SIMÕES, C. H. D.; RIEMENSCHNEIDER, F.; AIELLO-VAISBERG, T. M. J. “Victims of Contemporary Society”: mental health workers’ imaginary regarding the psychiatric patient. Proceedings of the X Apoiar Conference – The Laboratory of Mental Health and Social Clinical Psychology: 20 Years – The Journey and the Future, p. 254–265. São Paulo: Institute of Psychology, University of São Paulo, 2012.
Abstract: In this work, we present an intervention research conducted with mental health workers of various higher education backgrounds who form a team in a psychiatric institution. We employed a complex methodology, and in this study, we focus on the collective interview organized through two dialogical mediators: the Thematic Drawing-and-Story Procedure [D-E (T)] and the presentation of slides to facilitate group conversation, aiming to foster emotional communication. The event was recorded as a psychoanalytic narrative, which, when considered alongside the drawing-stories, enabled the interpretative production of an affective-emotional or unconscious relational meaning field named “Victims of Contemporary Society”. This field is defined by the belief that society generates psychic and existential suffering due to the ways in which it is organized in the current era. The concrete conditions of social, economic, political, and cultural life are seen as direct causes of psychic distress. This attribution of a direct social causality to psychic suffering may be considered an indication of a movement toward overcoming conservative positions. However, its presentation in the form of direct and simplified determination seems to reveal a tendency to overlook the individual’s complexity, reducing them to a mere effect of the political-social structure.