“Eu não sou louco”: Posicionamentos identitários em relatos de usuários de um centro de atenção psicossocial

Abstract

In several contexts, it´s possible to observe that certain narratives are designed to exclude subjects, as well as the dissemination of discourses that seek to inscribe conducts in the scope of scientific, religious and legal knowledge. The hard lines forged by Law, Psychological and Psychiatric knowledge legitimized the exclusion of several category of subjects, as it happened to the known as insane or mad, legitimizing their segregation. From demonic possession to mental illness, madness has historically been constituted by several negative conceptions, twisted by discourses full of prejudice, stigma and stereotype. The Psychiatric Reform has developed new paradigms about madness through a project that aimed the deinstitutionalization of mental health patients. However, the effects of the excluding discourses about madness represent impasses and challenges to the fulfillment of Mental Health Policies. Thereby, analyzing the various negative categorizations that were/are attributed to the subject who is in psychological distress, arose the question as to how he recognizes itself, since there was a gap in knowledge about the understanding of how this subject defines himself. This study aimed to analyze the process of discursive construction of identities, carried out by users of a Psychosocial Care Center (CAPS), in addition to identifying the rhetorical-discursive resources used in this process. This was a qualitative study in discourse analysis, based on the discourse analysis method developed by Social Discursive Psychology. The field of research was the Psychosocial Care Center III Reviver (CAPS III Reviver), located in the city of Campina Grande / PB. There we´re 22 participants of this study, who attended and participated in a workshop or therapeutic group held in the referred Psychosocial Care Center. The participants we´re divided into 8 groups for the data collection. The criterion used to delimit the number of participants was the saturation sampling. Data collection took place through a mask-making workshop and interviews in small groups, composed of 2 or 3 users of the service, according to the methodology used by Margareth Wetherell. The analysis of the data obtained with the interviews was based on the discourse analysis proposed by Social Discursive Psychology. Analyzing the results, it was verified that the CAPS III users assumed different positions, constructed from different discourses, that we´re organized into 6 categories: mentally ill, Christian, the position of moral subject, empowered and emancipated, sufferer and denial of madness. It was possible to verify that the socially constructed senses for madness, through institutions and other mechanisms of power, reflect in the way in which the subject constructs his definition of himself and his way of being and being in the world. Analyzing the narratives obtained in this study, it was possible to understand that despite the advances achieved from the Psychiatric Reform, negative conceptions about insanity still cause suffering in the CAPS users, who try to deny the madness in order to escape the stigmas that the terminology has. Therefore, it is necessary to think about strategies that can promote the transformation of these stigmatized and stereotyped lives, which must occur through a political action, based on the care ethics, the guarantee of human rights and deinstitutionalization. It is hoped that this study will contribute to the strengthening of the anti-asylum fight and to the reflection of the importance of care in freedom and the processes of resistance that are designed from new lines of invention of life and respect to the plural forms of existence.