Between the cross and the devil's cauldron: daily doses of alienation in religious therapeutic communities
Name: GIOVANNA BARDI
Publication date: 03/12/2019
Advisor:
Name |
Role |
|---|---|
| MARIA LUCIA TEIXEIRA GARCIA | Advisor * |
Examining board:
| Name |
Role |
|---|---|
| FABIOLA XAVIER LEAL | Internal Examiner * |
| MARIA DAS GRAÇAS CUNHA GOMES | Internal Examiner * |
| MARIA LUCIA TEIXEIRA GARCIA | Advisor * |
Summary: Since their emergence in Brazil, therapeutic communities have been expanding, gaining political strength, and increasing access to government funding. Although heterogeneous, their configurations point to religious work methods in order to promote a subjective-moral transformation of the individuals participating in these rehabilitation programs. From this scenario, our general objective was to analyze the aspects of alienation present in the discourses of people treated in religious therapeutic communities for addictions. As specific objectives, we had: to debate the organic relation between the capital and the prohibitionist politics; reflect on the alienation category; and characterize the therapeutic communities in Brazil by highlighting the process between religion and the treatment model offered. Data were obtained through 28 personal interviews with individuals who were treated in religious therapeutic communities. The selection of individuals was based on indications from CAPS ad professionals from the Espírito Santo Metropolitan Region, and other key informants who had no link with CAPS ad. We used discourse analysis to analyze the data obtained. The speeches uttered by the interviewees were organized in three groups: those who showed acceptance of the religious teachings provided by therapeutic communities (eight individuals); those who reject the religious teachings, demonstrating criticism of the methods used by these communities and defense for a treatment in freedom (nine individuals); and those who presented both agreement and disagreement with religious precepts (eleven individuals). Individuals who incorporated aspects of religious ideology have become to relate the courses of events in their lives to the spiritual realm. Interviewees often oscillated between the cross - the incorporation of religion as an essential element in their addiction recovery process and the devil's cauldron the incorporation of the drug as the result of the interference of devil in their lives and of the demonization historically constructed by the prohibitionist ideology. We conclude that the discourse spread out by religious institutions in the field of drugs policy legitimizes the prohibitionism and conceals, through an individualizing discourse (with the particularities of religion), the dynamics of capital that needs its ideologies to alienate human beings from yesterday, today and tomorrow. In addition to not addressing addiction effectively, religious-based therapeutic communities spread a discourse based on the protective effect of religion against this evil, which, in fact, is intended to mask the real malaise of our civilization: the dynamics of capital. This thesis rejected the naturalization of moralistic, conservative and authoritarian practices and theories that are predominantly present in our society.
