Translator: Leonardo Silva Reviewer: Custodio Marcelino
Wow!! Good afternoon!
Gee, shame I do not see anyone!
Well, I see this time running here.
Nietzsche says that however objective we may be,
nothing leads to our life story.
And it’s a bit what I came to tell you,
my story as a psychologist, how I met the Doctors of Joy
and what it taught me about health and training.
I brought this bag with me.
This bag, I put it on …
When my daughter was 3 years old and today she has 18 …
When she was three years old,
They invited me to her school to tell me what I was doing.
and by that time I was already working with the clowns.
I took this suitcase with several objects that the Doctors of Joy used
and for me, I think it was one of the hardest times to talk about my work.
So I brought her today with me because I think she is
with a very nice situation that I lived.
And I think I’m going to try to talk here a little bit today.
on what it is to emanate these relations.
I worked for several years at the Heart Institute, as a hospital psychologist,
making the preparation of patients for surgery.
Many things that we learn in the hospital
we learn through signs other than verbal,
and I remember that the first time I came across death in the hospital
was one such event.
It was about 3pm,
I was with my chart, working in the coronary unit,
had just attended a patient,
and you first hear a sound from an instrument
which “fades” a bit into those “pi, pi”,
and the steps of the professionals running, the drive, the curtain that opens,
then the devices that come in,
the whole procedure to try a resuscitation.
And then you again hear the silence:
one less device,
those professionals who come back to work
and make notes.
I remember that afternoon, when that happened,
for some reason I approached, wanted to approach the bed,
and I got very close to the patient who had just died.
It was not a patient he was attending.
And, when I made that move to get close,
something strange happened.
It is as if I have entered another zone of time.
It’s as if I could try to understand what his next moments would be.
I connected with the family: who would get the news?
At the same time, I connected with his past:
who would that man have been? What things had he built for his life?
That lasted very little, a few seconds.
I took another step back and, at that moment,
it’s like I’m back in the world of white coats,
the people acting normally, the doctors working, the nurses,
more or less as if nothing had happened.
This was a bit my daily experience of working within the hospital.
It had a flow of life that we health professionals did not participate in.
We could not even have graduated from university
to get in touch with this flow of life.
In 1991, I met Wellington Nogueira, who is the founder of the Doctors of Joy,
which is a job that takes professional clowns to hospitals
twice a week, continuously.
They have uninterrupted work in hospitals,
with high professional training for this.
Wellington, in 1991 … I saw a story on television
and finally I got to him and he invited me to attend work
and when I went to watch work, it’s like I went in again
in that place where I had lived with this patient who had passed away,
but this time I was able to live it in a non-schizophrenic way.
It’s as if that place could be connected to hospital life.
I remember what caught my attention the most
the first time I saw the work of the Doctors of Joy
was the flexibility they had in contact with the child.
They are very well prepared technically, but the technique is invisible.
They come in, and if they propose something and the child is not at the end of it,
they quickly get rid of that
and try a new way of relating to it.
They allow themselves to be in a certain “void” at the beginning of the relationship,
to be able to build it.
This for me was very new.
I, as a health professional and as a psychologist,
despite being linked to the area of humans,
when I went into a room, everything the patient said
I was going to put it within a diagnostic hypothesis.
I needed a “schizophrenic” or a “depressed”
to be able to relate and build my diagnosis,
and that was too new for me.
In 1993, Wellington invited me to join the group.
At the time, there were already eight artists.
And he invited me to do the emotional support part
and along with that, I started a research paper that lasts until today.
This work has several phases,
two published books, a master’s thesis,
but quickly because I only have 18 minutes,
I will summarize a little what I have collected all these years.
The data converge for some things in common.
For example, children become more active,
they begin to communicate more with parents and with health professionals,
accept better tests and medicines.
Children who are on hospital days,
with short-term hospitalization surgeries,
have their vital signs of ambivalence, eating …
they acquire these signals more quickly to be discharged.
In addition, I observed that work has a major effect on parents
and health professionals.
Parents are more confident in the treatment
because they can see their son closer than at home,
because he is joking,
a more particular way of being,
and this returns the confidence that the treatment will work.
Health professionals report a decrease
in the stress of day to day work
and a better self-image as a professional,
because, for example, if a nurse is nearby, or a doctor,
artists tend to incorporate them into the play
and, with this, they can be perceived
not only as the person who is there to give the medication,
but who can also play with the child.
