O TDAH interroga a educação: fracasso escolar ou sucesso do sujeito?

Abstract

This thesis is a production of the Postgraduate Program in Education of the Federal University of Juiz de Fora. The research theme arose from the observation by the increasing demand for psychiatric diagnoses and treatment to professionals from the psi area, coming from the school and its professionals. School failure is a recurring theme of research in the field of education and has already had many names and explanations. With the increasing discourse of pathologization and psychiatrisation of our maladies, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has been constantly evoked to explain educational impasses, becoming one of the current names for school failure. Our research question, therefore, was to investigate the relationship between ADHD and school failure, through psychoanalysis and its discourse. We did a reading that we consider of interest to teachers and other education professionals. The research was done by launching a question to Google general search engine, starting from the premise that the most relevant links indicated as an answer represent the way in which the social bond of our times has treated ADHD, when it appears as a symptom in children of school age. We analyze the most relevant texts indicated by the search engine using psychoanalysis - more precisely, the writing of Lacan’s discourses – highlighting in them the presence of each discursive type. Through the psychoanalytical discourse we take ADHD as a symptom, capable of making the teacher and other professionals of education, question and modify their discursive position. Analyzing the texts, we observed the prevalence of the University Discourse and the Capitalist Discourse to explain ADHD. These discourses transform the student into a Cerebral Subject and placed as an object of specialists and medicines, can´t be held responsible for its symptom. Moreover, against the Cerebral Subject, the teacher feels powerless and incapable of acting without the help of specialists and medicines. Thus, our indication to education professionals is that they seek to escape the University and Capitalist Discourse, and ask: would there be a possible way out of the Master Discourse? Our bet is that, in this way, the teacher could escape from a place of impotence, making it possible to read ADHD as a symptom, as psychoanalysis thinks; a singular mode of the subject is represented for the other. In fact, what would be considered school failure, can be thought of here as success of the subject, success of the subject of desire.