Intersections between Freirian thought and Freudian psychoanalysis: an integrative review

Abstract

This paper is an integrative review that surveys the bibliographic production in academic journals that explore the intersection between Paulo Freire’s pedagogical thought and Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic framework. The survey was conducted in the second half of 2022 across multiple repositories, both general ones (Scientific Electronic Library Online/SciELO and the Portal de Periódicos of the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior/CAPES), as well as specific databases in the fields of Education in Brazil (Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Educação/ANPEd and EDUC@) and Psychology (Portal de Periódicos Eletrônicos de Psicologia/PePSIC), using the combination of the descriptors “Freire” and “Freud” with the descriptor “psychoanalysis.” From the hundreds of documents retrieved, after reading and applying exclusion criteria, we selected eight to comprise the body of analysis for this work. The difficulties and obstacles encountered in the bibliographic survey highlighted the scarcity of research on the dialogue between these authors, despite its apparent fecundity. The comparison of the writings indicated similarities between the theories of the two authors, which converge on crucial points of their works. Freudian concepts such as narcissism, sadism, and masochism suggest psychic processes of colonization that can keep the oppressed in a position of passivity or even identification with the oppressor. Understanding these psychic mechanisms through the transdisciplinary body of knowledge of psychoanalysis may provide foundations for the understanding of and the fight against the physical and psychological chains that bind the oppressed.