Carvalho, J. E. C. de & Lenz Dunker, C. I. (2006) ‘Critical Psychological Approaches in
Brazil: When, where, why’, Annual Review of Critical Psychology, 5, pp. 305-312
www.discourseunit.com/arcp/5
João Eduardo Coin de Carvalho & Christian Ingo Lenz Dunker1
Critical Psychological Approaches in Brazil: When, where, why
The presence of Critical Psychology in Brazil academic approaches must be discussed
within a milieu that includes a twenty-year dictatorship (1964-1984) and the effects that
such experience produced on the social and academic fabric. The violence and oppression
associated to that period, today still contested by important national conservative sectors2,
continue to haunt Brazilian social life as something that inhabits everywhere, especially the
poorest communities.
Under a powerful policy of restriction of movement and rights, poor people are trapped
within inequality. Public politics on education just recently include alphabetisation
programs associated with a critical approach within a left wing perspective (e.g. Paulo
Freire). Such reality seems to resist even to the ultimate government efforts to construct a
democratic nation. In fact, in recent times Brazilian government has tried to deal with
poorest populations dramatic situation through initiatives as Bolsa-Escola (School Grant
Program), part of a federal program called Fome Zero (No Hunger), which gives money for
families that keep their children at school (Brazil, 2004).
Poor population histories expose a reality where violence against them did not stop with the
end of the dictatorship. In fact, the maintenance of poverty and inequality is a chronic effect
of those years. As in other countries and in different circumstances, the same kind of
relations among state’s violence, poverty and suffering is a prevalent presence among
countless poor Brazilian communities (Shepper-Hughes, 1992).
Nowadays, violence that submits people and sentences them to poverty and life without
perspectives has been embraced by other kind of agency. Poor people are many times
hostages of drug dealers that act inside their communities (specially in the big cities’
suburban areas and slums), in a way that not only compromise their well being but either
their identity, associated with drugs’ traffic. Consequences of drug trafficking in Brazil are
similar to war conditions. For example, youths strategies for negotiating life in a war are
easily applied to the context of a Brazilian shantytown under the influence of drug dealers
and organised crime (CSUCS, 2004). For example, more people died, per year, in urban
and rural violence confronts in Brazil, than in Palestine or Iraq conflicts.
1
Contact: chrisdunker@uol.com.br & joaocoin@yahoo.com
See the recent official reaction from Brazilian Army about new information related to Vladimir Herzog’s
case. Herzog, a well-known journalist from São Paulo Public Television (TV Cultura), was killed during the
dictatorship when he was “detained to investigation” by the Brazilian Army. Public manifestation that follows
his death is assigned as the beginning of the end of the dictatorship
2
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Linked to structural dissemination of poverty through its evident economic component,
social exclusion can be understood as key where the dehumanisation of the other comes
with his silence. Without a proper discourse and put outside the social game, an important
portion of the society is positioned as cultural pariahs (Sawaia, 1999, Guareschi, 1999) in a
way that they cannot make choices about how to solve problems that deeply affect them.
In Latin American societies poverty and social exclusion are extremely associated. In
Brazil, this could be counterbalanced with the qualitative differences in the native kind of
hegemonic gender and ethnic prejudice. Known as a “racial democracy” (Freire Costa,
1989), this condition has been refused by the idea that social exclusion is a powerful and
effective base to prejudice. Brazil has the worst degree of income inequality in the world.
This condition products an explosive context where wealthy and extreme poverty coexist,
with favelas located inside and surrounding the great cities side by side with the wealthiest
neighbourhoods. As a consequence of at least a century of govern negligence, with the
agreement of the political and economic elite, a disordered urbanisation associated with the
lack of an adequate housing policy install people in dirty, dangerous and violent
shantytowns, many times with the oppressive presence of drug dealers. Moreover,
disproportional land distribution in rural context, a heritage of colonisation, sustained by
family oligarchies, within recent agribusiness expansion, is a major element of social
tension.