At the time of my master’s degree, I began to study the question of humor,
which I think is the first thing that draws attention
in the work of the Doctors of Joy,
but many times I went to the hospital and not necessarily I laughed.
He had other emotions that were happening,
both with myself and with the people who lived the experience
of having contact with the artists.
In my master’s degree, I came across a definition of Espinosa on joy
which I think talks a lot about the work that artists do in the hospital.
Espinosa said that everything there is
and the ability of us to affect and be affected by these encounters.
If these meetings increase my potency of action,
I experience joy.
If these meetings diminish my potency of action,
I experience sorrow.
So, for Espinosa, all ethics should be the “ethic of joy”,
of what he calls “the joyful passions.”
Unlike morals, we should be guided by this ethics.
And the “sad passions,” to him, would be all the feelings
which are linked to piety,
in the sense that I need to see the other as a poor thing,
or strong hierarchies
where the other is not on the same level as me.
Well, why clowns?
This movement is a movement that has grown a lot in the world and in Brazil.
Michael Christensen, who created this methodology in 1986,
What was he able to perceive, what did he viralize?
Today, you have this work all over the world, strongly in Europe.
In Brazil, we have more than 1,200 groups that do this activity;
not as end,
because in many of these groups people work on a voluntary basis
and do not have the professional preparation to do this,
but as a means of carrying something.
So I keep asking myself, “Why?
Why does the clown enter the contemporary setting? “
The clown has a mask
and this mask is the authorization he has of society
to function in a certain way.
The clown allows us to get in touch with our feelings,
allows things that would not normally be said to be expressed.
He plays with authority figures.
For example, in the case of Doutores da Alegria,
they wear a white coat and pose as “doctors”,
play with this “position”
and, with that, they allow you to say things
which would not normally be said.
The clown embraces error, ambiguity.
All of these are ingredients, food,
so that from there grace may be born,
this joy of which I spoke.
And what the clown has to do with training?
Why am I joining the two themes here?
I would say that for me, a very important thing that I learned,
if I were to summarize what I learned from the Doctors,
is that I learned that a number of things I named in the hospital
of depression, hospitalism,
all these were issues that had much more to do
with the difficulty that we health professionals had,
to get in touch with patients,
than something that was actually happening to that patient.
What the Doctors of Joy propose, in my opinion,
is what I call an “ethics of encounter”.
Through the way of seeing the world,
the clown proposes to enter into another type of encounter,
and I think that’s what attracts so many people
to play with this figure a little.
The phenomenon that happens in Brazil is that a large part of these 1,200 groups
are students, college students,
medicine and other health areas.
What I realize working in training with them
is that we have the opportunity to create another pedagogical space.
It is a pedagogical space where the body and the feelings
are structuring bases for me to learn something;
where the experience I live is the most important thing to be considered;
where error, ambiguity and confusion are stages of learning,
an apprenticeship that reconnects learning with life, with the order of the human.
I think we saw this in other presentations,
the need for this to happen so that we actually speak in knowledge.
I’d like to read a short story for you guys I brought.
It is a tale of Gonçalo Tavares. He’s an Angolan.
It is a very short tale, which is called “O Casaco”.
“The jacket.
Since he believed he had a protective angel in his coat,
never undo it.
When they wanted to recruit him into battle, he said yes,
as long as he could fight with his coat on.
“The coat has an angel inside that protects me,” he said.
Of course the military hierarchies did not accept:
‘No one fights without uniform.’
The man in the jacket insisted, but nothing done, did not accept him.
Stayed at home.
The soldiers who entered the battle all died. “
I brought this tale because I think this jacket
of which Gonçalo speaks in the story
is this place of the subtle, the invisible,
of feeling, of individuality,
all places which, in general, in teaching,
We’ll put it out,
because knowledge is connected to something that is outside of me
and is given out from the inside.
This new pedagogical space,
this possibility of not only wearing the uniform,
but to be able to take his coat with him,
I think it speaks of this possibility of building a university of the future,
where your individuality will be able to build a professionalism,
and not the other way around.
So what I wanted with this tale
is to wish you that you can go to your battles,
when you are asked to wear your uniforms,
but that you can also wear your coats.
