“O fim do reino do divã”: a clínica psicanalítica contemporânea e os casos-limite

Abstract

This work aims to understand the limit-case functioning and discuss the role of psychoanalytic practice at the limits of analyzability, taking as its central reference the work of André Green, for whom limit-cases represent the clinical paradigm of contemporaneity. The study initially provides a historical and theoretical contextualization of the psychoanalytical field. It begins with Freud's classical method, focused on neurosis, and traces the post-Freudian transformations that broadened the scope of clinical practice, highlighting the contributions of Sándor Ferenczi and the "babelism" among psychoanalytic schools of thought. Then, André Green's metapsychological model for the limit-case is presented. The author revisits and expands Freudian concepts such as the function of the negative, the death drive, and the life and death narcissism. In the limit-case functioning, the function of the negative operates radically, attacking object and representational connections, etiologically linking itself to the "dead" mother figure, resulting in a psyche marked by splits, emptiness, and fragile symbolization. Finally, the technical implications are discussed. It is argued that the classic framework, centered on the couch (dream model), is inadequate. The act model is proposed, in which the analyst, anchored in their internal framework and clinical thought, actively modulates the setting (external framework) and the active matrix (dialogical process) to create conditions for analysability, tending towards representation. It is concluded that Green's theory instrumentalizes Psychoanalysis to meet contemporary subjectivities, signaling "the end of the couch’s reign" and the consolidation of a flexible and transmatricial clinical practice.