The PSC’s research lines are committed to studying human suffering, as well as its living conditions today. The preventive perspective and the development of clinical models that can be used in different work situations, especially institutional ones, are principles present in the research carried out in the Program, although we have research lines whose fundamental subject is prevention or the institution.

The PSC holds monthly seminars among the Program’s faculty with a view to improving the educational and scientific project that governs our work. In these meetings, we focus on the network of disciplines offered by our faculty, with the concern of maintaining greater integration between them and between the Program’s research lines and projects.

Three (3) Research Lines

Psychoanalysis, suffering and politics

Investigates clinical and social expressions of suffering based on concepts and methods proposed by psychoanalysis. Relating political and discursive conditioning factors, it epistemically and ethically evaluates strategies for transforming suffering in public and private contexts, in institutions and communities, with an emphasis on health. Their research projects involve: the critical examination of clinical procedures with subjects in vulnerable conditions, particularly when referenced by markers of race, class, or gender; the foundation of diagnostic rationales; the study of the social inscription of symptoms and the history of the formation of social pathologies as a way of operating on policies of recognition, subjectivation, and listening. The research aims to mobilize critical social and philosophical theories for the psychoanalytic and political confrontation of the experience of suffering.

Teachers: Aline Souza Martins, Christian Ingo Lenz Dunker, Gabriel Inticher Binkowski, Ivan Ramos Estevão, Maria Lívia Tourinho Moretto, Mayra Moreira Xavier Castellani e Miriam Debieux Rosa

Psychoanalysis, trauma, and attachments

Investigates contemporary subjectivities – their production, the traumas to which they are subjected, and the suffering resulting from them – in the context of their environment and their bonds, seeking the development and improvement of clinical devices supported by an ethics of care. The focus is not only on individual clinical work, but also on clinical work with couples, families, groups, and institutions. There are six privileged research areas: (1) understanding intersubjective interactions and the constitutive bonds of the human being; (2) understanding traumatic events in their interface with subjective and relational constitution; (3) investigating contemporary productions of psychic suffering based on the articulation between discourses and social practices and their intersectionalities of gender, class, and race; (4) developing and improving care devices and new social and clinical technologies; (5) history and epistemology of psychoanalysis, in order to contribute to the understanding of its transformations in contemporary times; (6) teamwork and interdisciplinarity of clinical work in health facilities, schools, legal institutions, and social assistance institutions.

Teachers: Daniel Kupermann, Danielly Passos de Oliveira, Isabel Cristina Gomes, Marina Ferreira da Rosa Ribeiro e Pablo de Carvalho Godoy Castanho.

Clinical Interventions in Mental Health: Diagnosis, Therapeutic Action, and Prevention

Investigates clinical intervention using different methodologies and in diverse contexts, seeking the development of diagnostic, intervention, and prevention procedures for the care and preservation of human mental health. Its privileged research fields include: 1. Psychological assessment through projective, expressive, perceptive, and neuropsychological procedures. 2. Individual clinical interventions, in families, institutions, and social groups. 3. Short- and medium-term treatments and evaluation of psychotherapies. 4. Evaluation and implementation of preventive interventions in dialogue with public policies.

Teachers: Andrés Eduardo Aguirre Antúnez, Francisco Lotufo Neto, Leila Cury Tardivo, Márcia Helena da Silva Melo e Renatha El Rafihi Ferreira.