Intervening for transforming: The horizon of action in the Clinic of Activity

Abstract

The article provides an account of the theoretical and methodological principles of the interventionist approach called the Clinic of Activity. A case is presented of educators working within a youth judicial protection service in centers for emergency placement of minors. As an intervention, the case did not proceed as expected and could be regarded as a failure. Ultimately what was commissioned to be an intervention for developing the professional profile of the educators in the organization became an analysis of the organization’s institutional crisis. The diagnosis proposed by the interventionists was that the impersonal dimension of work—that is, its institutional features—was underdeveloped while at the same time personal defenses among educators were increasingly manifesting themselves as ways to indicate the unbearable crisis in the organization.