“You Have to Start Early”: Psychoanalysis and the Normalization of Childhood in the 1920s–1930s

Abstract

This article analyzes the arrival of psychoanalysis in the field of child psychology in Brazil during the 1920s–1930s, examining the extent to which this body of knowledge was mobilized in the service of a medical-pedagogical project aimed at normalizing childhood. Drawing on primary sources by Júlio Pires Porto-Carrero, Durval Marcondes, and Arthur Ramos—key figures in the adoption of psychoanalysis in Brazil—the article examines how each author integrated psychoanalytic theory with the hygienist ideology of their time, producing distinct discourses and practices that nevertheless converged in their normalizing effects. Drawing on Michel de Certeau’s historical perspective and Pêcheux’s discourse analysis, the article examines the signifiers “moral pedagogy,” “shaping tool,” and “pedagogical intervention” as discursive operators that address the child as an object of correction and medical-psychoanalytic knowledge as a legitimate discourse on childhood. It is concluded that, despite the nuances that distinguish each of the approaches, the three uses of psychoanalysis belong to a normalizing discursive framework, traces of which remain in contemporary practices of child care.