Sofrimento psíquico e medicalização da vida: um estudo fenomenológico hermenêutico

Abstract

Emerging from the vicissitudes of existence, interpersonal relationships, loss, and the complexity that permeates human experiences, suffering appears as a particular, inherent, and essential dimension of the subject. Various perspectives across multiple fields of knowledge have recognized this aspect and sought to understand it, with psychology being grounded in suffering as an object of study, intervention, and care. In contemporary times, marked by an accelerated lifestyle, fluid relationships, and imperatives of happiness and success, this dimension is viewed through a peculiar lens, bringing to light the entanglements between suffering and processes of the medicalization of life. Within this context, several questions arise in the scientific field. The present study is guided by the following research question: in what ways has the process of medicalizing life been reported by psychotherapists in Brazilian psychological literature? This dissertation aims to identify how medicalization is addressed through the research experiences of other psychology professionals in Brazil. The study is a qualitative narrative literature review, articulated with a hermeneutic-phenomenological framework. Four articles were analyzed, from which three thematic categories emerged: Medicalization and biomedical knowledge: medication as the center of care; Listening and other tools of care; and Psychic suffering and medicalization in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings reveal a persistent centrality of pharmacological prescriptions as a response to psychic suffering, even during the pandemic, highlighting a biomedical logic that tends to silence the complexity of subjective experiences. This scenario underscores the urgent need to strengthen psychology as a practice committed to the sensitive and ethical listening of suffering, recognizing it in its uniqueness and historicity. It is hoped that this dissertation contributes to challenging hegemonic discourses and promotes a clinical approach that goes beyond the normalization of ways of existing, affirming care as an encounter rather than mere intervention.