Migrants, Immigrants and Refugees: the Trauma Clinic

Abstract

This paper presents the activities carried out by the university outreach project Migrants, immigrants and refugees: social vulnerability and social bond, developed at the Institute of Psychology, University of São Paulo, as well as its objectives, results and consequences. Initially, we present its clinical-theoretical- epistemological field of articulation with  Psychoanalysis, society and politics, aimed at investigating the relations between the subject and ways of building social ties. We trace elements to characterize the problems of immigrants and newly arrived refugees to the country and present some of the issues and impasses of these subjects in the social bond. We observe numerous reorganizations and creative resolutions, with links between politics and desire. We highlight the impasses related to anxiety, guilt and the overcoming of violence, the maddening power of trauma and subjective disorganization, as well as the endless wandering of some of these subjects. Finally, we present the coordinates of the trauma clinic and the strategies and clinical-political devices developed in dealing with these subjects, particularly the issues of demand and the analyst’s position vis-à-vis disorders generated by subjective political situations and the strategies for the collective elaboration of the trauma.