Publicação do Núcleo Interdisciplinar do Imaginário e Memória (NIME) e do Laboratório de Estudos do Imaginário (LABI) - Departamento de Psicologia da Aprendizagem, do Desenvolvimento e da Personalidade (PSA) do Instituto de Psicologia da Universidade de São Paulo (IP-USP).
Universidade de São Paulo. Instituto de Psicologia
Oncology patients: a glance about the difficulties lived by the caretaking relatives
The patients with cancer quite often need a continuous help in their everyday life. Usually, one of the relatives is put in charge of these activities, dedicating him/ herself for a long period to such cares. The purpose of this research is to make a survey of the difficulties experienced by the caretaking relatives of oncology patients and check the support techniques presented in literature to them. The data were collected through interviews with 16 relatives that take care of patients with cancer for at least 4 months, without considering sex, age or instruction level. The analysis followed a qualitative and quantitative proposal. From the results found, we can be sure that the relatives that take care of patients with cancer are people prone to get sick easily, what may cause a psychic suffering to them and thoughts about death. These caretakers present a sudden change in their life as well as in their daily routine. Some of them reported that they have already identified some psychosomatic symptoms. We concluded that it is extremely important that these relatives try to take some time to take care of themselves. Doing that, they will be able to dedicate themselves to their relatives with cancer in a more effective way and enjoy the positive aspects of their duty.
Squiggling to be: from yourself to the paper
The purpose of this article is to reflect on the Squiggle Game, a situation created by Winnicott to comprehend the communication of his patients. The game is described as proposed by Winnicott (1968, 1984) in his texts The Squiggle game and Therapeutic Consultations in Child Psychiatry, respectively. To the author, the drawings reveal, in the therapeutic area, some aspects of the individual’s personality and perceptive abilities, which many times, couldn’t be evidenced in the familiar environment. Safra’s study regarding this theme enriches the article. The experience lived by Karin, a 12-year-old teenager, apathetic to the studies and to her life, is presented as an illustration of how the Squiggle Game may happen in the clinical routine. The article also intends to foster the research with this kind of resource, which seems to be simple, but is highly complex and of great psychic significance.
The paper relates to the transference love as being double faced: it is, at the same time, a very important factor for the psychoanalysis development as well as a source of resistance to the psychoanalytical treatment. The transference of love to knowledge, which is sustained by the analyst’s position during the treatment, must be maintained as the analysis horizon, and never be confused with transference love. The analyst should receive this love as a genuine one, although not responding to or underestimating it. For that, he/ she shall use the analyst’s wish as an operator that maintains the tension at the point of suspension of knowledge.
The Consciousness-Unconsciousness intergame
This study had as its main purpose to investigate the unconsciousness in a Machado de Assis’ literary work, using the concept of “relative unconsciousness” by Fabio Hermann’s. Through the work of art, the author interacts with the reader establishing an interpsychic field, where some aspects are manipulated by him determining the field’s characteristics and directing the reading to a certain artistic purpose. The data were taken from Machado de Assis’ literary work - The Nurse. The interpsychic relationship between author and reader can be investigated, transferentially, converting the psychoanalytic method into a research. Others papers can corroborate this study.
Memories of research: the experience of a psychologist inside a women’s prison
The text shows the reflections of a psychologist and researcher from her experience in a women’s prison unit from 2001 to 2003 in the city of São Paulo, the period during which she collected data to elaborate her Doctor’s Degree Dissertation for the Psychology Institute of the São Paulo University. The facts presented in this text report some of her experiences during her research time, specially regarding the impact that a prison institution exerts on those people who develop activities there, as well as, and mainly, on those who were sentenced. Law, Sociology, Psychology and Criminology Authors have been used as references to the reflections developed. The text’s purpose is to make the reader sensitive with the effects that prisons have over the human mind. Characterized as a text that privileges the female gender’s theme, it points towards the disregard with which the imprisoned women’s matters are treated within the scope of the national penitentiary policy.
