Between listening and hearing: Psychoanalysis, psychotherapy and urban poverty in Buenos Aires

Abstract

Psychoanalysis in Argentina has been studied by different approaches and Social Sciences; however, only a few studies have investigated it within the public health system, specifically in hospitals. Based on the results of the ethnographic research carried out in Health Centers in a neighborhood of the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area, this paper aimed to problematize the listening technique, specifically, the modes of listening that participate in those treatments based on speech and orientated to marginalized populations. By articulating the anthropological perspectives on health, psychotherapies and psy technologies on the one hand, and on the sense on the other, in this paper the modes of listening are understood and analyzed as perceptual, corporal and expressive actions. Finally, based on a ethnographic approach, it is suggested that to hear and to listen, being listened and to speak within the treatments, can be understood as only one case related to a complex set that these actions are carried out in everyday life.