The conflict of difference at school: A psychoanalytic view

Abstract

We live in times of hegemony of the discourse about inclusion, the right of differences, which, although fundamental, has brought great discomfort within schools. This article seeks to demonstrate that the dilemma between the search for equality and of difference is not false for the models of addressing a strictly political agenda; but is one of a social perspective, if one takes into consideration that the latter is not disassociated from a psychic perspective. From a Kleinian and Bionian psychoanalytic view, the difference is conceived as the point of inflection, which initiates the conflict and coincides with it. Based on this, the article discusses that the school systems reveal different ways to receive (or not) that which each one brings to school – one’s particularities, anxieties, ways of feeling, learning, of developing the differences -; end up offering to the real necessities of those who are there daily, distinct possibilities of elaboration. These are characteristics of some institution profiles, which are described as: a negligent school, school homogenizers, a naïve school and a receptive school.