Four Conditions for Research in Psychoanalysis

Abstract

This article discusses the use of psychoanalysis - particularly of psychoanalytic technique based on free association - for investigations in the field of social psychology, based on the authors’ experience in a graduate program. To this end, we have attempted to produce a reflection on the conditions and the impact of the dislocation of concepts between the clinic of individual psychic suffering and empirical research involving institutions and groups. By focusing on the assertion of the primacy of the unconscious, we have tried to array the lines of approximation and distancing between clinical practice and empirical research. The basis is the discussion on the necessary conditions (outside of the therapeutic setting) for listening to the unconscious, for creating a transference bond, for the work of interpretation of the discourses of subjects and, finally, for the elaboration of unconscious contents and desires - whether by the subjects listened to in this research or by the researchers themselves in their work of theoretical elaboration.

Keywords:
psychoanalysis; research; methodology

Resumo

Este artigo discute o uso da psicanálise - em especial da técnica psicanalítica baseada na associação livre - em investigações no campo da psicologia social, a partir da experiência dos autores em um programa de pós-graduação. Para tanto, tentamos produzir uma reflexão sobre as condições e os impactos do deslocamento de conceitos entre a clínica do sofrimento psíquico individual e a pesquisa empírica envolvendo instituições e grupos. Centrando-se na afirmação do primado do inconsciente, os autores procuram ordenar as linhas de aproximação e de afastamento entre a clínica e a pesquisa empírica. Parte-se da discussão sobre as condições necessárias (fora do setting terapêutico) à escuta do inconsciente, ao estabelecimento do vínculo transferencial, ao trabalho de interpretação dos discursos dos sujeitos, e, por fim, à elaboração de conteúdos e desejos inconscientes - seja por parte dos sujeitos escutados da pesquisa, seja por parte do próprio pesquisador em seu trabalho de elaboração teórica.

Palavras-chave:
psicologia; psicanálise; metodologia de pesquisa

Resumen

Este artículo discute el uso del psicoanálisis, en especial la técnica psicoanalítica basada en la asociación libre en investigaciones en el campo de la psicología social, a partir de la experiencia de autores en un programa de postgrado. Para tanto, se intenta producir una reflexión sobre las condiciones y los impactos del desplazamiento de conceptos entre la clínica del sufrimiento psíquico individual y la investigación empírica de instituciones y grupos. Centrándose en la afirmación del primado del inconsciente, los autores buscan ordenar las líneas de aproximación y de alejamiento entre la clínica y la investigación empírica. Se parte de la discusión sobre las condiciones necesarias, fuera del setting terapéutico, a la escucha del inconsciente, al establecimiento del vínculo transferencial, al trabajo de interpretación de los discursos de los sujetos y, por último, a la elaboración de contenidos y deseos inconscientes, ya sea por parte de los sujetos escuchados en la investigación, o del propio investigador en su trabajo de elaboración teórica.

Palabras clave:
psicoanálisis; investigación; metodología

Résumé

Cet article traite de l’utilisation de la psychanalyse - en particulier de la technique psychanalytique basée sur l’association libre dans la psychologie sociale - à partir de l’expérience des auteurs dans un programme de troisième cycle. Pour ce faire, nous réfléchirons aux conditions et aux impacts du déplacement des concepts entre la clinique de la souffrance psychique individuelle et la recherche empirique impliquant des institutions et des groupes. En se concentrant sur l’affirmation de la primauté de l’inconscient, objet fondamental de la technique psychanalytique, les auteurs cherchent à ordonner les lignes d’approche et de distance entre les recherches clinique et empirique. Nous discutons les conditions nécessaires, en dehors du cadre thérapeutique, pour l’écoute de l’inconscient, pour l’établissement du lien transférentiel, pour l’interprétation des discours des sujets, et enfin, pour l’élaboration des contenus et des désirs inconscients; soit par les sujets de recherche, ou par le chercheur lui-même dans son travail d’élaboration théorique.

Mots-clés:
psychanalyse; recherche; méthodologie

Introduction

The topic of research in psychoanalysis is often restricted to its clinical dimension (Lo Bianco, 2003), centered on a question about the effectiveness of psychoanalysis as a therapeutic method and the search for proof of such effectiveness and its link with particular aspects of the technique. This seems to be, indeed, the more usual sense of the expression research in psychoanalysis (Malan, 1981).

The clinic is certainly the inaugural empirical field of psychoanalysis, in which its technical rules and ethical reflection are forged; but it is not the exclusive field of the unconscious. Therefore, the reflection on the clinical procedures may produce a direction for the non-clinical research procedures. We resume questions about the possibilities and the limits of what is often referred to as “applied psychoanalysis” - as opposed to a pure psychoanalysis, ideally subjected to a setting and to the practice of private clinic (Birman, 1994); or, in Lacanian terminology, questions of a psychoanalysis in intension or extension (Aragão, Calligaris, Costa, & Souza, 1991); or yet of an extramural psychoanalysis as the politically implicated clinic (Rosa, 2016).

