From Reception to the First Organizations Around the Teaching of Lacan in Brazil

• Grant number: 24/16991-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor
• Start date: December 30, 2024
• End date: December 29, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Social Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Belinda Piltcher Haber Mandelbaum
• Grantee: Francisco Ronald Capoulade Nogueira
• Supervisor: Pierre-Henri Castel
• Host Institution: Instituto de Psicologia (IP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: École Des Hautes Études En Sciences Sociales, France
• Associated to the scholarship: 22/12789-7 - From the reception to the first organizations around Lacan's teaching in Brazil, BP.PD

Abstract

This research project aims to investigate the reception and the first developments of Lacanian psychoanalysis in Brazil, including its first institutional formations from 1970 on, privileging, as a source of investigation, the testimonies of those who had direct contact with Lacan, either by performing analysis with him, in supervision, or even participating in his seminars, and who contributed to the implantation of his ideas in Brazil. The event of the arrival of Lacan's teaching in Brazil produced not only impacts on the already existing psychoanalytic institutions, but also, and mainly, a kind of grouping of several clinicians and laymen interested in psychoanalysis around the country. Both the reception and the transmission of Lacan's teachings took place in a complex and conflicting context, both because of the virtues and contradictions of each character involved in this process and because of the challenges and controversies concerning the implementation of psychoanalysis in a dictatorial regime, and also because of the disputes with the voices of psychoanalysis present here. In the intention of analyzing these phenomena, we will concentrate this research on two main axes, namely, reception and transmission. The first concentrates on investigating the characters who were pioneers in direct contact with Lacan himself, considering their regions of origin and birth, their cultural, religious, and political backgrounds.The second axis intends to advance with regard to the transmission of Lacan's teachings by these pioneers, in Brazilian territory. The research will be conducted through three interconnected methods: 1. Interviews with psychoanalysts who lived and worked with Lacan in the 1970s and are still alive, namely Jacques Laberge, Durval Checchinato, Betty Milan, M. D. Magno, Marie Christine Laznik, and Jorge Forbes. 2. Research in archives of Lacanian psychoanalytic associations in Paris, in Brazilian associations of Lacanian psychoanalysis in São Paulo, Campinas, Rio de Janeiro and Recife, and in important centers of psychoanalytic practice and transmission in Brazil in general. 3. Review of Lacanian psychoanalytic literature, both Brazilian and French, from the period covered by this study. The research should become a detailed case study on the impact of Lacan's teaching on these pioneer characters, the political dispute it generated within the psychoanalytic movement, and how the transmission of this teaching was carried out, considering the moment of political repression experienced in Brazil.