The locations of psychoanalysis: issues on the cultural and clinical psychoanalytical inscription

Author(s)

Wilson de Albuquerque Cavalcanti Franco

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Instituto de Psicologia (IP/SBD)
• Defense date: 2018-08-17

Examining board members

Daniel Kupermann; Sidnei Jose Casetto; Flávio Roberto Carvalho Ferraz; Luis Claudio Mendonca Figueiredo; Adriana Barbosa Pereira; Eduardo Henrique Passos Pereira

• Advisor: Daniel Kupermann

Abstract

The research focuses on the locations of psychoanalysis in clinical practice and in culture. The concept of location is borrowed from postcolonial thinker Homi Bhabha, for whom the locations of culture are determined by hybridism and interpenetration, which means that critical thinking has to inhabit borders, limits and (as Bhabha names it) the caesura. Derrida and psychoanalysis itself are also mobilized as constituents for the theoretical framework, which aimed to discuss the means through which psychoanalysis inscribes itself in the texts in which it operates, the culture with which it intertwines, the institutions through which it transmits itself and the clinical praxises that embody it in everyday life. Two main critical points have been issued: 1. the idea that psychoanalysis is intrinsically exceptional whether such exceptionality be stated in historical, epistemological, clinical or political terms, in any case the argument is that such exceptionality cannot be stated as an a priori: be it desired, it has to be constantly put under suspicion and scrutiny, has to be constantly fought for, conquered and (re)established, every time anew. 2. The location of canonical authors within psychoanalytical tradition the recurrent notion that canonical authors confer rigor and stability to the psychoanalytical endeavour (be it theoretical, political or clinical) has been put into question; in its place the author argues for the notion that canonical authors arrange the strategical battlefield within the psychoanalytical community which means they do not confer rigour: what they do is to establish the critical terms for the politics of authorization which set up the starting points for psychoanalytical practice. Throughout the text a red thread signals the main critical argument: psychoanalytical locations in text, in culture and in clinical practice cannot be taken for granted, but have to be thought anew, systematically questioned and fundamentally (re)established, time and time again (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 15/02520-7 - Genealogy of the psi-clinics: an investigation on the common foundations of psychoanalysis and psychiatry
• Grantee: Wilson de Albuquerque Cavalcanti Franco
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate