Description
This paper aims to investigate the points of encounter and mismatch between the
areas of psychoanalysis and law, specifically in relation to the theme of child sexual
abuse. From a brief retrospective we seek to investigate the theme of child sexual
abuse, throughout the development of human history, seeking to understand the
various moments in which this practice was present in societies. We seek to highlight
the current moment, when new technologies, driven by the internet, pose an additional
danger to the vulnerability to which children are exposed, due to the easy access of
abusers as opposed to the legal resources available to suppress and punish such
practices. We analyze the various definitions of child sexual abuse brought by leading
scholars in the area and the institutions that propose to address the issue. We
investigated how the theme is approached by Psychoanalysis, based on basic
concepts of its theoretical scope, such as trauma and psychic reality, highlighting the
tensions that are evident when these terms are taken by legal action. We brought a
historical overview of the child, under the lens of law, emphasizing the different ways
in which childhood was seen over time and how the law has been positioned in relation
to child sexual abuse. From its theoretical devices, we try to bring an analysis of the
way of acting used in dealing with the listed theme. We verified, through the
bibliographical research, that the original point from which each of the disciplines
comes, are distinct from each other, as well as their methodological and procedural
devices. We seek to emphasize that the meeting between the disciplines will inevitably
happen, but for now, still under a lot of tension, perhaps driven by lack of
understanding, of each other, of their objects of interest, that is, the psychic subject
and the subject of rights. We see the possibility of this meeting happen, in fact, as a
dialogue, mediated by the human subject, from an interdisciplinary view.