Trajectories, habitus and practices: a study on street psychoanalysis in São Paulo

• Grant number: 20/07070-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: September 01, 2020
• End date: March 28, 2021
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Other specific Sociologies
• Principal Investigator: Marcia Cristina Consolim
• Grantee: Ana Bárbara Moreira Rossato
• Host Institution: Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (EFLCH). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Guarulhos. Guarulhos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This work aims to analyze the social and intellectual trajectory of psychoanalysts who offer free care in public spaces. I take as an object, specifically, the Psychoanalysis at Roosevelt and the Open Clinic of Psychoanalysis, both projects active in São Paulo. The two groups were chosen because of their similarities in practical performance, but they have significant differences for a comparative study: they are differentiated by the space where they operate - the first in a public square and the second in a cultural center - and the difference in the formation of its members, the first group consisting mainly of psychoanalysts who attended Fórum do Campo Lacaniano and the second group mainly formed by psychoanalysts who attended Sedes Sapientiae. First, I intend to investigate the social, economic and cultural properties of the agents who work in these groups - inherited family capital, school and higher education, their cultural practices and lifestyle - in order to analyze to what extent these properties and practices influence the choice of psychoanalysis as an area of professionalization and, subsequently, the dispositions and strategies of action in the field of psychoanalysis. Second, I intend to investigate to what extent such "free" practices from an institutional point of view are considered legitimate by holders of the monopoly on the legitimate definition of psychoanalytic practice - representatives of scientific societies and training institutions in the area. The hypothesis adopted in this research is that these groups - whose heterodox practice questions the assumptions of clinical care - face the limits of the professional or "pure" relationship established between psychoanalysts and patients, and that this is because their members are carriers of dominant social and intellectual properties - which leads them to recruit followers who are in early carrier and available for uncertain experiments.