ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a heterogeneous group of providers of therapeutic services, with the purpose of analyzing how they construe and assemble their therapeutic networks, and the kind of actants they engage. In the particular case of the psychoanalysts, the chapter’s purpose is to contrast their view with that of the patients whose narratives will be discussed in the next chapter. This chapter is divided into two parts: the first one concentrates on practitioners whose therapeutic networks are constructed around thin actants, according to the distinction made in the previous chapter, while the second part shifts the analysis to those whose networks are constructed around thick actants. Throughout the analysis, the attention is shifted from therapeutic practices that might fall within the usual notion of “therapeutic culture” (such as Psychoanalysis or “therapeutic Astrology”) to others (like Afro-Brazilian religions) that fall clearly outside it.
