This article analyzes the incorporation of counseling practice into anti-HIV testing service as the result of a social discursive construction of AIDS in the context of late modernity and based on a proposal by the Brazilian STD/AIDS National Program. The main analytical references were the global influences in democratization process of modern practices and discourses contextualized by Fairclough. Other references were the evolution of preventive discourses broadcasted since the infection was first identified, and disciplinary power and confession technologies. Counseling includes major themes such as 'technologization', reflexivity, and dialogue. In this practice a game of ambiguities can be identified between the democratic and coercive systems which conjugate liberating and disciplinary modes. Understanding counseling from the vantage point of this ambiguity is to deal with issues still little investigated. It is necessary to understand counseling practice from the user's point of view, inasmuch as he/she is the end recipient of this practice.
Counseling; Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome; Health education