MIRROR VOICES: THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE COMMON AND THE ALTERITY IN THE UNIVERSITY EXTENSION PROJECT OF RECOVERY AND EMPOWERMENT GROUPS IN MENTAL HEALTH

Abstract

This study aimed to build a critical reflection on the encounter with the Common and Alterity as components of the experience within the University Extension Project of Recovery and Empowerment Groups in Mental Health at the Aurora de Afonso Costa School of Nursing at the Federal University Fluminense. The justification for this article is given by the need to offer studies that deal with the reality of group Recovery practices, since they are interventions in line with the deinstitutionalization of life. As results and critical discussion about the Project's experience with the components of the encounter with the Common and Alterity, the study pointed out that people who share similar adversities perceive themselves and see each other. For a layman's reading, the Common can be understood as commonplace or trivial and for psychoanalysis it could be read from the point of view of identification that reinforces some narcissism. However, in schizoanalysis and philosophy of difference, this encounter with the Common is brought about as a flam that produces increased life potency. It is the production of potency caused by repetition in difference, or by what the writer Manoel de Barros brought about “to repeat, to repeat, until it becomes different”. It was concluded, through this critical construction about the Project's experience with the components in question, that perceiving similar experiences and pain in the other contributes to each one validating and legitimizing their own experience, creating contact with feedbacks in good encounters and producing desire of potency.