Social Psychology and health: assuming complexity

Abstract

This paper is a position statement based on a long trajectory of research and intervention in the Brazilian context. The argument put forward is that health experiences are complex, and professional practice must be based on both technical expertise and scholarship. Complexity is not about different points of view: that of healthy people, patients, doctors, health professionals, health administrators and science, of course. It is about the concomitance of multiple versions; about fractal realities that are performed in different manners by the many social and material actants that are present in this heterogeneous network. This argument is structured in two parts. The first one merely restates multiplicity from the perspective of Psychology as a health profession. The second, proposes that action in a complex setting requires a broad base of information based on scholarship rather that technical expertise: it is the familiarity with issues that are cultural and historical and directly or indirectly related to present-day organization of care delivery that will anchor political and ethical everyday practices.