Acta Psychopathologica Open Access

The theme of this section of the Journal is the interface between clinic and politics, which has been discussed within two major fields: In political theory, as to how psychoanalysis can contribute to critical social theories; and in clinical practice, as to how the space of the clinic can be political and transforming. As an intersectional field, it benefits both from the contributions of sociology and politics, and from psychoanalytic concepts, fundamentals, ethics, and methods, referring especially to Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan.

Psychoanalysis, Clinic, and Politics are terms that bring to the fore and make explicit, among other themes, the connection between the subjective constitution of the subject and desire and jouissance, as well as the aspect of social ties, including here political and ideological context. This field aims to debate how politics is entangled in the process of constitution and destitution of the subject. It includes a debate [1] on how the psychoanalytic clinic is connected to politics, reflecting on its practice and the elements that can promote resistance to mechanisms of social control, criminalization, and individual and collective pathologization. Within this theme, unconventional interventions and the political and subjective dimension are discussed in order to think about the social bond. A focus is placed on the type of intervention and clinic arising within contexts of violence and exclusion, which we understand as clinical-political practice.

This section privileges the following themes: Cross-studies between psychoanalysis and social and political processes of exclusion and violence, as well as modalities of clinical-political interventions [2] in these contexts; politics and the subject in psychoanalysis through the analysis and critique of totalitarianism, forms of violence and exclusion in the contemporary world, besides creative ways out indicated via utopia and democracy; and the issues of migration, foreigners, exile, minorities, racism, and segregation. It also addresses questions relating to new family configurations, the place of children and adolescents, the body and politics, and gender [3] and sexuality.

By and large, the section favors research on and in contexts of social, political, and/or institutional crisis. It also includes: A discussion of psychoanalytical theories in critical studies; the clinic connected with politics and its impasses; the theoretical and practical interface between psychoanalysis and other fields, such as the feminist and queer, Marxist, Foucaultian, and postcolonial; as well as connections and tensions between research, intervention, and ethical issues of psychoanalysis.

Miriam Debieux Rosa, Associate Professor at the Clinical Psychology Program at the University of São Paulo (USP), having presented the dissertation “Psychoanalysis theory, politics and culture: The clinic vis-à-vis the socio-political dimension of suffering” [4], in August 2015 (USP Library). At USP, she coordinates the “Psychoanalysis and Society Laboratory” and the “Veredas [Narrow paths] Project: Migration and Culture”; as a full professor in the Graduate Program in Social Psychhttps://www.imedpub.com/psychology-and-brain-studies/ology at PUC-SP, she coordinates the “Psychoanalysis and Politics Center”. Head of the CNPq research group “Subject, Society and Politics in Psychoanalysis (USP), she is also a member of the working group on “Psychoanalysis, Politics and Culture”, (National Association for Research and Graduate Studies in Psychology- ANPEPP. She conducted her postdoctoral work at the Université Paris Diderot, PARIS 7, UFR Etudes psychanalytiques, with Fethi Benslama (CNPq), France. As a CNPq grant holder, (September 2015 to June 2016), she has been developing the theme “Vicissitudes of addressing the other in situations of violence: The case of the refugees”.

Professor Debieux-Rosa has been researching and producing on the following themes: The socio-political dimension of suffering, the clinic of the traumatic [5], expressions of violence, violation of rights, forms of resistance and confrontation of subjects in vulnerable situations, the construction/transformation of the social bond in the contemporary world, immigration and migration, responsibility and accountability, and children and adolescents. She is the author of Stories that are not told: psychoanalysis with children and adolescents, in 2010 (Publisher: Editora Casa do Psicólogo) and a co-organizer of the books Debates on contemporary adolescence and the social bond (Publisher: Juruá Psicologia Editora, Rio Grande do Sul, in 2012, and Desire and policy: challenges and perspectives in the field of immigration and asylum, in 2013 (Publisher: Max Limonad Editora).

References

1. Rosa MD (2015) Trajectories between war and Peace: political and subjective intersections. In: Cresswell, James and others Dialogue and debate in the making of theoretical psychology. Captus press, Canada, PP: 368-376.
2. Rosa MD (2015) Forced Immigration: From the traumatic imaginary to clinical-political interventions. Nouvelle Revue de Psychosociologie 20: 1-10.
3. Mountian I, Rosa MD (2015) The other: a critical analysis of discourses on immigration and gender. Psicologia USP 26: 152-160.
4. Rosa MD (2013) Forced migration: the sociopolitical dimension of suffering and transmission of history [Forced migration: the sociopolitical dimension of suffering and the transmission of history]. In: Alencar RC (ed.) Politics and desire: challenges and perspectives in the field of immigration and asylum [Politics and desire: challenges and prospects in the field of immigration and refuge. São Paulo: Editora Max Limonad, pp: 83-98.
5. Rosa MD, Alencar SL (2013) The collective elaboration of trauma. In: Marvakis A,lMotzkau J, Painter D, Ruto-Korir R, Sullivan G, Triliva S, Wieser M (eds.) Doing psychology under new conditions (1stedn). Ontario: Captus Press, pp: 401-407.