A construção da "criança problema", a psicanálise infantil e o debate racial: O trabalho analítico de Arthur Ramos

Abstract

This doctoral thesis aims to examine the historical trajectory of the constitution of the category “problem child” and, more broadly, the process through which the Brazilian child was constructed as a scientific object through the articulation of psychoanalysis, anthropology, education, and mental hygiene in the context of the 1930s. The central hypothesis is that this category was directly associated with processes of racialization of childhood, in alignment with the projects of modernization, civilization, and whitening that prevailed during the period. Methodologically, the study adopts a historical-documentary and analytical approach, expanding the corpus traditionally mobilized in studies on Arthur Ramos by incorporating books, scientific articles, journalistic texts, and writings related to racial studies. The analysis demonstrates that, by shifting explanations of inferiority from the biological domain to cultural and psychological frameworks, Arthur Ramos promoted a theoretical advance in relation to biologically determinist racial conceptions, while simultaneously maintaining hierarchies grounded in culturalist and evolutionist assumptions. The findings indicate that the category “problem child” functioned as a scientific and institutional instrument of intervention in the lives of Black, mixed-race, and working-class children, who were conceived as obstacles to the ideal of a modern and civilized society. It is concluded that psychoanalysis, incorporated as an auxiliary field of knowledge within educational and mental health policies, contributed both to the affirmation of childhood as a scientific object and to the reproduction of structural processes of racial invisibility, reaffirming whiteness as the normative horizon of normality and social adjustment.