Methodological Construction Directions for Research in Psychoanalysis: The Problem of Colonization of Other Fields of Knowledge

Abstract

Through the problematization of othering as a strategy of domination and exploitation characteristic of the capitalist system, this article highlights how science itself participates in this logic by producing subalternized and objectified subjects, positioned as objects to be described and analyzed by a supposedly neutral and universal subject. When inserted into the scientific and university fields, psychoanalysis, like other areas of knowledge, operates inside epistemological disputes that determine what is recognized as legitimate and true knowledge, thereby reproducing, to some extent, the mechanisms of exploitation, expropriation, and objectification inherent to capitalism. Although psychoanalytic ethics is marked by resistance to these processes, within narrative disputes it may nevertheless engage in forms of power maintenance. Feminist epistemology can illuminate points of tension in the construction of methodology in university-based psychoanalytic research. As a way of problematizing this issue, this article proposes imagetic associations in order to make visible methodological tendencies in research, such as “island research,” “servile research,” “master research,” and “encounter research.” The latter, inspired by the proposal of a relational ethics, points toward a non-colonizing position in research conducted across distinct fields. Thus, we conceive methodological construction inspired by clinical case formulation as a guiding orientation for engaged psychoanalytic methodologies resistant to colonizing tendencies.