A critical psycho-pedagogy situated in Latin America

Abstract

The cognoscent subject, as the apprentice, cannot do without the horizon of his life’s world. It is only in relation to such horizon that he can build knowledges that have an effect on his possibilities of action, establishing at the same time new horizons. The objectivist illusion to reach the truth of definite knowledges should not be sustained by those who have to reestablish the possibilities to learn and know, as constructive process displayed by a subject that constitutes himself as subjectivity who creates sense and, therefore, who creates the interpretations of the things considered, in each time, reality. To communicate oneself and understand messages (sms, e-mails, twitter messages, etc), it is required an intersubjective knowledge of the rules of the language that is being used (elliptical, transgressive or common use). Subjective conditions of this knowledge building are also required, of particular cases of the possible, something that is not reduced to the individual at any circumstance. Many psycho-pedagogists have reproduced the professional style of psychologists-psychoanalysts (in some way the same proposal that unified their clinical practices, conceived as clinical psycho-pedagogy, perhaps so encouraged, performed from a chair of the degree of Psychology of the University of Buenos Aires, from which the one subscribing this summary was part) without being totally conscious of it. A few have stopped to think to what extent these ways of action have constituted elitist professional practices to which the most vulnerable and needy people of our region could not have access to. In general, psychoanalysts neither stop to think that their therapeutic performances are away from the most needy and numerous towns of our America, trying to reproduce actions born in Europe in their offices in large cities such as Buenos Aires, Córdoba or Rosario. It is necessary to differentiate “the environment” or “the environmental conditions of the context” from what is “the life’s world”. Our life’s world is constitutive and constituting of our distinct features, though some would like to deny that. This is the reason why we need a psycho-pedagogy situated in Latin America. As there was a Latin American pedagogy, as that of Paulo Freire, we now need a Latin American psycho-pedagogy that fulfills the demands of a Latin America which, for the first time in history, is defining itself.