Mulheres lendo mulheres: literatura como possibilidade expressiva em um grupo terapêutico

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to monitor the impact that women's literature has on the experience of other women, based on a therapeutic group device as a care proposition linked to the ‘Women in Versions’, an intervention research project at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). Inspired by Bruno Latour's Actor-Network Theory (2012) and feminist authors such as Donna Haraway (1995), Vinciene Despret (2004; 2011), Grada Kilomba (2019) and brazilian researchers such as Márcia Moares (2011; 2016; 2020) and Laura Quadros (2015; 2020; 2021; 2022), I seek to weave a localized research, that is, one that considers my intersections as a woman, researcher, psychologist and bibliophile in the field in which the research develops. Based on the experiential nature of Gestalt clinics, literary and poetic art has emerged as a potential vector of impacts on clinical practice, but also on research. The horizontal posture of the consultations allowed for an openness to the use of literature, understood as a catalysing and mobilising language, which shows the many ways of saying and expressing women's experiences. It is from this crossroads that I investigate what impacts this expressive possibility produces within group clinical practice. We conclude that these artistic expressions are powerful bets that foster a more artesanal (Quadros, 2021), inventive and creative clinical practice in Psychology. Thus, clinical practice and research form a partnership and enhance care both in the therapeutic and in the research process. With the intersection between Literature and Psychology, we perceive a reconfiguration of the assisted clients’ suffering and, with this, important shifts were produced so that these young women could update their experiences and not crystallise in a place of pain and anguish.