Clínica Histórico-Cultural e processos de cura: um estudo-intervenção sobre as feridas coloniais de homens gays negros brasileiros

Abstract

Contemporaneity carries with it an inheritance based on social inequality; in this reality, there are people who are valued more and less, producing colonial wounds in the psychic dynamics of those who are valued negatively, which can be observed in the experience of black gay men. The specialized literature points out that because black gay men are the target of racism and homophobia, their mental health situation suffers significant damage, which manifests itself in their conduct in the most diverse forms. On the other hand, black gay men have built strategies to deal with the repercussions of racism and homophobia, including healing processes, which are technologies of self-care and inter-care within the black community. Despite this, it is well known that racism and homophobia produce an effect of non-recognition in the other, which disempowers the ancestral care processes of black gay men for themselves and for each other. In this sense, it is believed that psychotherapeutic intervention, more specifically the Cultural-Historical Clinic, can be an alternative to the depotentialization of the healing processes of black gay men in the face of their colonial wounds, given that the Cultural-Historical Clinic is a therapy that diverges from the idea of the universal human being, present in traditional approaches to psychology. Considering this context, the general aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between the Cultural-Historical Clinic and healing processes in black Brazilian gay men. Specifically, it seeks to: I) describe the approximations and distancing between the Cultural-Historical Clinic and the healing processes of black Brazilian gay men; II) understand the possibilities and limits of the Cultural-Historical Clinic for acting on the colonial wounds of black Brazilian gay men; III) analyze the narratives of black Brazilian gay men about their colonial wounds; IV) propose the cultural-historical clinical intervention based on the healing processes of black Brazilian gay men; and V) evaluate the cultural-historical clinical intervention based on the healing processes of black Brazilian gay men. This study is eminently qualitative, more specifically of the action-research type, with complementary descriptive statistics. In order to build the corpus and meet the research objectives, the following tools will be used: I) Autoethnography; II) Field Diary; III) Online psychotherapeutic sessions in the Cultural-Historical Clinic; IV) Self Report Questionnaire (SQR 20); and V) Affective Map Generator Instrument (IGMA). The meanings of the research will be interpreted based on Discourse Analysis and Cultural-Historical Psychology, using ATLAS.ti software version 8. The first study indicated that the developmental experience of black gay men in Brazil is marked by colonial wounds of racism and homophobia, which become incorporated into the individual's personality, producing psychological illness. Building on this scenario, the investigations carried out in the second study pointed out that historical-cultural clinical psychology can constitute a contextualized work approach, helping us to overcome the inaccuracy of traditional, white, and Western categories such as mental health. Subsequently, the third study made the necessary theoretical and epistemological connections between historical-cultural clinical psychology and clinical approaches to working with black and LGBT+ people, showing that Historical-Cultural Psychology, due to its historical and epistemological roots, is appropriate for working with black gay Brazilian men, after all, it is disconnected from the idealism and mechanism present in bourgeois psychologies. In the fourth study, we analyzed the narratives of black gay men and identified that, although the psychological development process of this population is marked by the social inequalities of racism and homophobia, there is room for healing processes, which are connected to community strengthening and emotional development. In the fifth study, it indicated that the historical-cultural clinical model is effective for mediating and strengthening healing processes in black gay Brazilian men, indicating that the proposed theoretical model needed to be revised and expanded and that intervention and clinical management strategies from a historical-cultural perspective are effective for promoting psychological health in black gay Brazilian men who suffer from the psychological repercussions of racism and homophobia. Finally, the research contributed to strengthening a central thesis, namely: from a historical-cultural perspective based on the healing processes of black gay men, healing is the dialectical integration of self-care and mutual care practices taking place in the territory and based both on the availability of healthy mediating resources for psychological development and on the construction of strategies for confronting homophobia and racism.