Women’s Migratory Project: motivations and torments between dream and reality
The research, whose results are presented in this work, was carried out through May and June of 2006. Nine interviews, with an average duration of 40 minutes, were carried out in the community of Nova Colina, periphery of Sobradinho, an integrant city of the Federal District. It is important for us to understand how women mentally elaborate and live emotionally her migratory route, as much as their perception of the changes they make in this route, arising from the external and internal dynamics of adaptation and integration to the new society. As relevant as that are the changes printed in their route and the relationships derived from the symbolic and psychophysical function of the maternity in this process. According to Bourdieu (2004), the somatic culture of each group determines their behaviors and, therefore, denaturalizing maternity is to make possible the perspective that, even the reproduction enters in the “system of relations between the different dimensions of the corporal behavior (that) implies in the breakage with the practical situation defined by a social necessity”. The repetition of the sequence: to migrate, fall in love and have children causes an increasing volume of breakages, structural disorganizations and children under the woman’s responsibility, integrating in her body the marks of the sufferings experienced, as well as traces of a latent past that becomes present in the visible expression of her self: the body.
The integration of Brazilian immigrant women in Rome: conquests and difficulties
This study focuses on the integration of Brazilian immigrant women in Rome. The research is theoretically anchored in the perspective of gender relations giving priority to the feminine empowerment and the biggest visibility of women in the migratory process. Using a qualitative methodology approach, this research was conducted with fieldwork notes taken at local sites and 83 interviews (women, men and people representing keys roles in the Brazilian community). The content analysis disclosed that the social integration occurred for many of them but that solitude is also one of their biggest torments. It is emphasized that a bigger degree of social integration does not necessarily mean for such women the desire to remain forever in Italy. The women’s satisfaction with the job depends on the work previously carried out in Brazil and on their level of education. Despite the many difficulties experienced by them, many of those women feel fortified by their psychological, social, cultural and material conquests in Rome. Note that, if for some women the migratory process is only instrumental, for others it is promotional and results in women’s emancipation.
This article discusses the conclusions of a research carried out with Brazilian emigrant women using life histories, oral narratives and blogs as a methodology, with a view to emphasizing the gender’s role in transnational migration. The focus of the reflection is the transnational identities, the production of transcultural responses; it points the discussion about the viability of building a citizenship across territorial borders, with a cultural, flexible character, according to the inter-identity circulation imposed by the globalization process and suitable to the displacements of the XXI century.
The learning of the young Brazilian migrants: problems and perspectives
This study on the second generation of Brazilian migrants in the U.S.A. emphasizes the insertion of the young and adolescents into the school environment while they also search for a place in the labor market. The school is for many of them the door of entrance to the new world, where the main conflicts and shocks of identity occur, Inter and intra-related with the linguistic, sociocultural and political issues, within a process of exclusion and racism at the same time in which it aggregates communities and segregates them from the access to the main way of the North-American society. The methodology used in this research sought to follow the migrants trajectories and the relations that they establish between Brazil and the U.S.A. Besides, the data collected in the Consulate of Boston was also used, as well as the analyses of relevant secondary data found in revised bibliographies. Authors like Bourdieux (2001), Sayad (1998), Penna and Mey (1998), Elias (1996) and Assis (2003), e experts like Portes (2001), Alba (2003) and Suarèz-Orozco (2002) were extremely important to validate this article. The result of this analysis points to the hope of the young Brazilian migrants to insert themselves into the North American society to gain America, while they demonstrate their lack of perspective for being illegal in the country.
