Laugh-clinic interventions: between clowns and workers on permanent education in mental health

Abstract

This article is a report of the research developed by the first author in her master degree in social and institutional psychology, having as its theme the researcher’s meetings as clown and as psychologist with the workers in the spaces of permanent education practices in mental health. Such meetings take place from the interventions of the clown Dulcinóia, embodied in the researcher through the mask of the red nose, both at the permanent education practices in mental health and in the exercise of the research. These interventions were termed laugh-clinic interventions. Thus, the relationships of clown techniques with mental health from the lived experiences and possible inventions on different ways of working and caring in this context are discussed. The experiences are narrated and developed from the methodology of the essay on the lived scenes. As a conclusion, we highlight the importante of clown´s figure presence and sign of humor as producers of possible transformations and extention of the look on mental health work.