—to be available in 2026, toward the end of the first half of the year. The initial plan is for Cury’s clone to communicate in Arabic, as the project is set to launch in the UAE, with additional languages to be added as the platform expands. The books will be published in Arabic and English across the 22 Arab countries in both digital and print formats. Cury says he has great affection for the Arab world and dreams of bringing his ideas to the region.
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Translated by Guilherme Miranda