Mozambican Students in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: sociability and social networks
This research’s subject matter is the presence of Mozambican students in the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, focusing on their experience of temporary immigration. Our target is related to a certain extent to the work of other specialists in Human and Social Sciences engaged in studies of urban ethnography. In spite of following the same line, the present study faces a challenge, as the immigrant and/or emigrant himself is both an observer and an integral part of the study’s subject matter, that means, an immigrant reflecting on himself as well as on his fellow countrymen, using anthropological terms. The data and instances collected for this dissertation refer to: i) life projects and the choice of Brazil; ii) identity and classifying systems; iii) sociability and social networks and finally; iv) the expectation of returning home (in other words, how these students intend to apply the knowledge acquired in Brazil to the reality of the emigration country, Mozambique. This material has been gathered by means of interviews (composed of open and closed questions) with Mozambican students at public and private universities in Rio de Janeiro. This group constitutes an amplified network of relationships receiving also individuals of other nationalities, enabling not only face-to-face contacts but also the interaction through virtual networks. It is also worth emphasizing that the expectation of returning home is always present in our interlocutors’ speeches.
A portrait of the end of de century: man, land and work in Nova Ponte - MG, and the problem of displacementstradition?
This article consists of a contribution for the understanding of what was meant by Nova Ponte, with its peculiarities, in the second half of the XX century and, mainly, how the town looked like when the barrage project was materialized, destroying the whole old city. The reality described here represented the effects of the transformations occurring in the Brazilian countryside, specifically in the Cerrado [Savannah] areas. This little town of the Alto Paranaíba region presented the propitious conditions for the implementation of the national project for the reasonable good use of the Cerrado areas: availability of covered area with that kind of vegetation and a low-income community of inhabitants ready to be part of a new work relationship imposed by that occupation form, thought as being reasonable and represented by the toiler. Many of the described experiences were based on our master’s degree dissertation, defended at São Paulo University (USP), under the title: Destruction and Symbolic Reconstruction in Modernization Times.
The contemporary subject’s territory and the “machine of the world” (50 years of Eros and Civilization)
In spite of being a classic theme in West, the ‘mundi machina’ or machine of the world is a polysemic sign whose manifestation in the present time has resemblances with the critical theory in its analysis of the new forms of mass culture repression. The sign unveiled itself as a promise of fidelity of the thought to the being and true, but after the XX century, it assumed regressive forms that do not cease to desolate the subject in politics, science and reason. As a representation of a collective aesthetics, the ‘mundi machina’ can be understood through a culture psychoanalysis ruled by science and technology. Such enterprise was performed by Herbert Marcuse in the work Eros and Civilization - a philosophical inquiry into Freud (1955). This essay, when remembering the 50 years of this work’s publication - aims at a new reading of the Marcuse’s challenge, who carried out a certain psychoanalysis of the great refusal to the “mundi machina”, in order to identify the repressed character of this refusal before the destructive power of civilization, using the essay to express the principle of contradiction.
Cultural regions in Rio Grande do Sul: comparative studys
Thinking of the region as a theoretical “construct”, founded on similarities and differences with other cultural areas, implies in the assumption of a blend, that means, the fusion of pure matters seeking the heterogeneity for the sake of cultural reality. According to Ricardo Kaliman, this latter can only be known when interwoven with the presumed paradigmatic homogeneity of the concept of “imagined culture” (Benedict Anderson), which reinforces even more the “culture lived” in Latin America. Thus, I intend to examine regional differences formed from different cultural substrates added to later acquisitions, which substantially change the cultural physiognomy of Rio Grande do Sul. The state starts to be mapped into new sub-regions from their local literary production. The study forces to widen the range for comparison so that the aimed interdisciplinarity can take over adjacent disciplinary areas, such as History and Sociology, passing beyond political and linguistic frontiers, and forming kinds of “subgroups” in the worldwide literary universe, representing the emanation and materialization of political and linguistic dominance, as stated by Pascale Casanova.
The integration of the Italian immigrants to the politics of Rio Grande do Sul in the former-Colony Silveira Martins
The article analyzes the difficult integration of the Italian immigrants of the former colony Silveira Martins, in Rio Grande do Sul, to the politics and nationality in the end of the XIX century and first decades of the XX century. Our glance privileged the State’s and the Catholic Church’s actions. The reflections that permeate the text are interdisciplinary and prioritize the ethnic and the national and social identities issues. The immigrants had to negotiate with the Brazilian culture, without assimilating it completely. They remained dispersed, dialoguing with several cultures, an aspect that reveals the current pluralization of the national culture and identities.