The discussion on psychoanalytic technique, which would sustain the enunciation of a possible research method, concerns above all the conditions for recognition of the unconscious. It points to the suspension of the functions of the self - both in the discourse required of the patient and in the listening required of the analyst (Cunha & Coelho, 2015) - and to the ban on the satisfactions of the self, in the abstinence required regarding transference and in the control one must have of countertransference, in a discussion originated in Freud’s criticism of his masters’ practice of hypnosis and suggestion. The debate does not concern only the reflection on how effective clinical methods are, but also the design of an ethical, political posture (Coelho & Birman, 2014). Freud recounts, for example, his discomfort with Bernheim’s practice of vehemently forbidding his patients’ resistance to suggestion; for the author, this was “an evident injustice and an act of violence”, since the patient “certainly had a right to counter-suggestions [that is, to resist] if they were trying to subdue him with suggestions” (Freud, 1921/2014a).

In his course, suggestion - the doctor’s influence on a patient - is reduced to a minimum; instead of urging one to recall, it invites one to associate (Freud, 1925/2011, pp. 120-121). One takes on the listening role, not mindful of where the talk is headed, and any intervention is justified and measured only by the production of new associations - hence, by the continuation of the patient’s discourse (Freud, 1911/2010, 1937/1969). To keep the labor of association going on is the analyst’s main task: any other ought to be subordinate to that one, including those connected to scientific and therapeutic interests (Freud, 1912b/2010, 1915a/2010). Subordinating these interests to the practice of free association actually induces their very redefinitions, placing them at the service of the discovery of the unconscious. Therefore, the premise of psychoanalytic research should be the possibility of enunciating the unconscious, and its methodological reflection can be described as a discussion of the conditions for such enunciation.

Beginning with the findings, questions and concerns amassed over some years working in a social psychology graduate program, in which we advise students in field research with groups and social institutions, and with a psychoanalytical theoretical and methodological framework, we organized a discussion of those conditions into four blocks:

We shall depart from the conditions for listening, appropriating the golden rules - free association and floating attention - as research principles, organizers of their procedures and, hence, their own empiricism and ethics. This shapes the kind of interlocution established with the research subjects and provides a direction for some of the concerns with data collection, such as recording the material. In the conditions for transference, we will discuss the implications of the researcher in their research object, pointing to the ethics of abstinence when dealing with the transference phenomenon. In the conditions for interpretation, we will define the interpretation in clinical practice as an operation of reinstatement of the word. We will approach the problems in the implication of the researcher in his interpretations and his preliminary role in the elaborations. Finally, in the conditions for elaboration, we will discuss the notion of work (Arbeit) in Freud, in its aspects of disguise of the unconscious material and psychic transformation, questioning the possibility of elaboration by the research participants. We will also situate theoretical elaboration in articulation to psychic elaboration, thereby discussing the production of the text that concludes the research.

These conditions interfere with one another and do not feature very distinct boundaries, but they still act as anchors to operationalize, in the terms of field research practice, the ethical posture that allows the recognition of the unconscious.

Conditions for listening

We have argued elsewhere (Batista & Cunha, 2012; Cunha & Coelho, 2015) that the golden rule of free association and floating attention should be the starting point for a discussion of the procedures of any research grounded on the psychoanalytic method. This implies a suspension of the functions of the self reflected in the practical tips that Freud gives to the novice analyst in 1912: there is no need to memorize or write down what the patient says; we must forego any attempt at ordaining the material; instead, we must allow the material to lead the attention, which otherwise remains diffuse, and it shoud be able to also follow the analyst’s unconscious chains. The functions of ordering the self are set aside, suspended, so that communication can be established between two unconscious minds, as proposed by Freud (Freud, 1912b/2010).

We also point out (Cunha & Coelho, 2015) that the transposition of the rules organizing clinical practice to field research practice runs into a series of difficulties. The research situation is different from the clinical practice one that Freud points out as ideal. The researcher does not go out to the field before undertaking a literature review and working out a project - unlike the clinician, who refuses any systematic means of obtaining information about his patient, as well as any attempt at theoretical articulation of the case before it is finished. The researcher, on the contrary, has a prior interest in his object of study and also a theoretical framework with which to narrow down a specific research problem that suggests a working hypothesis. Research often seeks corroboration only from this prior theoretical framework. We are, therefore, far from the conditions that Freud deemed ideal for analytical work, far from being capable of exercising strict floating attention.

