Weaving nests, daring to fly: production of multiplicities in the territories of users of Psychosocial Care Centers

Abstract

In the light of new challenges posed to processes of deinstitutionalization by Brazil’s mental health reform, this study explores the production of existential territories in the city by recording the experiences of users of a psychosocial care center in São Paulo. Using methods based on social cartography, including the creation of affective maps and accompanying participants on routes around the city, it was possible to understand how participants weave multiplicities of living territories and networks throughout their itineraries, breaking free from places instituted by the asylum logic and cementing the principles of deinstitutionalization in the micropolitics of their everyday lives. During this process, the participants’experiences stimulated reflections on the kind of cities we want to build, collectively reinventing urban territories, making them more sensitive and permeable to instituting forces and creating new ways of living together and producing differences. At the same time, they stimulate reflection on how these singular experiences of the city can be incorporated into and enhance the therapeutic itineraries of clinical practices based on the “logic of territory”.