During the last decade, with the extent of economic crisis and unemployment in São Paulo
City, for example, population who lives in favelas have raised proportionally more than the
city population. While the total population increased 8% from 1991 to 2000, the number of
inhabitants in favelas has increased 41%, reaching more than 1 million people (Sampaio
and Pereira, 2003). In addition, central and local governments have unsuccessfully brought
citizenship and social recognition to people who live there. Whereas these people have an
expressive spatial and human presence, society and government have not recognised them
as city inhabitants, what keeps them invisible, living many times without the necessary
public support to education, healthy and employment.
Critical Approaches
In Brazil, Psychoanalysis (Lacanian and Argentinean Psychoanalysis), Social Psychology
(Community Psychology, Institutional Psychology and Socio-Historical Psychology), and
Educational Psychology (Marxism) include critical approaches which must be considered.
In Psychoanalysis a initial division between orthodox kleinian-bionian approach and the
lacanian and left Argentinean Marxist tradition (Bleger, Pichon, Bohoslavsky) turns, during
the last years, into a strong presence of the lacanian perspective in many Psychology
undergraduate programs, followed by a general psychoanalysis presence on mental health
system. This psychoanalytic set keeps some influence in the anti-asylum movement and, as
social psychology, had important presence during the World Social Forums based in Porto
Alegre. Otherwise, Psychoanalysis is an important theoretical presence in intellectual
debates around Brazilian culture and politics, including themes as identity, violence,
colonisation and social exclusion. Its visible presence on media and mass representations
includes some critical perspectives.
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Inside Brazilian social psychology, the Latin American social psychology model stands out
as more important than the traditional division between the North American model, based
on studies of groups with cognitive support, and the more sociological European extraction
model. For the social psychologist coming from this confrontation, the practice demands
political militancy and systematic association with minority organisation groups linked with
gender, sex, and ethnic movements. Unusual alliances are supported in this context, for
example: traditional Marxism and what is called the “catholic left”, revisionist Marxism
and the libertarian and egalitarian science project, critical Anarchism and assistance work
by non-governmental organisations.
Educational Psychology is also divided between an adaptive and conformist practice, and
academic critical perspectives. For many years pathologization of school failure, sustained
by ideological discourse, either clinic or cultural and yet neurological essentialism, was
being criticised. The Marxist influence and recently foucaultian approach try to deconstruct
and reverse some hegemonic tendencies in public education politics.
Psychoanalysis
From the standpoint of importing social practices, our culture seems aligned with the
United States, especially regarding a consumption-oriented economy and the political
intensification of a hardly accomplished liberalism. Psychoanalysis has been associated
with intellectual projects of resistance and reflection on national identity, including
anthropological modernism in the 1920’s and vanguard movements in the 1960’s:
tropicalism in music, concretism in poetry, and cinema novo. At the same time, Brazilian
Psychoanalysis is markedly present in institutions, having influenced psychiatric pioneers
and played a strategic part in launching Psychology graduate programs in the 1970’s and
became a strong presence in general hospitals and schools, in the legal system, and in
corporations alike. Today, Psychoanalysis is beyond doubt the most organised and
influential form of Psychology in a country with nearly 120 thousand psychologists. This is
not restricted to clinical psychology, which is the main practice (45.5% work mainly in
private clinics3).
In Brazil, Psychoanalysis received a major boost in the 1970’s, especially from the period
of redemocratization of the country, known as abertura, only over in recent years. During
the abertura process we noted the expansion of three major critical perspectives in Brazil:
Critical Psychoanalysis (associated to Marxism and the Catholic left), the English
Psychoanalysis of Klein, Bion and Winicott, filter by the Argentinean Marxism (Plataforma
Group, for example), and certain Lacanian Psychoanalysis, connected with althusserian and
discursive approaches, for example.
In São Paulo we have Sedes Sapientae Institute, reference in psychoanalytical training,
since the 1970’, as a Marxist catholic orientated institution which plays a very important
role during the resistance period. In Rio de Janeiro we have the important work of Helio
Pelegrino and recently the critical approaches of Jurandir Freire Costa (1984, 1989), Joel
3
See Federal Psychology Council - http://www.pol.org.br/publicacoes/pdf/Pesquisa_WHO.pdf.
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Birman (1999) and Antonio Quinet et al. (2001), all of them working within universities
and in the mental health system. In Rio Grande do Sul we have the presence of the
Associação Psicanalítica de Porto Alegre (lacanian orientation) which has contributed with
the left-wing city administration during the last 15 years (Fleig, 1997; Souza, 1999; Costa
and Melman, 2000). In the early 2000’, in São Paulo, either in University of São Paulo, in
Catholic University of São Paulo and other city universities, we notice an increasing
alignment among critical lacanism, social psychology and critical approaches in philosophy
and semiotics. This activity is bounded with social movements, for example gays and
lesbian activism, poverty and abandoned children institutions, and alternative mental health
projects (Goldenberg, 1997; Kehl, 2000; Koltay, 2000). Recent theoretical references
include Foucault, Zizek, Badiou, Angamben and also discourse analysis (Pecheaux) and
critical theory (Adorno, Horkheimer and Benjamin).
Social and Community Psychology
Even North-American social psychology with its individualistic approach has created roots
in Brazil, dictatorship and the increase of inequality and suffering that follows it, was the
main reason to conduct a critical psychology approach. During the 60´s and 70´s, scholars
with a huge academic training – almost ever obtained in USA universities – and sensible to
social problems, initiated political and scientific efforts to resist military government.
Although different academic groups were engaged in such problems, a group from Catholic
University of São Paulo (PUC) enables links with other Latin American psychologists also
interested in social transformation. Within a humanist and Marxist perspective, following
authors as Vygotsky, Paulo Freire, Martin Baró, and Politzer, such scholars produced a
special way of intervening in the social reality. Community Psychology (Psicologia
Comunitária) has been, since then, the most characteristic critical psychology approach in
Brazil (Campos, 1999; Lane and Sawaia, 1995).
It is important to realise that Community Psychology as a research field has its origin in the
USA, in a conference in Boston (1965) where American psychologists were interested in
questioning mental health practices. Although the meeting had pointed to political role of
psychology, that approach kept a deep individualistic and clinical methodology. Otherwise,
Brazilian community psychologists found the work with groups and the election of
psychosocial concepts – as language, identity, ideology, social representations and
subjectivity – its methodological and theoretical core.
Working with action research, psychodrama or within a humanist approach, community
psychologists have conducted their research activities due to produce awareness among
poor and excluded people. During the 20 years of military dictatorship, following a
strategic conception, they tried to bring poor people, especially from favelas inside
Brazilian metropolis, to find their rights as citizens. After the abertura, their action has
been concentrated still on that, but their themes are enlarged. Nowadays, working inside
public institutions or in NGOs, these psychologists are engaged on problems related to
health (including mental health), justice, violence, sexuality, work, and have focused a
variety of excluded people groups, as youths, women, children, gay, lesbian, prostitutes and
still workers.
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Although Community Psychology keeps a resistant approach against capitalism and their
consequences on the social and on subjectivities, it has increased its aim, including a kind
of discursive methodology to deal with inequality.
There are also other groups working with social psychology in a critical perspective.
Scholars from South to Northeast Brazil have discussing problems outside community
psychology, as prejudice, racism or media and ideology. A diversity of theoretical and
methodological approaches supports those researches. Among them, Critical Theory,
especially Adorno, Horkheimer and Benjamin works, has consistently leading critical
psychological enterprises.
Institutional Psychology
As an also relevant critical approach, Institutional Psychology (Psicologia Institucional)
emerged in Brazil by the influence of psychoanalytic thought brought to social field by
Argentinean psychoanalysts Henrique Pichòn-Riviere and Jose Bleger, by French
institutional analyst Georges Lapassade, and by Brazilian social scientist Guilhon de
Albuquerque (Guirado, 1987). Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari works on psychoanalysis
also co-operated to modify a Marxist hegemony on Brazilian Institutional Psychology.
