1968-2018: o que se perdeu? No ar rarefeito das sociedades de controle

Abstract

Considering all that has happened in the 50 years that have passed between 1968 and 2018, the aim of this essay is threefold: first, to make a brief recovery and characterization of what happened in the late 1960s; second, to identify, to understand and to estimate what has been lost since then, and how and why it has happened; third, to use this mapping to problematize the relationship between psychology and politics. On the one hand, I will approach a strand of psychology, institutionalism, associated and affected by the iconoclastic and contestatory spirit of those rebellious years. On the other hand, another tradition present in the history of psychology will be dealt with. This tradition has not served as an intercessor or as a promoter of social transformations, instead it has served to guarantee or reinforce an adaptation and/or adjustment of individuals to the established social order, reproducing the establishment. Throughout the essay, metaphorically speaking, I argue that, from 1968 to 2018, the atmosphere has changed from one where the air available to young people was abundant and of the best quality to one in which the air has become increasingly thin, compromising and rendering unfeasible its insurgent movements in our contemporaneity.