The article critically discusses the reception of Liebermann’s book Freud in the kibbutz in Brazil, problematizing the ways in which institutional psychoanalysis has aligned itself with political and historical narratives marked by erasure and silencing. Based on an analysis of the uncritical enthusiasm with which the book was received, the text proposes to debate how Brazilian psychoanalysis tends to celebrate idealized external narratives without considering their sociopolitical contradictions. The aim is to highlight how this reception operates as a symptom of a structural difficulty within the psychoanalytic field in elaborating its own historical implications, both in the context of colonialism and the Brazilian military dictatorship. It argues that the celebration of the kibbutz experience, taken as a fable of social justice, conceals the colonial violence of the Zionist project and the consequent erasure of the Palestinian catastrophe. The article's central contribution is to propose that psychoanalysis must adopt an ethical-political approach, capable of articulating social and clinical critique, as well as reading Palestine beyond colonial narratives, recognizing the historical violence that sustains the erasure of its people. By situating the work's reception as a central point of analysis, the text highlights the urgency of a psychoanalytic praxis committed to naming the violence that underlies contemporary malaise.
Silva et al. (Sat,) studied this question.