The article provides an account of the theoretical and methodological principles of the interventionist approach called the Clinic of Activity. A case is presented of educators working within a youth judicial protection service in centers for emergency placement of minors. As an intervention, the case did not proceed as expected and could be regarded as a failure. Ultimately what was commissioned to be an intervention for developing the professional profile of the educators in the organization became an analysis of the organization's institutional crisis. The diagnosis proposed by the interventionists was that the impersonal dimension of work-that is, its institutional features-was underdeveloped while at the same time personal defenses among educators were increasingly manifesting themselves as ways to indicate the unbearable crisis in the organization.
PurposeDrawing upon a case study with public prosecutors, this article seeks to illustrate a reflective methodology for the analysis of activities.Design/methodology/approachThe paper first describes the origin of the intervention at the National School of Magistracy and the great diversity of public prosecutor daily activities, and then presents the theoretical and methodological framework employed: the “clinic of activity” and its associated analyses in “crossed self‐confrontation”. This perspective organizes a developmental process in the professional experience of professionals by the way of the analysis methodology, constructed in a Vygotskian interpretation of the thought‐language relations and its consequences for consciousness and psychological development. Finally, the paper illustrates the approach using the example of a micro‐event, a lapsus lingae that occurred during work activity, and shows how such an apparently insignificant “detail” can become a subject of reflection and enable an individual and collective elaboration of thinking about work.FindingsBy examining this singular event and the progression of its interpretation, the paper attempts to explain the approach and field of operation in the clinic of activity. This example shows how an apparently insignificant event can lead to an analysis of the work activity. In this example, an error in pronunciation, interpreted by the professionals as a lapsus linguae, is the basis of an analysis which makes it possible to show and develop the principle of the counter argument, the obligations that this principle carries, as well as the historical and generic forms of the counter argument within hearings.Originality/valueThis paper looks to transform preoccupied professionals into occupied professionals, or in other words, to expand the profession's limits.
In Psychology, the issue of language usage as a means of action in psychological life requires thatwe question the relations between the forms of language expression and their psychologicalfunctions. The current paper contributes to an understanding of this question. The relationbetween form and function is examined here, with particular focus on a discursive and dialogicmethod employed in the Activity Clinic approach to elicit controversy as a means of developingdialogical thinking. We argue that the interfunctionality of levels of dialogue serves developmentalprocesses, promoting thought and the possibilities for its elaboration. We describe thesedevelopmental processes on the basis of an empirical analysis of a sequence from an interventionconducted with Roman Catholic Priests on preaching in homily. Our methodological frameworkshave the function of vivifying dialogical thinking about work, by making use of theinterfunctionality of levels of dialogue and the vital function of social relations in thepsychological life of the subjects.
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