Navigating Differences, Creating Common Territories: A Tale of a Group Psychology

Abstract

This study describes the experience of Navegantes Clinica Psi, founded in 2024 by two Brazilian and a Mexican psychologists. Its initial goal was to provide group care to Brazilian migrants around the world. Using group methodologies and generating others based on our professional and activist experiences, we aimed to create communities - including via virtual meetings - to counter the all-too-frequent feeling of loneliness, a common occurrence among migrants. As the first group with migrants, clinical work meetings showed that our path at Navegantes was much broader. Far beyond migration, groups make our clinic. We understand that developing groups as therapeutic devices configures a radical strategy for encountering territorial, cultural, sexual, racial, theoretical, among many other differences. How to listen to these differences, organize meetings, and develop groups as spaces for exchange are some of the topics we will explore in this experience report. Thus, and discussing the concept of intersectionality, we analyze the group experiences we have developed and propose a questioning of the individualizing and exclusionary practices of contemporary psychology, hoping to resonate with the joyful and creative encounters we have experienced in diversity and to foster other clinical ventures based on the common and the collective.

Keywords:
Group Psychology; Migration; Difference; Psychological Clinic