Towards a Semiotic Cultural Clinical Psychology: Contributions for the Discussion

Abstract

AbstractThis article outlines the basic premises of the proposal for a semiotic cultural clinical psychology and presents how these premises could be translated in the approaching to a concrete situation. For this purpose, the work of some contemporary authors is identified, elucidating the possible bridges between cultural psychology and a form of clinical practice interested in the singular expression of suffering that privileges an idiographic approach. A typical scenario of applied intervention is examined to illustrate how the situation could be interpreted from the perspective of a semiotic cultural clinical psychology and to indicate the distance taken with respect to other ways of approaching it in psychology. It is concluded that this proposal conceives the phenomena of human suffering as transitions, elucidating the interactions between the singular and the cultural, and is characterized by a reflective perspective on its practice, considering social and historical dimensions that constantly question its theoretical frameworks, thus allowing, in theory and application, to emphasize changes rather than the description of norms.