However, we must bear in mind that Freud’s rules are not rigid protocols; they indicate minimum parameters of action and an ethical posture that guides the psychoanalyst. Floating attention pushes away the possibility of hastily fitting a patient into what the theory prescribes, but floating attention itself is dependent on a theory, which assumes that such attention could lead to an interpretation that will decipher the symptom as a formation of the unconscious. In his turn, the patient’s free association is never really free - but, as a task laid on the horizon, it leads to the recognition and overcoming of resistances. Besides, it is false that the analyst receives his patients in the office in a neutral, uninvolved and atheoretical way, which Freud believed was ideal. The classical setting analyst obviously has a theoretical framework guiding him - he is a psychoanalyst, perhaps a Lacanian or a Winnicottian one - as well as obvious interests and desires at stake in his work. Therefore, what separates research work from the ideal clinical situation might not be the difference, strictly speaking, between clinic and research, but rather the difference between an ideal proposal and putting it into practice.

Thus, on the horizon, free association and floating attention guide our data collection practice, as ideals that provide us with minimal parameters of action, regulated by an ethical posture. We left the interview scripts aside, preferring instead to ask vague, open-ended questions which woud act as as triggers of the subjects’ discourse; subsequent questions will also follow this discourse. By doing so, we came close to the model we highlight in the research by Ana Cristina Figueiredo (1997) on pyschoanalytic work at a public outpatient clinic. She reports that during her research, she was led to cast aside interview scripts in favor of a conversation with a more spontaneous tone, chained and continued by the subjects that came up, allowing the interview to be conducted by the interviewee and not the interviewer.

As regards the material record, it ought to meet some requirements that Freud indicates in his brief discussion on the same problem in clinical practice (Freud, 1912b/2010; Cunha & Coelho, 2015). His refusal to engage in note-taking is based on a few aspects: the note-taking demands the analyst’s attention, when it should be available and dispersed, “uniformly suspended”; notes always carry an amount of secondary elaboration since they select, order and set down what was heard. Note-taking is therefore refused, since it reintroduces the secondary functions of the self, which the rule of floating attention tries to suspend.

Audio-recording, on the other hand, is a means that dispenses the interviewer’s attention and records with no elaboration. For this reason, full, uncut audio-recording of all that is said is our preferred strategy. At the same time, we warn that the fidelity of audio-recording does not dismiss the thought that, in the course of the research, it might also function as described by the Freudian theory of remembrance. From audio-recording to transcription and publication, evidently a great deal of selection and elaboration of material takes place, and the latter is prone to forgetfulness and cover-up remembrance (Freud, 1899/1969).

What we said about the interview and the recording is an attempt to set minimal standards of action, and should not be taken rigidly. The conditions under which research takes place - its setting- are determining. In the case of research on a treatment adherence group for HIV patients, the interviews were replaced by informal conversations in waiting rooms, in administrative departments, or before and after the usual group meetings (Santos, 2012). In the case of research with patients volunteering for bariatric surgery, data collection, originally designed as a semistructed interview, also took place as a casual conversation in the waiting room, where the researcher found a better chance of not being mistaken for a member of the team in charge of another assessment (Brazil, 2013). The everyday work of a psychologist in a Social Services Reference Center (CRAS) has become the field of a study on social welfare policies (Souza, 2012). In all those cases, a model closer to ethnography was imposed, and the notes were taken a posteriori, from memory. Implicated secondary elaboration was resumed in a reflection on methodology as a countertransference effect (Souza & Coelho, 2014).

Also about the setting, in a study on teenage girls who are disconnected from the institutional shelters where they were housed upon reaching the age of majority, the researcher was received at the institution and taken to a room where she should wait for the end of a meeting of the technical team - the room was where the medical records of the teenagers were filed. All their records were kept there: medical, actions, events and procedures. Much of what, certainly, the teenagers would not like others to have access to. So, the researcher found in the silence of the interviewees a boundary that was relentlessly disrespected, materialized by the very room they were allocated to (Santana, 2015).

Another researcher reported feeling incarcerated when she was going to the women’s shelter for victims of domestic violence, where she conducted her study. Gates, doors and windows were kept shut due to internal regulations. In the interviews, the women said they were imprisoned while their attackers were on the streets. They also said that they were to blame. The researcher, in her position, felt sorry for them and, while listening to the recordings, was surprised by a Freudian slip that had gone unnoticed during the interview: one interviewee complains of being there “obliged” (rather than “sheltered”)¹ (Fonseca, 2015, p.60).

Conditions for Transference

As Freud warns on several occasions, free association is a task doomed to failure in view of the resistance it faces. This failure, however, reveals the resistance, first in what the patient does not say - when he changes the subject or keeps silent - and, soon after, in the terrain of transference - in the updating of unconscious conflicts and desires in the relationship between analyst and patient, in which what is resisted to in the discourse is revealed through act (Freud, 1914/2010).

