ABSTRACT
This paper is based on a qualitative research study within a Community Mental Health Centre in Brazil. It addresses professional actions within mental health services as a sensitive sphere in which to discuss deadlocks and critical strategies to expand practices towards deinstitutionalization. The idea of subjective development from a cultural-historical standpoint is discussed as a theoretical way to promote institutional practices which articulate education and mental health care. Subjective development is regarded as a non-universal, non-deterministic, and context-sensitive process, having the subject configuration as its unit. We argue that such discussion has heuristic value for understanding mental health as a living process, beyond hermetic diagnostic entities, overcoming the objectualization and hierarchical aspect which frequently characterize the relationship between service users and workers. Moreover, we discuss how professional actions geared toward subjective development could enhance dialogical relations capable of supporting individuals and groups to actively position themselves as subjects in their life pathways. From this point of view, individuals are not considered as an epiphenomenon of social forces, such as the result of the effects of power, but as a crucial moment of social experience.
