Beer-laai-roi – “eu vi aquele que me vê”: relações entre mulheres evangélicas e seus processos psicoterápicos

Abstract

We have a sizable evangelical population in Brazil, with more than half of them being women. At the same time that there are so many evangelicals in Brazil, psychology is becoming more established as a field of study and practice in the country. In order to address these new challenges, academic research must be developed in the field of psychology. The purpose of this dissertation is to better understand the relationship between evangelical women and their psychotherapeutic processes. To develop this point, it begins with a Critical Discourse Analysis methodology with an intersectional reference, which built the bibliographic reading that supports the field. Two phases of the research were conducted. The first involved preliminary semi-structured interviews with four Evangelical women who had previously undergone psychotherapy, during which they discussed their experiences. After developing this first point, we had the first clues regarding what to ask in the key interviews - about the identity of these women, their sufferings, clashes between psychology and religion, such as the concept of the "Christian psychologist," and recurring themes in psychotherapy, such as family, sexuality, marriage, guilt, racism, and violence. These themes are further investigated in the main study, revealing that, despite the churches' emphasis on family, sexuality, and other topics in their speeches, these women are dissatisfied with the solely religious response and continue to suffer. Thus, in the second stage, an online questionnaire was administered to 64 women in order to analyze their socioeconomic profiles. Twenty-one of them agreed to participate in an online semi-structured interview. According to the interviewees' statements, being an evangelical woman relates to a sense of meaning in life that is associated with but not limited to evangelical churches. Despite the fact that it is a meaningful place, they report being afraid to show their pain and suffering, preferring to solve problems on their own. Religion disputes suffering, which is one of the research's central themes, as the only place to resolve pain. Churches demonstrate a desire for exclusive care, but women are not fully welcomed there. One of the major issues raised is fragility, a reason why many people only seek psychotherapy when they have no other options. As a result, there are significant conflicts between psychological knowledge and religion, which can frequently ally to exert power over these women or distance themselves in order to create spaces for secular listening. Religion pervades their psychotherapeutic processes, giving the impression that suffering is a "bad testimony." At the conclusion of the study, it was evident that their experiences had been ambivalent, not only because the religious field is malleable in terms of its ability to establish dominance and comfort, but also because of their subjectivities as women who move through these complex spaces, being who they are and seeking out spaces where they can feel good and welcomed.