Thank you.
(Applause) (Live)
Wow!! Good afternoon!
Gee, shame I do not see anyone!
Well, I see this time running here.
Nietzsche says that however objective we may be,
nothing leads to our life story.
And it’s a bit what I came to tell you,
my story as a psychologist, how I met the Doctors of Joy
and what it taught me about health and training.
I brought this bag with me.
This bag, I put it on …
When my daughter was 3 years old and today she has 18 …
When she was three years old,
They invited me to her school to tell me what I was doing.
and by that time I was already working with the clowns.
I took this suitcase with several objects that the Doctors of Joy used
and for me, I think it was one of the hardest times to talk about my work.
So I brought her today with me because I think she is
with a very nice situation that I lived.
And I think I’m going to try to talk here a little bit today.
on what it is to emanate these relations.
I worked for several years at the Heart Institute, as a hospital psychologist,
making the preparation of patients for surgery.
Many things that we learn in the hospital
we learn through signs other than verbal,
and I remember that the first time I came across death in the hospital
was one such event.
It was about 3pm,
I was with my chart, working in the coronary unit,
had just attended a patient,
and you first hear a sound from an instrument
which “fades” a bit into those “pi, pi”,
and the steps of the professionals running, the drive, the curtain that opens,
then the devices that come in,
the whole procedure to try a resuscitation.
And then you again hear the silence:
one less device,
those professionals who come back to work
and make notes.
I remember that afternoon, when that happened,
for some reason I approached, wanted to approach the bed,
and I got very close to the patient who had just died.
It was not a patient he was attending.
And, when I made that move to get close,
something strange happened.
It is as if I have entered another zone of time.
It’s as if I could try to understand what his next moments would be.
I connected with the family: who would get the news?
At the same time, I connected with his past:
who would that man have been? What things had he built for his life?
That lasted very little, a few seconds.
I took another step back and, at that moment,
it’s like I’m back in the world of white coats,
the people acting normally, the doctors working, the nurses,
more or less as if nothing had happened.
This was a bit my daily experience of working within the hospital.
It had a flow of life that we health professionals did not participate in.
We could not even have graduated from university
to get in touch with this flow of life.
In 1991, I met Wellington Nogueira, who is the founder of the Doctors of Joy,
which is a job that takes professional clowns to hospitals
twice a week, continuously.
They have uninterrupted work in hospitals,
with high professional training for this.
Wellington, in 1991 … I saw a story on television
and finally I got to him and he invited me to attend work
and when I went to watch work, it’s like I went in again
in that place where I had lived with this patient who had passed away,
but this time I was able to live it in a non-schizophrenic way.
It’s as if that place could be connected to hospital life.
I remember what caught my attention the most
the first time I saw the work of the Doctors of Joy
was the flexibility they had in contact with the child.
They are very well prepared technically, but the technique is invisible.
They come in, and if they propose something and the child is not at the end of it,
they quickly get rid of that
and try a new way of relating to it.
They allow themselves to be in a certain “void” at the beginning of the relationship,
to be able to build it.
This for me was very new.
I, as a health professional and as a psychologist,
despite being linked to the area of humans,
when I went into a room, everything the patient said
I was going to put it within a diagnostic hypothesis.
I needed a “schizophrenic” or a “depressed”
to be able to relate and build my diagnosis,
and that was too new for me.
In 1993, Wellington invited me to join the group.
At the time, there were already eight artists.
And he invited me to do the emotional support part
and along with that, I started a research paper that lasts until today.
This work has several phases,
two published books, a master’s thesis,
but quickly because I only have 18 minutes,
I will summarize a little what I have collected all these years.
The data converge for some things in common.
For example, children become more active,
they begin to communicate more with parents and with health professionals,
accept better tests and medicines.
Children who are on hospital days,
with short-term hospitalization surgeries,
have their vital signs of ambivalence, eating …
they acquire these signals more quickly to be discharged.
In addition, I observed that work has a major effect on parents
and health professionals.
Parents are more confident in the treatment
because they can see their son closer than at home,
because he is joking,
a more particular way of being,
and this returns the confidence that the treatment will work.
Health professionals report a decrease
in the stress of day to day work
and a better self-image as a professional,
because, for example, if a nurse is nearby, or a doctor,
artists tend to incorporate them into the play
and, with this, they can be perceived
not only as the person who is there to give the medication,
but who can also play with the child.
