Psychology and social assistance: contributions of Freud and Lacan’s psychoanalysis and of historical materialism

Author(s)

Sara Mexko

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: Assis. 2017-04-18.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp). Faculdade de Ciências e Letras. Assis
• Defense date: 2017-02-17
• Advisor: Abílio da Costa Rosa; Silvio José Benelli

Abstract

Our main objective was to think what a psychologist can do in the field of Social Assistance with the guidance of Freud and Lacan’s Psychoanalysis and Marx’s Historical Materialism. We started from the Intercessor Device as a new way of producing knowledge in the common praxis (work) and a way of producing knowledge in the university praxis. The Intercessor Device starts from two radically different moments of production: the moment of institutional praxis with the subjects and in the collective work, and the moment of theoretical reflection about experiences, produced a posteriori, movements and productions of intercessors accomplished in the first moment. The ethical theoretical references that support the two moments are: Marx's Historical Materialism, French Institutional Analysis, the Philosophy of Difference and the Freud and Lacan’s Psychoanalysis Field. These references seek us a point of view about both practices and discourses of the field of Social Assistance as well as a mode of interceding on it. We introduce a reflection on the Social Assistance National Policy and on the Unified Social Assistance System for tracing some parallel aspects of the Unified Health System. Then, we approach address the Social Assistance institution as a social device of subjectivity production, noting that there is a relationship of inseparability between the production of care and the production of subjectivity. We also approach the bases of the Intercessor Device in its two moments, and we present a little about our praxis as a worker-intercessor, but specifically our reflections on events, crossings, impasses and movements as a psychologist working in assistance centers in a small city in the country of the State of São Paulo. In our experience we were able to listen in different contexts of the traditional clinic, such as, for example, conversation wheel with people and workers. The psychoanalysis of the field of Freud and Lacan offers the worker a theoretical and ethical reference that makes possible the listening of the subject beyond the subject of rights, this is, the listening of the subject of the unconscious. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 15/01099-6 - COULD THE FREUD AND LACAN'S PSYCHOANALYSIS CONTRIBUTE TO THE FIELD OF SOCIAL ASSISTANCE?
• Grantee: Sara Mexko
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master