The reflective encounter as a possibility for clinical intervention in educational institutions and community groups

Abstract

This study aimed to expand on the study of psychological practice referred to as reflective encounter, envisioned as a proposal aimed at psychoeducational attention. In this research, the reflective encounter is characterized also as a clinical group action aimed at educational institutions and community groups, which are rarely explored from this perspective. The clinical action emerged due to the availability and readiness of the psychologist in his activity with the group, recognizing the place for the alterity of the other and of oneself. This psychologist’s action was guided by attention, listening and care, and gave rise to an open space and refuge to welcome the meanings of the history of each participant in the group relationship. This availability was understood as a participant interventional action aimed at promoting the establishment of a space to operate and coexist, building knowledge and narratives from the action of its components. In this work, Heidegger’s phenomenology epistemologically based the formulation of an existential analysis that guided us as a methodological possibility for understandings in the field of clinical psychology intervention. It was concluded that the reflective encounter emerges as an innovative proposal, consolidating a group meeting space for the constitution of meanings, and that it has high social relevance and can break new ground in relation to the exercise of the activity of psychologists who are requested as clinical intervention agents in educational institutions and community groups.