Clinical Cases in the History of Brazilian Psychoanalysis

We distinguish four moments in the history of psychoanalysis in Brazil through this comparative study of the construction of clinical cases. Based on discourse analysis, we propose that the period of the pioneers (1914–1949) is marked by the hybrid discourse and allegorical connection between psychoanalysis, psychiatry and anthropology. The period of institutionalisation (1950–1984) is characterised by normative descriptivism, with recourse to illustration and a concern with legitimacy in conceptual use. The period of re-democratisation of the country (1984–2000) presents clinical cases with a greater content of authorial function and the search for more singular stylistics. In the contemporary period (after 2000), the focus on the importance of Lacanianism produces a kind of inversion of the previous traits: a search for unique cases, sovereignty of concepts in their hybrid relationship with other concepts and criticism of the aspirations of normativity and consensus.

1. 1.

   Casuistry is a process of reasoning that seeks to resolve moral problems by extracting or extending theoretical rules from a particular case, and reapplying those rules to new instances. This method occurs in applied ethics, medicine and jurisprudence. Casuistry dates from Aristotle (384–322 BC), yet the zenith of casuistry was from 1550 to 1650, when case-based reasoning arose, particularly in administering the Sacrament of Penance. The term casuistry became pejorative with Blaise Pascal’s attack on the misuse of casuistry. The ‘case by case’ approach to personal moral decisions ultimately developed and accepted a casuistry (the study of cases of conscience) where at the time of decision, individual inclinations were more important than the moral law itself.

2. 2.

   Lacan proposes the concept ‘transmission’ of psychoanalysis to contrast the Freudian idea of formation (Bildung). Transmission focuses on the receiver, the candidate as he or she recognizes the effect on them of psychoanalytic discourse. The idea is connected with the concept of ‘matema,’ as the model of an ‘integral transmission,’ deprived from imperfections of speech.

3. 3.

   ‘The [money] which, through inheritance and theft, is kept in the closed hands of the rich… (…) I know you, loose beast, capable of the worst purposes. Febbrônio dissimulated from the streets of Brazil!’ (De Andrade, 2000, p. 151).

4. 4.

   ‘In Brazil, it can be said that we have only exceptionally had an administrative system and a body of employees purely dedicated to objective interests and founded on these interests. On the contrary, it is possible to follow, throughout our history, the constant predominance of private wills that find their own environment in closed circles and are little accessible to impersonal ordering. Among these circles, it is undoubtedly the family that has expressed itself with the greatest strength and resourcefulness in our society. And one of the decisive effects of the undeniable, absorbing supremacy of the family nucleus […] is that the relationships that are created in domestic life have always provided the obligatory model of any social composition between us that is based on patrimonialism’ (de Holanda, 1927, p. 121).

Authors and Affiliations

1. Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

   Christian Ingo Lenz Dunker

2. Universidad de La Republica, Montevideo, Uruguay

   J. Guillermo Milán-Ramos

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christian Ingo Lenz Dunker .

Editors and Affiliations

1. Department of Social and Work Psychology, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

   Belinda Mandelbaum

2. Department of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK

   Stephen Frosh

3. Laboratory of Social Theory, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

   Rafael Alves Lima

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