The transference proves itself to be field of psychoanalytic experience. There, the unconscious is no longer a distant and forgotten memory reachable only by means of remembrance, but something present and consistent, repeated in the relationship with the analyst as a current thing. The success of the analysis depends on this updating, since it is not possible, according to the Freudian image, to liquidate someone in absentia or in effigie (Freud, 1912a/2010). This experience is what creates, as a space between reality and fantasy sustained in a relationship with the other, the terrain in which psychoanalysis can claim its own notion of empiricism (Birman, 1994) and therefore oppose objective psychologies (Lacan, 1966/1998, p. 215).

The transference phenomenon is not separate from what is called countertransference, that is: the presentification of the unconscious is not limited to the patient’s projection of the analyst’s desires and fantasies. We should mention that the analyst also takes part in this - that is, the projection of such fantasies produces effects on him and elicits his affections. Thus, the transference scene is constituted not only of the subjective impact that the presence of the analyst has on the patient, but also from the subjective impact that the presence of the patient has on the analyst. The countertransference phenomenon - affections and implications the patient elicits - is strongly articulated with the image of communication between the unconscious minds, and makes the very practice of interpretation depend on it (Freud, 1912b/2010, p.156).

In the extramural environment, analytical work has a strong countertransference character. The interest in a certain topic always brings the marks of history, desire and the researcher’s subjectivity and, as we stated above, going to the field is always preceded by bibliographic research, definition of a research problem and eventually the presentation of a hypothesis.

The rule of floating attention seeks to suspend all of this at the time of listening, but its meaning is not to prevent the researcher from being affected by its field; on the contrary, he seeks better conditions that make possible an important transferential reading at the time of interpretation. Acknowledging the inevitability of the transference phenomenon, the critical resumption of its material in the elaboration of the work, as well as pointing out of the countertransference factors in orientations and conversations between peers is important for recognizing and “controlling” countertransference - either preventing the researcher’s theoretical expectations to determine the discourse of the subjects listened to (and the direction of the research as a whole), or warning that their eventual willingness to help those listened to produces a gratification which obstructs an anguish that drives the subject’s discourse and the research as a whole.

Freud (1915a/2010) articulates his rule of abstinence based on a critique of morality as the boundaries of the relationship established between analyst and patient. In his reasoning, this implies the full admission of the impassioning his patient might undergo, while indicating, as a condition for such, that the therapeutic process must be conducted without retribution, but also without rejection - in other words, in abstinence - of what constitutes transference, reproducing what guided the very postulation of floating attention. Even if through acts, the transference should be regarded as something the patient says, and therefore cannot be dismissed as inconvenient or forbidden.

The possibilities of retribution, in their turn, are vetoed not only because they obstruct the forces driving the analysis forward, but above all due to the analyst’s ethical obligations toward his work. It is he who, by starting the analytical device, evokes transference passion - this makes him accountable for the phenomenon, and prevents him from using it for his own personal gain. The evocation is justified to the extent of a clinical promise, which involves restoring the patient’s ability to love and to relate to others, in such a way that it means an “increase in psychic freedom” (Freud, 1915a/2010, p.226). This freedom is presented as a value in itself, and it is the same freedom which is at stake in his critique of hypnosis.

Returning to the research field, transference also requires a reflection on the effects of the researcher’s presence on his field of action, the way the subjects take him and the demands that they make him. We should remember the example of the research on bariatric patients (Sobral, 2013), mentioned earlier, in which it was important or the researcher not to be seen as part of the medical team, since the subjects’ discourse was already too contaminated by the technical discourses of medicine. It is also interesting to observe that the team receiving the researcher at the women’s shelter for victims of violence gave her a challenge by saying that the task of listening to the victims would not be easy, and also volunteering to tell their experiences, asking for tips on how to deal with the sheltered women and, especially, asking the researcher to help them understand an enigma: why those women insist on remaining with the men who abuse them (Fonseca, 2015). Similarly, when the members of a hooligan firm, threatened with stadium ban due to episodes of violence, say that coexistence will show the researcher that they are not as violent as they are said to be, this statement is interpreted as a demand for recognition as an autonomous group capable of self-regulation, often working as a request that she act as a spokesperson and attorney for the group to representatives of the State. The researcher could not take on such a role, obviously, but neither could she dismiss once and for all the group’s hope to find in her salvation for the firm, since it was what kept them participating in the research (Batista & Cunha, 2012).

Conditions for Interpretation

The interpretation of dreams (Freud, 1900/1969) presents the following thesis defining psychoanalytic practice: a dream, like a neurotic symptom, is interpretable. Its absurd appearance can be explained as a precipitate of at least two desires, one of which must undergo a series of deformations on account of the censoring action. The thesis proposes, at the same time, a method of interpretation which consists basically in asking the dreamer to free-associate (Freud, 1900/1969, P.108; 1916-1917/2014b, p. 135).