At the time of my master’s degree, I began to study the question of humor,
which I think is the first thing that draws attention
in the work of the Doctors of Joy,
but many times I went to the hospital and not necessarily I laughed.
He had other emotions that were happening,
both with myself and with the people who lived the experience
of having contact with the artists.
In my master’s degree, I came across a definition of Espinosa on joy
which I think talks a lot about the work that artists do in the hospital.
Espinosa said that everything there is
and the ability of us to affect and be affected by these encounters.
If these meetings increase my potency of action,
I experience joy.
If these meetings diminish my potency of action,
I experience sorrow.
So, for Espinosa, all ethics should be the “ethic of joy”,
of what he calls “the joyful passions.”
Unlike morals, we should be guided by this ethics.
And the “sad passions,” to him, would be all the feelings
which are linked to piety,
in the sense that I need to see the other as a poor thing,
or strong hierarchies
where the other is not on the same level as me.
Well, why clowns?
This movement is a movement that has grown a lot in the world and in Brazil.
Michael Christensen, who created this methodology in 1986,
What was he able to perceive, what did he viralize?
Today, you have this work all over the world, strongly in Europe.
In Brazil, we have more than 1,200 groups that do this activity;
not as end,
because in many of these groups people work on a voluntary basis
and do not have the professional preparation to do this,
but as a means of carrying something.
So I keep asking myself, “Why?
Why does the clown enter the contemporary setting? “
The clown has a mask
and this mask is the authorization he has of society
to function in a certain way.
The clown allows us to get in touch with our feelings,
allows things that would not normally be said to be expressed.
He plays with authority figures.
For example, in the case of Doutores da Alegria,
they wear a white coat and pose as “doctors”,
play with this “position”
and, with that, they allow you to say things
which would not normally be said.
The clown embraces error, ambiguity.
All of these are ingredients, food,
so that from there grace may be born,
this joy of which I spoke.
And what the clown has to do with training?
Why am I joining the two themes here?
I would say that for me, a very important thing that I learned,
if I were to summarize what I learned from the Doctors,
is that I learned that a number of things I named in the hospital
of depression, hospitalism,
all these were issues that had much more to do
with the difficulty that we health professionals had,
to get in touch with patients,
than something that was actually happening to that patient.
What the Doctors of Joy propose, in my opinion,
is what I call an “ethics of encounter”.
Through the way of seeing the world,
the clown proposes to enter into another type of encounter,
and I think that’s what attracts so many people
to play with this figure a little.
The phenomenon that happens in Brazil is that a large part of these 1,200 groups
are students, college students,
medicine and other health areas.
What I realize working in training with them
is that we have the opportunity to create another pedagogical space.
It is a pedagogical space where the body and the feelings
are structuring bases for me to learn something;
where the experience I live is the most important thing to be considered;
where error, ambiguity and confusion are stages of learning,
an apprenticeship that reconnects learning with life, with the order of the human.
I think we saw this in other presentations,
the need for this to happen so that we actually speak in knowledge.
I’d like to read a short story for you guys I brought.
It is a tale of Gonçalo Tavares. He’s an Angolan.
It is a very short tale, which is called “O Casaco”.
“The jacket.
Since he believed he had a protective angel in his coat,
never undo it.
When they wanted to recruit him into battle, he said yes,
as long as he could fight with his coat on.
“The coat has an angel inside that protects me,” he said.
Of course the military hierarchies did not accept:
‘No one fights without uniform.’
The man in the jacket insisted, but nothing done, did not accept him.
Stayed at home.
The soldiers who entered the battle all died. “
I brought this tale because I think this jacket
of which Gonçalo speaks in the story
is this place of the subtle, the invisible,
of feeling, of individuality,
all places which, in general, in teaching,
We’ll put it out,
because knowledge is connected to something that is outside of me
and is given out from the inside.
This new pedagogical space,
this possibility of not only wearing the uniform,
but to be able to take his coat with him,
I think it speaks of this possibility of building a university of the future,
where your individuality will be able to build a professionalism,
and not the other way around.
So what I wanted with this tale
is to wish you that you can go to your battles,
when you are asked to wear your uniforms,
but that you can also wear your coats.
Thank you.
(Applause) (Live)
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