Subjective development from a cultural-historical standpoint: Articulating education and mental health care

This abstract synthesizes the ideas I intend to discuss as a dialogue paper on Ph.D. day based on my Ph.D. research in process. In such dialogue paper, I aim to discuss the idea of subjective development from a cultural-historical approach as a theoretical way to promote institutional practices capable of articulating education and mental health care. Subjective development represents a way to overcome unilateral and absolute criteria as the basis to label people within standardized and universal stages without overlooking the uniqueness of this process. The case study of Sebastiao is presented as part of my Ph.D. research in a community-based mental health service in Brazil, and it was conducted through a constructive-interpretative methodology. The research was aimed at understanding individuals within social subjective processes of the institution. The main purpose of our work was to find effective ways oriented to the transformation of “patients” into subjects of their experience. Sebastiao, who was 39 years old, had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia since he was 30. He was known as one of the first users of the service with uninterrupted treatment for seven years. I argue that only through a therapeutic process based on dialogical and educational actions it was possible for him to open new social spaces and to produce new subjective productions related to life and to himself. By raising those theoretical issues, I hope to foster further discussions, advancing reflexive ways to address research in social institutions within cultural-historical perspective.