The relevance of interculturality in the formation of critical psychoanalists: meeting of knowledge about psychic suffering and structures of power

• Grant number: 21/05345-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: April 01, 2022
• End date: March 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Fundamentals and Assessments in Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Miriam Debieux Rosa
• Grantee: Raoni Machado Moraes Jardim
• Host Institution: Instituto de Psicologia (IP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The dialogue between psychoanalytic theory and sociological, anthropological, historical and economic reflections is expanding. Though the great icons of psychoanalysis, such as Freud and Lacan, have pointed to the importance of a contextualized and even engaged psychoanalytic practice, the vast majority of Brazilian institutions that offer training in psychoanalytic theory leave out bibliographies that could collaborate with the proper social, political and historical training, leading to a fundamental deficit in psychoanalytic listening. The contextualized study of socioeconomic structures leads us to reflect upon the colonial period and its legacy, the so-called 'colonialities'. We will seek to articulate the psychological suffering of a large part of the Brazilian population and social history, particularly slavery and the racial division of labor that founded capitalism modern Perhaps it was Lacan, on his return to Freud, who reopened the possibility of thinking about the subject of psychoanalysis in relation to the public sphere. "The unconscious is politics," says the Frenchman in one of his intriguing aphorisms from Seminar XIV. The enigmatic phrase is parallel to another Lacanian provocation aimed at psychoanalysts: the analyst "who cannot reach the subjectivity of his time" (1998a[1953], p. 322) should renounce the practice of psychoanalysis. Whoever cannot place the speaker and their suffering historically will not be able to find room for the dialectics of the oppressions at stake, and thus will conceal the clinic's function of emancipation. The democratization of the clinic and the articulation with the contextualized critical theory demands new epistemic contributions to represent the silenced side, sacrificed in our ability to listen as humanity and as a nation: this is the view of traditional peoples and communities in Brazil about psychological suffering. As common in his technical and metapsychological texts, Freud affirms the unfinished character of the psychoanalytic knowledge. However, little has been changed in epistemic terms from its foundation on Greek mythology to the description of psychopathologies based on the cases studied by Freud. This is precisely what this project is about: establishing epistemic dialogues between psychoanalysis and traditional Brazilian populations by means of the Encounter of Knowledges project. Coordinated by Prof. José Jorge de Carvalho, this project is an initiative of INCTI/CNPq. Masters of traditional knowledge will be invited to compose a seminar for graduate students in partnership with professors from the USP. Masters and teachers will be invited through consultations with INCTI /UnB and the Psychoanalysis and Society Laboratory /USP. Before the course starts, academic professors and traditional masters interact to define the scope of their speeches. The narration of one's own history is what makes it possible to understand their symptoms; thus, it cannot be replaced in clinical treatment and in the subject's learning of their own affective dynamics in the world. Based on this assumption, listening to the masters of traditional knowledge, is essential to understand the suffering frameworks generated by current power structures.If access to the public clinic has been democratized, it is necessary that this democratization be reflected on the bibliographic materials and the education of psychologists and psychoanalysts. The question that will guide this research project is, 'How do masters of traditional knowledge understand psychological suffering in their relationship with the structures of power? The challenge is to carry out this project module at the Psychoanalysis and Society Laboratory of the USP, a center for the training of critical psychoanalysts, who are attentive to the dialectical relationship between the constitution of subjectivities and social structures, their social and personal symptoms and its consequences in the clinic and in the theory. (AU)