Discurso, intelectuais e poder: os psicanalistas e suas projeções imaginárias em colunas e entrevistas de jornais (1980-1998)

Abstract

This research aims to map discourses about the figure of the psychoanalyst in the press, insofar as they are understood as "authorized voices", summoned by the daily newspaper to diagnose the forms of psychic and, especially, social malaise of the contemporary. Based on a theoretical and conceptual basis in Discourse Analysis, the main objective of this work is to understand how occurs the transformation of the public image of/about the psychoanalysts, from 1980 to 1998 – period delimited by two moments of the history of psychoanalysis in Brazil that had repercussions in the press: The institutional "crisis" of the Psychoanalytic Society of Rio de Janeiro and the split of schools affiliated to the World Association of Psychoanalysis. 474 texts of columns signed by psychoanalysts and interviews published in the newspapers Folha de Sao Paulo and O Globo compose the corpus of this research. The results of the analysis indicated that there was variation in the themes on which psychoanalysts used to testify: specialized themes had more space in the first half of the 1980s and themes such as art and culture, behavior, feelings, inequalities and human rights prevailed in the rest of the time. As the imaginary projections, the most frequent are those that put the psychoanalyst in the place of "thinker", characterizing him as an intellectual rather than as a clinician or specialist. From 1980 to 1998, there was a displacement of the image of the psychoanalyst, previously more identified to the theoretical-psychoanalytic discourse, for the intellectual of a generalist type, capable of commenting on themes such as politics and behavior. The analysis indicated differences in how the psychoanalyst is summoned by the two newspapers, Folha de S. Paulo being more linked to psychoanalytic knowledge and its articulations with other knowledge (as philosophical or religious), while in O Globo the image of the psychoanalyst that provides tips on how to solve an intimate problem prevails, especially in the "sentimental consulting" columns.