Subjectivity and Critical Mental Health:
Lessons from Brazil (Daniel Goulart)

This presentation is based on the book ‘Subjectivity and critical mental health: lessons from Brazil’ (Routledge, 2019), which presents and discusses subjectivity as a key concept to challenge the individualized and reified perspective that psychology and mental health studies have traditionally sustained. It draws on González Rey’s cultural-historical theory of subjectivity, constructing points of convergence with critical social psychology, as well as with some critiques from traditional psychiatry based on antipsychiatry. Drawing on empirical findings from original research undertaken in Brazilian community mental health services, a complex articulation between mental health, education and subjective development is proposed by emphasizing a unified research/professional practice, based on an ethics of the subject.

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Daniel Magalhães Goulart,
Daniel Magalhães Goulart is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Theory and Foundations of the Faculty of Education of the University of Brasilia. He is also a Collaborating Professor at the Master’s in Psychology of the University Center of Brasilia. He graduated as a psychologist from the University of São Paulo and completed his Ph.D. at the Faculty of Education of the University of Brasilia, Brazil. He is the current coordinator of the Reading and Research Group “Subjectivity: Theory, Epistemology and Methodology”. His latest books are: (1) Theory of Subjectivity from a Cultural-Historical Standpoint: González Rey’s Legacy (Ed., Springer, 2021), (2) Subjectivity within a cultural-historical approach: theory, methodology and research (Ed., Springer, 2019), and (3) Subjectivity and critical mental health: lessons from Brazil (Routledge, 2019)