Between transmission and transference: ethic, educacional and psychoanalytical developments in the relationship master-apprentice in the process of foreign language teaching and learning

Abstract

The current article was entailed by an understanding that teaching and learning processes (in the case in point, the teaching of German as a foreign language), as well as the development of specific classroom procedures, are influenced by both objective factors (methods, approaches, measurable tests and exercises) and subjective ones. Unlike Didactics, which emphasizes an objective perspective, it is believed here that elements such as personal interferences, and in particular those related to the figure of the master, heavily influence learning, at times stirring learners' feelings and even blocking apprentices altogether. Such aspects might be analyzed under the light of the Freudian concept of Transference, originally born in the psychoanalytic clinic. Another relevant psychoanalytical concept is sublimation, a productive and socially acceptable destination for psychological drives. Thus, teaching and learning are viewed as essentially sublimatory activities, and must, according to the view developed along this article, be stimulated by the master, with efforts channeled into the establishment of an awareness-raising and critical learning process, appropriate for the educational challenges of the twenty-first century. Whilst "psychoanalyzing" and deconstructing the pedagogical process, this article is grounded on a view of the classroom as a dialogic environment, wherein masters learn; and where learning is constructed through language and confrontation of otherness.