Restou (in)frutífero: reflexões psicanalíticas sobre o não-todo dizer de crianças no Depoimento Especial do Judiciário Amapaense

Abstract

From the dialogue between Psychoanalysis and Law, prompted by psychoanalytic praxis within the Judiciary System of Amapá, this research emerged in the context of the Santana County Court. It was here that the first clinical-political inquiries regarding the Special Testimony arose-a type of institutional interview conducted in a room equipped with an extensive audio and video system, where the Judge can observe and ask questions through a trained professional capable of interpreting and adapting them to the language of children and adolescents involved in judicial proceedings, either as witnesses or victims of abuse and/or sexual crimes. The procedure aims to crown a set of legislative, legal, and political practices focused on maximizing the reliability of testimonies presented in court and protecting victims and witnesses of crimes in Brazil. Due to some children’s behavior or testimonies not meeting the institution's expectations of attaining factual truth, such cases were redirected to psychological listening under the label “proved fruitless”, which, having become a significant term, assumed the central theme of this dissertation. The initial hypothesis was that, when confronted with unconscious manifestations, the social actors within the legal scene conclude that reaching the truth is impossible, and thus the child's testimony cannot be validated as evidence, leaving the case marginalized, in a residual space within the institution. From this standpoint, the aim of this research was to analyze the impossibility of fully verbalizing the experience by children in the Special Testimony, based on the concept of the subject, articulated with the psychoanalytic concept of objet a. The “Remainder,” as formulated by Lacan, when linked to the theme of this dissertation, led to various paths, revealing what is strange, obscure, repulsive, and unsettling in human experience, which emerges daily in courtrooms across the country. Regarding methodology, the psychoanalytic method, specific to research in Psychoanalysis, was adopted, supported by the works of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, as well as contributions from contemporary authors in the fields of Law and Psychoanalysis. “Case fragments” will be presented, based on the psychoanalytic listening of children, to explore singularity and, in doing so, facilitate the articulation between psychoanalytic theory and practice. As a result, it was concluded that psychoanalytic listening has its place within the Judiciary, as what may remain "fruitless" during the Special Testimony or any other listening context in the Judiciary can, in fact, become fruitful for psychoanalytic praxis.