The displacement of the cities, a Hispano-American tradition?: The Parangaricutiro case (Mexico, 1944)
In 1943, the eruption of the Paricutín volcano led to the abandonment of San Juan Parangaricutiro (Michoacán, Mexico) and to the foundation of a new city, which followed the urbanistic rules inherited from the colonial period. This article aims at replacing this case study within the most general context of the tens of displacement that characterize the Hispano-American urban system’s unsteadiness since the beginning of the conquest until the middle of the XX century. The comparison between the colonial files and those of Manuel Ávila Camacho’s Presidence allows showing the continuity of the institutional mechanisms and the processes set to ensure the displacement of a city and its inhabitants in a crisis situation.
Permanences and changes in french imagery about Brazil (XVI to XVIII centuries)
This article addresses the French views of Brazil from the XVI to XVIII centuries, aiming at detecting permanences and transformations within the context of a study that favors the long duration. The theoretical focus adopted is that of Cultural History, with an emphasis on the study of the formation of images of Otherness. It was taken as a basic premise that the traditional chronological sections of historiography do not correspond to the changes in mentalities, which are very slowly transformed. A hypothesis was then established that in voyagers’ accounts of the XVI and XVII centuries, a strong evidence for the so-called Modern Age could hardly be found. All along the XVI century and until the middle of the XVII century, the views of Brazil were largely tied to the Medieval imaginary. It was only from the XVIII century onwards that a break could be seen, with significant changes in mentalities. The way of looking at Otherness is then changed under the influence of Natural History and the Reason of the Enlightenment, breaking with the Medieval view of world but, on the downside, letting go a rich imagery that had oftentimes been the key to a better understanding of the difference.
First impression: Rio de Janeiro seen by those who arrived there by ship
In this article, I analyze some of the testimonies gathered from the immigrants that arrived at the city of Rio de Janeiro by sea, while trying to focus from their reports on the impression kept in their memory of the first moments spent in this city. I consider the lack of language fluency at their arrival as an opportunity to access the way by which the five senses of the human body react to such a situation of novelty and unfamiliarity. That means, taking for granted the lack of verbal communication, I observe how the body mediates and builds the attribution of senses, thus proving to be an interesting analytical device for access to human representations.
Literary texts on Eva Perón. Appropriations, representations and displacements of popular imagery
In general terms, texts concerned with Eva Perón’s figure have established a tradition that repeated the lineaments of a phallic-centered cultural logic, which grants pathological sources to feminine potentiality. Most of male writers cannot grasp the love-hate phenomenon inspired by Evita; it has compelled them to represent her in a sanctified or a devilish portrait. Authors have made appropriations and representations of popular imagery and transferred them into their literary texts. Every work that approaches Evita offers diverse versions of the myth that she incarnates and that are supported, in their turn, by diverse visions of the world, framed by ideology.Besides, we are intrigued by the special attraction that her figure exerts on some homosexual writers, like Copi and Perlongher. They make converge in Eva the junction of saintprostitute oppositions. They build an anomalous category, using Manichean assessments that have been brought to her image and playing with them. By manipulating assessments that do not satisfy them, they change meanings that enthroned established myths, resisting their power. Finally, we conclude that, after these diverse representations, the authors have been apparently released both from the justicialistic mythology and the scatological celebration.
Freud and Nietzsche: tragicity and poetry
This text presents a perspective of interlocution between Freud and Nietzsche from the poetic creation, dealing with the relationship between the Freudian and Nietzschian writing styles, which could be considered as expressions of their methodological conceptions related to the knowledge production.