The material from such associations is the basis for dream interpretation. The operation consists in restoring, in the dreamer, the word lost in the deformation of the unconscious material involved in the creation of the compromise that is the dream (and also the symptom); in other words, it seeks, through interpretation, to point out the repressed element.

The patient’s word is still the very index by which we can evaluate the truth of an interpretation; not in the sense of whether or not the patient agrees, but in the production of new material, a new memory, a new association that testifies to the overthrow of resistances (Freud, 1937/1969).

In this way, interpretation consists in a reinstatement of the word: by asking the patient to associate, to point the repression and to expect an association in the patient’s discourse (not an agreement).

Therefore, getting the bariatric patient to talk (even if a little) is interpreting. His place as a subject is thus reinstated, even if it happens as he waits for a consultation where the patient will be evaluated and perhabs blamed for not achieving the body mass index (BMI) needed for the dreamed-of surgery, with which he hopes to achieve ideal physical standards that will finally allow him to be requited in love - the ultimate ideal (Sobral, 2013).

A word restitution is also how we can understand the interpretation by which a football firm finds in violent confrontation with rival fans the means of ensuring that their inner tensions do not threaten their cohesion. The violence in the fight with rival fans, and seeing them as the enemy, creates strong bonds uniting those subjects to one another through their passion for their football team. It would then be necessary to restore this group’s violence to a place other than that of something undesired or to be restrained (as the discourse of the State and “society” would have it), or that of a wrong impression that needs be undone, as the fans clearly assert. The violence is part of what binds them and organizes the field of affections: outward violence and hatred, inward friendship and cohesion. In this sense, the violence in the encounter with the enemy fans is the ambiguous sign of the bonds of friendship that unite them (Batista, 2011).

Returning to Freud, however, we can raise two problems in the thesis that interpretation is the restitution of the word: the first is the role of the analyst himself in the construction of interpretative material. If it is true that there needs to be communication between the unconscious minds, and if it is true that the interpretation is closely related to the eliciting of the analyst’s affections in the transference situation, the analyst is implicated there, and the interpretation is not purely of the patient’s speech. In other words, interpretation never ceases to be arbitrary, and what is restored is not the original word, but an interpretation - in the sense of how precarious and partial an opinion is, from a point of view - of the analyst (Batista & Cunha, 2012).

The second problem concerns the expected response of the interpretation. As we said earlier, it is not a matter of accepting it or not; what is expected is that it should produce effects, causing previously inaccessible material to surface. This, however, is only preliminary work: what the interpretation points out will only produce its effects after a long time of elaboration, through solitary psychic work in which the patient must face his own resistances, and which the analyst must patiently wait for (Freud, 1914/2010, 1937/1969).

The patience with which we wait for the patient to elaborate correlates to the ethics which protests the violence of suggestion, which argues that a patient should have his right to resistance a little more respected at the same time it proposes the consequences of such ethics in the very notion of a cure, since the patient’s solitary work of elaboration, which the analyst can do nothing about except wait, is what constitutes the novelty of psychoanalysis compared to suggestion therapy (Freud, 1914/2010).

Conditions for Elaboration

Elaboration (from the German “Arbeit”, translated simply as “work”) is a general notion which describes the act of transforming the psychic material appearing throughout Freud’s work in different contexts and different compound forms.

Let us first consider dream elaboration, or dreamwork (Traumarbeit), that is, the series of transformations and disguises that dream thought must undergo in the making of a dream - from the unconscious mechanisms of displacement and condensation, through figurability, to the role of secondary elaboration (Sekundäre Bearbeitung). The description of the elements of dream processing leads Freud to consider that one reaches in it the point of “transvaluation of all psychic values” (Freud, 1900/1969, P.542). In dreamwork, such processes are set in motion by the need to distort and disguise the material, making it acceptable for the continuation of the sleep of the self, and we must recognize that there is an original meaning there that might be lost.

Such considerations are present in our reflection on the recording of the research material: the recommendation of full recording of interviews ensures a degree of fidelity to the material, but it is only a starting point for a series of operations that will lead to the making of the final work. The original material will undergo a series of transformations. In the transcription, the speech record must turn into text, which will be articulated to others taken from other interviews and from the theory itself. From recording to transcription and publication, the material will be elaborated on, and as was already said, elaboration is always an opportunity for cover-up remembrance.

