WHAT IS THE PLACE OF THE PSYCHOANALYST IN LISTENING TO RACISM AGAINST BLACK
PEOPLE IN BRAZIL?
Psychoanalysis; Clinical listening; Racism; Training; Decoloniality.
This dissertation is the result of my concerns as a woman, a black woman and a psychoanalyst,
especially when listening to the denunciations made by self-declared black patients of the positions
of coloniality present in the work of Brazilian psychoanalysts. It is well known that in the 19th
century racist and scientific discourses engendered policies of whitening and miscegenation of our
people, which produced and produces consequences in the modes of subjectivation present in this
territory. Therefore, an ethical and welcoming approach to racial issues is not given or guaranteed,
and it is necessary for other analyzers to appear in order to think about the formation and work of
psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts in Brazil. So, faced with this scenario, a first question emerged:
What is the place of the psychoanalyst in listening to racism against black people in Brazil? To do
this, we looked to the theoretical guidelines given by Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan on the
training of psychoanalysts and listening to the unconscious, but due to the processes of colonization
and Brazilian cultural neurosis, other positions had to be adopted. Decolonial and black theories
appeared here as new lenses in order to investigate racial and racist policies, the white narcissistic
pact that sustains this logic of violence and segregation directed at the black population, and to
foster knowledge and ancestral technologies of black resistance to such confrontations. Based on the
weaving of writing experiences, with experiences that permeate my body and professional training,
and interviews with practicing psychoanalysts in Rio Grande do Norte, this research can provide
elaborations on the place of psychoanalytic listening in the articulation and disarticulation of racism,
the denials and practices of coloniality in the analytical setting and the possible inventions of this
clinical device when in composition with politics.