Maus, a graphic novel by Art Spiegelman, was successful with both the public and the critique, winning the Pulitzer Literature Prize in 1992, although it has as its conductor line the story of a Jew that survived the concentration camps. In spite of this surprising and unusual theme, Spiegelman chooses to represent his characters as animals, depicting the Jews as mice, the same image used by the nazi propaganda to associate the Jews to filthiness, dejecta or plague to be exterminated. In this article, we intend to present the various displacements, not only formal but also in content, which allowed Spiegelman to construct this unique narrative.
An author for all seasons: João Almino’s work in progress
This essay analyses As cinco estações do amor, João Almino’s third novel, published in 2001. A renowned essayist, with an important body of work on political and ethical issues, since 1988 with the publication of Idéias para onde passar o fim do mundo, Almino has been producing a solid and coherent fictional work, which comprises Samba-enredo, a novel published in 1994. This essay aims at answering the following questions: “Is it possible to find a common thread in Almino’s three novels?” An even more ambitious question: “is it possible to discern indistinctly points of contact between his theoretical imagination of a essayist and his fictional reflection of a novelist?” Two answers are proposed. On the one hand, a permanent process of experiments with the narrator’s constitutes Almino’s fictional ground. On the other hand, the author seems to understand literature as a special form of thinking: literature is thinking in action; literature is philosophy that never stops thinking. Finally, the concept of “interlegibility” is proposed as a theoretical contribution arising from the reading of Almino’s novels
Expropriated earth and water: the conflict in Itaipu
Festive culture. The imaginary thing dislocates the daily thing
This article approaches, from an anthropologicalsociological perspective, the understanding of the deep logic that presides over certain ritual manifestations of the contemporary culture in which a festive spirit expresses itself. First, it analyzes how in the West the implantation of an excluding and totalitarian model of rationality takes place that prohibits the order of the imaginary thing. Later, it examines the holiday as the privileged space where this rationality is broken and goes out to re-illuminate the imaginary one blocked socially. Finally, he proves to be a fundamental existing overlap between the spirit of the holiday and the capacity of the imaginary thing to go beyond the instituted reality.
Latin expressions and the constitution of imaginary in“The cask of Amontillado”
This study is an analysis of the short story called The cask of Amontillado, by Edgar Allan Poe, translated into Portuguese by Brenno Silveira. Our object is the use ipsis litteris of two Latin expressions in relation to the unity of effect aimed in the narrative. Our objective is to point out the stylistic role of this option, since nemo me impune lacessit and in pace requiescat supply the narrative with an essential and questionable principle of cause and effect. Our method consists in a concise description of these Latin expressions from the conceptual perspective of stylistics (on enunciation). Our theoretical basis has been provided by Nilce Sant’Anna Martins (Introdução à estilística: a expressividade na língua portuguesa [Introduction to Stylistics: expressiveness in the Portuguese Language]) and Regina Rocha (A enunciação dos provérbios: descrições em francês e português [The Enunciation of sayings: French and Portuguese descriptions]), along with other supporting works. Our conclusion speaks about the option of the translator to preserve the Latin expressions in this short story, which is not that simple in terms of interpretation.
Pratique à plusieurs: report of an experience in the Belgian institution Le Courtil
The purpose of this article is to discuss a training experience in the Belgian institution Le Courtil, that is engaged in cases of autism and psychosis in children and adolescents. The Lacanian Psychoanalysis guides the institutional foundation through the “pratique à plusieurs”, an expression given by Jacques-Alain Miller in 1992. The conditions for this practice are structuralized from four axes: the partnership between each member of the team and the child or adolescent, the team meeting, the therapeutical director’s function and the theoretical-clinical reference. A case is reported to illustrate these reflections.
The mental patient’s path between confinement and life in society
The following paper is related to the path followed by the mental patient during confinements in psychiatric hospital, looking for building your life in the community. The mental patient leaves the psychiatric hospital to live in community, but this paper’s purpose is the displacement from the depreciated and social exclusion place to the contractual power building and social involvement. The methodology applied was based on Agnes Heller’s quotidian concept of qualitative approach. The patients’ and relatives’ interviews were submitted to a speech analysis that not always reveals the social displacement related to space.