A medicalização e a patologização da infância: epistemologia subjacente e repercussões na escola

Abstract

This is a critical-theoretical study about the medicalization and the pathologization of childhood in the dimension of its presuppositions and of its repercussion at school. The problem in investigating is in understanding which historical-philosophicalepistemological presuppositions lie beneath the phenomenon and which contributions are able to offer the psychoanalysis and philosophical hermeneutics to think of a school which could face the objectificator aspect of the human being who is in its basis. The work hypothesis starts from the understanding that the superficial comprehension of the children’s behavior in terms of pathology (which is supported by the growing medicalization of life) and the remedy treatment as the first choice – medication – makes the subjectivation processes during childhood harder instead of facilitating them, once it denies the priority of people in the subjective construction and the power of the teacher-student personal interaction as well as its effect at school. From the methodological point of view, this research makes use of the hermeneutic point of view when dealing with sources and study material, as well as the research on psychoanalysis especially when it takes the experience of concrete intervention on reality as a raw material on which it articulates and understands the concepts. In order to correspond to this objective, this work is structured in three chapters. The first chapter situates the problem of medicalization and pathologization of childhood and the main concepts and it leads them closer to the school environment. It develops the concept of subjectivity, demonstrating that the different perspectives on the subjective constitution produce different comprehensions and distinct practices on the “behavioral symptoms” of a child (pathologizing and subjectivists), as well as discussing its impact on the teacher’s action and it gives examples of the potential risk of teacher’s subjective destitution. The second chapter is destined to reveal the reductionist aspect which lies on the basis of the medicalization and pathologization of childhood starting from its historical, epistemological and anthropological presuppositions, sustaining being this the way to avoid the dogmatism from these processes and their pernicious effects on children’s education. It also proposes a contrapuntal to the reductionist model that allowed from the neuroscientific concepts of epigenetics and neuronal plasticity, the composition of hypothesis of comprehension of the psychic suffering that include the inter relation between the biological and the environmental factors supporting a non -objectifying epistemology of the subject and childhood. The third chapter takes as an example an experience of subjectivist intervention carried out inside the school and articulates the concepts of dialogue, health and treatment, from philosophical hermeneutics, as well as the concept of stranger and the notion of extramural psychoanalytic intervention, from psychoanalysis, aiming to think perspectives and actions beyond the pathologization of childhood, culminating in formative experience. It presents fragments of a listening and intervention carried out in a school, where this conceptual load became alive, and illustrates how an act of this quality can result in the humanizing rescue of children stigmatized by pathologization. The results obtained allow us to conclude that the use of Freud's psychoanalysis and philosophical hermeneutics, when converted into concrete action within the school, contribute decisively to the construction of non-pathological human relations, insofar as they enhance the formative and subjectivating effect of the human encounter, whose scope favors the symbolic and subjective restitution of the pathologized child, returning to her the hope of projecting herself into the future, despite the difficulties.