The series of distortions applied to the dream material does not exhaust the meaning of the term Arbeit in Freud’s work. Let us also highlight that the term points to transformation as the need to reorganize the psyche. When coping with loss, the subject must proceed to a series of operations to switch off the libido invested in the object that is no longer within reality; in other words, the subject must proceed to a work of mourning (Freud, 1917/2010), after which that libido will be available for investment in a new object. The experience of remembrance and repetition in the analysis leads the subject to shroud himself in his own resistances, elaborating on and overcoming them. This is the work that produces the most transformative effects on a patient (Freud, 1914/2010). Consequently, the elaboration does not correspond only to the distortions produced by the censorship demands in the making of the dream; it also describes profound psychic rearrangements, such as those presumed in mourning and analysis.

We should, therefore, ask whether our research could also have any effect of elaborating a profound psychic rearrangement for those who were listened to. For that, we must bear in mind that field trips are short and the interpretations (both in the clinical sense of the unveiling of the unconscious and in the academic sense of the synthetic ordering of the material and the formulation of a hypotheses from it) are, therefore, saved for a later moment. Even if there is an assessment at the end of process, in which the interested parties will be informed of the purposes of the work - and this might produce an elaboration effect - we cannot appropriate the clinical character found in other styles of research, such as the implicated psychoanalysis of Miriam Debieux Rosa (2016), which places the task of elaboration at the forefront and regards transference as a strategy to allow the speaker to appropriate his own discourse (Rosa & Domingues, 2010).

At the same time, we must also consider that every interview has a performative dimension of an act, which is often a starting point for a work of elaboration for the research subject. This is an inevitable effect created by the research situation itself. Nevertheless, our goal by having the results of the work go back to the subjects who took part in it is to produce an interpretation effect that might call the subjects to elaboration.

Theoretical elaboration

On the other hand, theoretical production of psychoanalysis should also be understood as elaboration work. It is the final destination of the analyst’s transference experience, from which he collects the phenomena which are to be described, organized and articulated into abstract ideas in theory. As for the concepts created therein, they are nothing but conventions and do not tolerate overly rigid definitions (Freud, 1915b/2010, p.52-53). They are “myths”, speculations valid for their heuristic character, that is to say, for what they allow us to “discover” - which must also be articulated through the practice of interpretation, which takes on its meaning through the discovery of new elements and the production of new associations. Thus, the very idea of elaboration bears an approximation between the theoretical work of the analyst, or scientist, and the fantasizing of the child.

Freud warns of the difference between the “psychic attitudes” necessary for analysis and theoretical speculation. The psychic attitude of the analysis is indicated in the floating attention and the abstinent posture; whereas the psychic attitude of the scientist implies a systematization that composes a structure and expects the continuation of the case, and to that end cannot renounce speculation and cogitation. Hence, the recommendation that theoretical elaboration, the “synthetic work of thought” (synthetischen Denkarbeit) be undertaken after the patient treatment is finished (Freud, 1912b/2010, pp. 153-154).

There is another factor that should be highlighted regarding the recommendation to leave the theoretical elaboration for later: the impact of the transference, a situation in which, let us remember, the analyst is also involved. It is necessary that this impact become a memory so that it can be elaborated. Only after the end of Dora’s analysis was Freud able to glimpse his own part in the failure of that treatment: his interpretation was founded on a prejudice which expressed itself in his countertransference (Lacan, 1966/1999).

Going back to the field journals and interview recordings puts the researcher in a third person position regarding himself and the experience the material portrays (Figueiredo, 1997). As we pointed out, this is a reason for relativizing the fidelity of such files, while it is the condition of possibility for noticing details that had escaped the first listening. This is also where the researcher can estrange himself and reconsider what was happening then in terms of transference.

Therefore, the researcher’s feeling sorry for the women victims of violence (Fonseca, 2015) does not show only the identification that makes her feel part of the suffering those women experienced; it shows what is constantly being repeated: victims of violence are, one way or another, always seen as having to face punishment for something they did. This is in the discourse of violent husbands as a justification of their acts. It is also in the discourse of women to justify their being in a shelter home, that they allowed their husbands’ violence to escalate to the point that their bodies were mutilated, and their lives were threatened. It is also in the shelter norms, which are structured to resolve issues of safety and confidentiality necessary for the operation of those places by enforcing strict rules that remind prison discipline, and in the discourse of shelter workers, who confront the researcher to explain why those women go back to their husbands.

At the same time, the elaboration of academic work correlates to the production of a network of intelligibility which articulates the listening and interpretation of field experience to scientific knowledge and general culture, in such a way that the result is something that can be shared as a text offered for reading.

