Psychoanalysis, aesthetics and social thought: the role of interpretation

• Grant number: 16/22694-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor
• Start date: February 13, 2017
• End date: August 12, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Social Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Joao Augusto Frayze-Pereira
• Grantee: Fernanda Sofio Woolcott
• Supervisor: Pedro Meira Monteiro
• Host Institution: Instituto de Psicologia (IP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Princeton University, United States
• Associated to the scholarship: 14/50534-4 - Towards a visual poetic perspective on psychoanalysis: a study inspired by Hermann's 'Notes on China', BP.PD

Abstract

"What is the force of letters, or cinema, (...)? Will introspection always be in the realm of the illusive, the unachievable?" The query posed by Pedro Meira Monteiro (2015, electronic edition) summarizes the vexation many Brazilian artists, intellectuals, and researchers must be experiencing at the present moment-a series of controversial government initiatives has forced our country to radically change political and economic directions. We might complement Monteiro's reasoning: what is the contribution psychoanalytic interpretation can make to this debate? It appears to be the case that the Freudian discovery, as we continue to understand it and its consequences, has in its horizon the potential to flow beyond itself, into the realm of the social sciences in general; in order to consider this possibility, the work by Brazilian psychoanalyst Fabio Herrmann is exemplary. My research objectives are Princeton University twofold: firstly, to contribute to the interdisciplinary debate about the relationship between interpretation, in literary and visual art, and social thought, for which an analysis of Brazilian psychoanalyst Fabio Herrmann's Anotando a China (viagem psicanalítica ao oriente) is exemplary. The text is an unpublished manuscript left by the author, that fuses photography, the poetic genre and social investigation; if published, I am confident the text will make a contribution to Brazilian psychoanalysis and, in fact, to Brazilian studies in general. And, secondly, to conclude the translation of O que é Psicanálise? Para iniciantes ou não-Herrmann's introductory psychoanalytic text, which would thus be made accessible to all English speakers.