Bringing together Kleinean psychoanalysis, dialectic method and Kurt Lewin’s Groups
Dynamic, Pichon-Riviere and Bleger were well known in Brazil from 60’s. During 70’s
some of their books were even translated to Portuguese, a real sign of interest inside a
academic world that, as your elite, give “its back” to our Spanish-speakers neighbours.
Bleger introduced the expression Institutional Psychology and offered a clinical method to
understand and deal with institutional realities. His work was based on a political
perspective that intended to intervene in inter-subjective dimensions, appealing to
“unconscious” social determinants, that is, imaginary.
Whereas this contributions to critical psychology were still next to dialectic approach,
following the main stream of European institutional analysis (Lapassade, Loreau), Brazilian
psychologists that belong to this field have tried to construct a interdisciplinary area where
applied psychoanalysis has an important role. In this case, a lacanian influence could be
noticed in a dialogue with foucaultian concepts (Guirado, 1995). The reference to discourse
analysis carries the importance of language inside groups and institutions as the field where
this critical psychology approach could be performed.
In connection with this domain, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari works also have
inscribed their marks on Brazilian critical psychology, offering, as those authors above, a
different view to understand and to interfere with social phenomenon. Their contributions
about relations on social and subjectivity from a critical psychoanalytic perspective during
the 80’s, were largely adopted on institutional contexts, especially those related to mental
health.
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Socio-Historical Psychology
Socio-Historical Psychology is another approach that could be identified to a Critical
Psychology perspective. This group has Vygotsky Psychology as reference. Based on
epistemological considerations (Rey, 1997) Socio-Historical Psychology assumed an
opened platform to change Psychology in Brazil in an inclusive perspective. Important
research projects orientated to major social problems in Brazil are connected with this
approach, around, for example: domestic violence (Azevedo, 2005), helpless children,
family organisation, poverty and social inequality (Sawaya, 2005), educational exclusion,
and so on.
Trying to introduce psychology theoretical debate in post modern context and
historicization of psychology practice, Socio-Historical Psychology turns fast from a
theoretical position into a political movement (Bock, 2001). Dominant in the most powerful
control institutions, as the national and local Psychology Counsels, in charge of the most
extensive journals and organising massive scientific meetings, for at least 15 years, SocioHistorical Psychology is in straight connection with community and institutional initiatives,
for example, a national “bank of hours” to help on social risk situations and general
demands on Psychology. In theoretical terms we can stress some classical forms of
Marxism combined with all sorts of constructivism and cognitivism approaches. The
strategic platform to establish a kind of hegemony in psychology movements appears in a
tendency to exclusion of clinical practice and turn socio-historical approach in the major
approach in Brazilian Psychology.
Educational and Children Psychology
Linking institutional and educational psychology, there is an important research group in
the Psychology Institute of University of São Paulo. Dealing with Educational Psychology,
they intend to move from a traditional approach that sees the individual as responsible by
school failure to an institutional and social perspective, within a Marxist background (Patto,
1997).
This group has developed researches about educational failure as a social process. Also,
they have worked with Brazilian children’s history, trying to recovered hints for the
construct of children social exclusion, especially among those who live in poverty.
Psychoanalysis enters this field associated with – or confronting – Marxist thought with
Gramsci and Critical Theory with Adorno and Horkheimer as a nowadays important
stream.
Publications and References
There are at least two main periodicals in Social Psychology where it is possible to find
material related to those critical psychological production: Psicologia: Reflexão e Crítica
(http://www.scielo.br/prc) and Psicologia e Sociedade (http://www.scielo.br/psoc). In
Psychoanalysis we can mention the periodicals Revista da Associação Psicanalítica de
Porto Alegre - APPPOA (http://www.appoa.com.br/), Revista Mal Estar e Subjetividade –
Unifor (http://www.unifor.br/) and Revista Percurso (http://www.uol.com.br/percurso).
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As we can see, all of these periodicals are published in Portuguese, especially to a Brazilian
audience. Whereas this means the possibility of alliance and collaboration among Brazilian
researchers, this also seems to be its weakness, as Critical Psychology in Brazil has little
exchange with international academic centres.
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