We can point a direction to this elaboration. As we insisted, we begin by listening, and this means putting the discourses of the subjects in the foreground because an interpretation will rise from them, and elaboration must proceed with those discourses on the horizon. In this sense, the repetition of a signifier - “family” - was the point from which a study on shelter institutions for children and adolescents can be developed (Souza, 2012). The sheltered spoke of two families: the one inside and the one outside the shelter homes. The shelter workers, in their turn, spoke as if they were parents of the sheltered and, at the same time, children abandoned by the State. This repetition led to an analysis of the history of shelters homes, which suggested that they are institutions acting as substitute homes and whose emergence is closely linked to the idealization of the nuclear family by hygienic medicine. The model is so established in the organization of the State and its laws that, in the case of those children and adolescents, it prevents any other bonds from being formed as they are always measured by their precariousness in comparison to the idealized model.

Therefore, theoretical speculation must always be anchored in what the subjects said, and it must demonstrate the link that exists between this material and the one that is awakened in the transference. At the same time, if we recognize the analyst’s, or researcher’s, part in the transference, we obviously also indicate this as a limit of the work, since no matter how much we strive to put what is said by the research subjects in the foreground, what is being elaborated is always the researcher’s unique experience. Thus, in this last stage the scope and limits of the analytical work of investigation of sociocultural phenomena are indicated, as well as a discussion on the very status of the knowledge produced in the context of this research, and finally of any and all theoretical formulation produced from psychoanalytic experience.

Conclusion

To conclude, it is important to resume what we consider to be the central elements of this shift in the work of the analyst from the strict environment of the clinical setting to the expanded field of institutions and the social body.

Our starting point is an ethics that consists, on the one hand, in the unrestricted reception through listening and, on the other, in the posture of abstinence regarding the transference. To insist that it is an ethics necessarily entails admitting the partiality of the knowledge we produce, considering that certain values - such as “psychic freedom” advocated by Freud - are tied together. Let us also remember that the discussion about this freedom is not restricted to the “analysis of the self”, but also permeates the “psychology of the masses”, which highlights the articulation claimed by Freud between individual and social Psychology.

We approach our study objects with this ethics, translated into the discussion of the procedures, and we hope to explore this articulation between individual and society through an appreciation of the notion of the unconscious.

With such ethics, we also seek to establish the minimal boundaries of an empiricism which, precisely, places the unconscious and the entire phenomenal field associated with it in the foreground, for example, the pulsion dimension of subjective experience. In minimal terms, it is based on the delimitation of the patterns of listening and acknowledges the effects of transference and the necessary partiality of interpretations and theoretical elaborations. Therefore, not only the conditions of production of knowledge through psychoanalysis are indicated, but also the ultimate meaning of this production - the elaboration of a transference experience of confrontation with the unconscious - and its limits - those of a knowledge produced in a unique situation, by determined subjects, subject to the contingent character of an experience.

