The medical-psychological discourse in the configuration of the Special Education field

Abstract

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14244/198271991198

The present study addresses the commitment alliance between Medicine and Psychology in the configuration of Special Education in Brazil. It is important to highlight that Psychology, upon leaving the field of Philosophy and aspiring the status of a science, incorporates the epistemological corpus of Medicine, mainly with regard to the concepts of adaptation and development that were originally from Biology. Thus the so-called psychological functioning is often reduced to maturation, which directly implies a pre-defined conception of learning, for example. Analyzing some historical nuances, which clearly show the confluence between Medicine and Psychology, it is questioned why, to this date, in a time of inclusive education, physicians and psychologists are preferably consulted by schools as specialists. The social and political field, within which the school exists, becomes immune to criticisms before the hegemony of the medical/psychological discourse. A highlight is that the way the school deals with what is considered different, in its early days, occurred in classrooms that were close to hospitals and orphanages, generally of philanthropic nature, which indicate in the origin of the influence of the medical field in charge of those institutions. Based on medical procedures, Special Education incorporates the clinical view through the processes of rehabilitation and legitimately turns disability into an individual issue, as a result of organic factors. I conclude that the medical/psychological expertise was crucial in determining the service provided by special schools, in exclusive institutions, to children deemed to be inadequate to students of the regular education system.

Keywords: Special education, Medicine, Psychology.