Phenomenology as an ethical and epistemological basis of the desalienist movement in France and in Brazil

Abstract

This article aims to present the phenomenology as the epistemological and ethical basis of the desalienist movement of institutional psychotherapy in France and the Psychiatric Reform in Brazil. We describe these two movements and the main names that were part of their stories in interlocution with phenomenology, reflecting on how this can be considered a basis for the practice of mental health professionals inserted in this context that is in full transformation. To discuss such bases seems to us to have a fundamental importance in order to reaffirm the necessary epistemological and ethical sense that underlies both processes. We conclude that phenomenology has been presented and still presents itself as a way of questioning mental health practices and offers the basis to think of a practice that seeks the encounter with the subjects and not only with the mental illness, as well as the process of deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill.