Psychological counseling for school demands: an experience report between the clinic and the school

Abstract

This article presents an experience report on the extension project "Psychological Counseling for School Demands" (OPDE), linked to the psychology training clinic at the State University of Southwest Bahia, Brazil. Based on Critical School Psychology and Historical-Cultural Psychology, the work aims to discuss the practice of psychological counseling in the context of school complaints, highlighting its stages, strategies, and challenges. Methodologically, it is an exploratory report, grounded in theoretical reviews and systematic observation of the interventions carried out between August and December 2024. The data were organized according to the OPDE stages: parental reception, student intervention, dialogue with the school, closure, and follow-up. The results highlight tensions between family and school expectations and the goals of counseling, revealing the prevalence of medicalizing discourses and the search for diagnoses as responses to school difficulties. The analysis also emphasizes the importance of therapeutic bonding, playful resources, and qualified listening as fundamental elements for understanding school demands in their complexity. It concludes that OPDE contributes to a critical practice of School Psychology, although it faces limitations such as the reproduction of stigmatizing discourses and the absence of in-depth discussions on social markers such as gender, race, and class.