In the face of what we used to calling “the rise of violence” and the diversification of its manifestations, this article aims to reflect on the different psychological practices present nowadays in the field of education and, at the same time, to think about the possible contributions from psychoanalysis in this domain. We deal with diagnostics such as “bullying” and “Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder” through to techno-scientific imagery. The article demonstrates the illusions at play following the imposition of technical and (psycho)pedagogical policies destined to be applied in state schools by teachers and psychologists, without their having participated in the construction and discussion of these methods. Using some examples, drawn mainly from today's tendencies in Brazil's education system, the authors offer a critical analysis of neoliberal policies, based on an authoritarian and instrumentalized scientific discourse such as that of behaviorism and cognitivism, which insist on regulating everything.
This is why violence is starting to emerge as a response to the attempts of normalization, in the wake of the excessive use of diagnostics in schools and its respective medicalization, which has ultimately led to stigmatization and contributed to the sharp increase in passages à l’acte by children and teenagers. The authors dare to ask: what is the place for conversation in this context? Thinking about some less ambitious but perhaps more effective interventions, the authors defend the development of a psychological praxis oriented by psychoanalysis, founded on the valorization of singularity and subjectivity, that promotes a real insertion of children and teenagers in the adult universe of language and culture.