On psychoanalytic studies in education and the experience of university life: a conversation with Leandro de Lajonquière

Abstract

The interview with Professor Leandro de Lajonquière, conducted by professors Caroline Fanizzi and Douglas Emiliano Batista, was part of an event held in 2025 in honor of Professor Leandro on the occasion of his retirement - after more than three decades of academic work - at the Faculty of Education of the University of São Paulo (FEUSP). However, the repercussions of the conversation led the interviewee and interviewers to meet again at a later date, not only to revisit the first interview, but above all to expand and enhance it theoretically and analytically. In this way, the interviewee not only revisits topics that are dear to him, such the time of the university experience, but also addresses other issues, ranging from the reasons why an educator might become interested in psychoanalysis and the works of Freud and Lacan, to the place of psychoanalysis in the history of scientific thought, culminating in the threat to science and democracy posed by the totalitarian spirits of our days. Thus, this interview gives the reader the opportunity not only to learn about the interviewee’s position on controversial and urgent issues, but also to understand the particular impact of psychoanalytic studies on education and the academic experience as such.