Referências

• Aragão, L. T., Calligaris, C., Costa, J. F., & Souza, O. (1991). Clínica do Social: Ensaios São Paulo, SP: Escuta.
• Batista, K. R. O. (2011). Entre torcer e ser banido, vamos nos (re)organizar: Um estudo psicanalítico da torcida Trovão Azul Dissertação de Mestrado, Departamento de Psicologia, Universidade Federal de Sergipe, São Cristóvão.
• Batista, K. R. O., & Cunha, E. L. (2012). A experiência psicanalítica na investigação social: considerações sobre método. ECOS: Estudos Contemporâneos da Subjetividade, 2(2), 261-275.
• Birman, J. (1994). A direção da pesquisa psicanalítica. In J. Birman, Psicanálise, ciência e cultura (pp. 13-27). Rio de Janeiro, RJ: Zahar.
• Coelho, D., & Birman, J. (2014) A transferência na pesquisa em psicanálise - um ponto de vista ético. In J. Birman, D. Kupermann, E. L. Cunha, & L. Fulgencio (Orgs.), A fabricação do humano: Psicanálise, subjetivação e cultura (pp. 125-136). São Paulo, SP: Zagodoni.
• Cunha, E., & Coelho, D. (2015). Recomendações ao pesquisador que pratica a psicanálise. In A. Faro, M. Mendonça Filho, & R. Henriques. Políticas do social - Avesso da razão (pp. 94-104). São Cristóvão, SE: EdUFS.
• Figueiredo, A. C. (1997). Vastas confusões e atendimentos imperfeitos: a crítica psicanalítica no ambulatório público Rio de Janeiro, RJ: Relume Dumará.
• Fonseca, E. E. P. F. (2015). Mulheres em situação de abrigamento: uma abordagem a partir da inserção em uma casa-abrigo Dissertação de Mestrado, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Psicologia Social, Universidade Federal de Sergipe, São Cristóvão.
• Freud, S. (1969). A interpretação dos sonhos. In Edição standard brasileira das obras completas de Sigmund Freud (Vol. 4-5IV). Rio de Janeiro, RJ: Imago. (Trabalho original publicado em 1900)
• Freud, S. (1969). Construções em análise. In Edição standard brasileira das obras completas de Sigmund Freud (Vol. 23, pp. 289-304). Rio de Janeiro, RJ: Imago. (Trabalho original publicado em 1937)
• Freud, S. (1969). Lembranças encobridoras. In Edição standard brasileira das obras completas de Sigmund Freud (Vol. 2, pp. 333-358). Rio de Janeiro, RJ: Imago. (Trabalho original publicado em 1899)
• Freud, S. (2010). A dinâmica da transferência. In Obras completas (Vol. 10, pp. 133-239). São Paulo, SP: Companhia das Letras. (Trabalho original publicado em 1912a)
• Freud, S. (2010). Luto e melancolia. In Obras completas (Vol. 12, pp. 170-194). São Paulo, SP: Companhia das Letras (Trabalho original publicado em 1917).
• Freud, S. (2010). Observações sobre o amor de transferência. In Obras completas (Vol. 10, pp. 211-228). São Paulo, SP: Companhia das Letras. (Trabalho original publicado em 1915a)
• Freud, S. (2010). O uso da interpretação dos sonhos na psicanálise. In Obras completas (Vol. 10 p. 112-132). São Paulo, SP: Companhia das Letras. (Trabalho original publicado em 1911)
• Freud, S. (2010). Os instintos e seus destinos. In Obras completas (Vol. 12, pp. 51-81). São Paulo, SP: Companhia das Letras. (Trabalho original publicado em 1915b)
• Freud, S. (2010). Recomendações ao médico que prática a psicanálise. In Obras completas Vol. 10, pp. 147-162). São Paulo, SP: Companhia das Letras. (Trabalho original publicado em 1912b)
• Freud, S. (2010). Recordar, repetir, elaborar. In Obras completas (Vol. 10, pp. 193-209). São Paulo, SP: Companhia das Letras. (Trabalho original publicado em 1914)
• Freud, S. (2011). Autobiografia. In Obras completas (Vol. 16, p. 75-167). São Paulo, SP: Companhia das Letras. (Trabalho original publicado em 1925)
• Freud, S. (2011). Psicologia das massas e análise do eu. In Obras Completas. São Paulo, SP: Companhia das Letras, v. XV, p. 13-113 (Trabalho original publicado em 1921).
• Freud, S. (2014). Pressupostos e técnicas da interpretação. In Obras completas (Vol. 13. p. 133-150). São Paulo, SP: Companhia das Letras. (Trabalho original publicado em 1916-1917)
• Lacan, J. (1999). Intervenção sobre a transferência. In Escritos (p. 214-228). Rio de Janeiro, RJ: Zahar. (Trabalho original publicado em 1966)
• Lo Bianco, A. C. (2003). Sobre as bases dos procedimentos investigativos em psicanálise. PsicoUSF, 8(2), 115-124.
• Malan, D. (1981). As fronteiras da psicoterapia breve Porto Alegre, RS: Artes Médicas.
• Rosa, M. D. (2016). A clínica psicanalítica em face da dimensão sociopolítica do sofrimento São Paulo, SP: Escuta.
• Rosa, M. D., & Domingues, E. (2010). O método na pesquisa psicanalítica de fenômenos sociais e políticos: a utilização da entrevista e da observação. Psicologia & Sociedade, 22(1), 180-188.
• Santana, A. S. (2015). O processo de desligamento de jovens de abrigo institucional para crianças e adolescentes Trabalho de Conclusão de Curso, Departamento de Psicologia, Universidade Federal de Sergipe, São Cristóvão.
• Santos, E. M. F. (2012). Processos de subjetivação de pessoas que vivem com HIV/AIDS: considerações acerca de um grupo de adesão ao tratamento Dissertação de Mestrado, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Psicologia Social, Universidade Federal de Sergipe, São Cristóvão.
• Sobral, A. L. O. (2013). Cirurgia bariátrica: fragmentos da análise de uma espera Dissertação de Mestrado, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Psicologia Social, Universidade Federal de Sergipe, São Cristóvão.
• Souza, C. R. A. (2012). Políticas públicas de assistência social em análise: história, valores e práticas Dissertação de Mestrado, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Psicologia Social, Universidade Federal de Sergipe, São Cristóvão.
• Souza, C. R. A., & Coelho, D. (2014). Ideais e perversidades em jogo nas políticas públicas de assistência social: Uma leitura psicanalítica dos valores e práticas. Tempo Psicanalítico, 46(2), 253-269.

• 1
  In Brazilian Portuguese, the words obliged (obrigada) and sheltered (abrigada) are almost identical, with only one letter of difference, what justifies such Freudian Slip from the interviewee.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  18 June 2021
• Date of issue
  2021

History

• Received
  28 Nov 2019
• Reviewed
  22 June 2020
• Accepted
  01 Mar 2021