On the 15th of January 2024, we had the joy of inaugurating yet another FREEPSY project initiative, the Free Clinics Working Group. Gathered at the Freud Museum, in North London, as an intimate group, we counted with the presence of two important researchers and clinicians at the forefront of the free clinic’s movement in Latin America: Dr Carolina Besoain from Chile and Anderson Santos from Brazil. Over the whole afternoon and into the evening, we heard from their work on the ground, their radical and innovative research and their vibrant web of collaborative practices, alive across Argentina, Brazil and Chile.
The Free Clinics Working Group is a collective space of exchange, learning, thinking and writing promoted by FREEPSY, University of Essex, UK. Over a series of meetings across the years of our research project, we will host guests from free clinics and scholars from various territories aiming at stretching our collective repertoire of what free psychoanalytic clinics are, can be and how they operate across different contexts. As an important part of FREEPSY research – Free Clinics and a Psychoanalysis for the People: Progressive Histories, Collective Practices, Implications for our Times – the FCWG will hold a space for inscribing historical and contemporary accounts of free clinics into our fields of psychoanalysis and psychosocial studies. By sharing, reading, connecting and writing we challenge the hegemonic historiography of our disciplines which sees psychoanalysis as a Eurocentric canon, investing on the vibrancy of praxes that are either from the Global South or peripheric in their own manner, re-inventing psychoanalysis in their own time.
Another important element of the FCWG is that it encourages a dialogue between clinicians and academics, inviting colleagues from the university into the world of day-to-day clinical practice as well as providing analysts a space for intellectual exchange and production. In this first meeting, accordingly, our colleagues brought to our attention and collective discussion several contributions to the psychoanalytic dispositif, theory, and political epistemologies such as the notions of ‘plurivision’ and the reinvention of psychoanalytic practice from the perspective of transfeminists and black feminists in Latin America. Carolina spoke about her recent ethnographic investigation of free clinics, from a feminist perspective and her work as part of Colectivo Trenza, in Santiago. Anderson spoke about his experience in the Coletivo Psicanálise na Praça Roosevelt, in São Paulo, and his overall practice of collectivising knowledges in the field of psy.
Below you can get a taste of what Carolina and Anderson presented in this first FCWG meeting as well as learn a little more about their important work. Keep in touch with us if you would like to take part on the next discussions and join the group.
“My research shows how the psychoanalytic framework is unable to keep out the forces of politics. Moments of political mobilization by the people are also moments in which psychoanalysis undergoes transformations. When the logics and practices of exclusion are challenged and social rights are expanded, these logics, practices, and analytical concepts are also challenged and expanded. My principal argument is that the impact of intersectional feminist mobilization in psychoanalysis follows the path of the act. These are acts that have produced new actors who have created new venues where psychoanalytic theory has been actively, creatively, and subversively appropriated. I think of them as acts of citizenship in the psychoanalytic field. They are expanding the frontiers of what we understand as psychoanalysis.
I think it is necessary to recognize psychoanalysis as a flow that is impacted by political events and analyse the mechanisms through which it is expanded, subverted, and perhaps even perverted. In other words, I propose these findings to invite you to think of psychoanalysis beyond its own frontiers, as a desire flux that works in a decentralized manner, despite itself. Sometimes, even against itself. In other words, I believe that it is urgent for psychoanalysis to question its identity politics. Just as Rosi Braidotti proposed that we think of feminism not as an identity but as a desire, I propose the same for psychoanalysis. To twist the question: Is this still psychoanalysis? Instead, ask ourselves: What are we doing with psychoanalysis? Or better, what is the desire of psychoanalysis doing with us?
I think this workshop is deeply contributing to psychoanalysis expansion and creation. It was a nurturing and desiring experience, featuring brilliant psychoanalysts and scholars. It fostered an exciting dialogue and collective dreaming about the potential of psychoanalysis”.
Carolina Besoain (she/her) is a Chilean psychoanalyst, feminist, and researcher studying the connections between psychoanalysis, gender studies, and intersectional feminisms. She has a BSc and PhD in Psychology from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. She is a co-founder of Colectivo Trenza, a psychoanalytic organization in Santiago de Chile devoted to mixing psychoanalysis with feminism and gender studies in psychotherapeutic practice. Since 2023, she has been leading the Clinical Network of Colectivo Trenza. Currently, she is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at UFRJ’s Psychoanalytical Theory Program, and she is a member of the Subjectivity and Social Change Laboratory at PUC, Chile.
“To support my discussion, I turned to Donna Haraway, Guattari, Fanon, Jean Oury, Lélia González and Nego Bispo. I presented questions and reflections on topics such as colonialism, racism, alienation, disalienation, institutional psychotherapy, class struggle and the need to break with the idea of psychoanalysts as mere heirs of Freud. I highlighted the neoliberal subject as a current problem and, through Dardot and Laval, I addressed issues related to the psychic implications of neoliberalism.
In the context of the work at Coletivo Psicanálise na Praça Roosevelt, I shared our history, movements and work dynamics. I ended my presentation by emphasizing that Freud, nor anyone else, owns the foundation of the work of public/street clinics, as it has always been a collective desire and mobilization.
And inspired by @danielguimaraes_d when talking about the “demonetarization of the unconscious” (2018), I articulated it with the perspectives of psychoanalysis work in the square and highlighted the importance of building collective bonds as a political task contrary to neoliberalism, highlighting the relevance of building bonds with the territory”.
Anderson Santos (he/him) is a psychoanalyst, researcher and translator who studies the differences and compositions between psychoanalysis and schizoanalysis. In 2015, he created the website clinicand.com where he shares files and audiovisual materials related to the topic. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, Specialist in “Mental Health, Immigration and Interculturality” from the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP) and a Master’s student in the Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Program in Health Sciences at UNIFESP where he carries out research on “Memories, Racial Relations and Dreams of Youth”. He is part of the Coletivo Psicanálise na Praça Roosevelt, which has been carrying out psychoanalytic practice free of charge since 2017 in a public square in the center of the city of São Paulo. He was the organizer of the books “Uma política da loucura – François Tosquelles” (2024, ed. Ubu and ed. sobinfluencia), “Psicanálise e Esquizoanálise: diferença e composição” (2022, n-1 editions) and “Guattari/Kogawa. Rádio livre. Autonomia. Japão” (2020, sobinfluencia).
