Acid Horizon Desire, Institutions, and the Left: Susana Caló & Godofredo Pereira on CERFI Analysis Beyond Guattari
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Mar 21, 2026 Godofredo Pereira, architect, theorist and environmental activist, and Susana Caló, independent researcher on radical psychiatric histories, discuss CERFI’s experiments in institutional analysis. They trace militant roots, everyday programming, collective research techniques, and practical tools like grids, meetings with no agenda, and democratic documentation. The conversation centers on transforming institutions from within through pragmatic experiments.
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CERFI Was Born From Militancy Meeting Institutional Psychotherapy
- CERFI emerged from student militancy and institutional psychotherapy to treat institutions as sites of analysis rather than only treating individuals.
- The group formed organically from student struggles (Algerian support, anti-Vietnam) and La Borde clinic encounters, mixing militants and institutional-therapy practices.
Institution Means Small Instituted Practices Not Just The State
- CERFI reframed 'institution' as any instituted repetition or meeting, not only Capital-I institutions, enabling micro-institutions to proliferate as analytic devices.
- Adam and Susana stress rhythms and repeating practices (e.g., pub meetings) as institutional equipment that allow desire to be inscribed and worked on.
Transversality Turns Therapy Into An Institutional Field
- Transversality replaces psychoanalytic transference by expanding analysis beyond a dual patient-therapist to institution-wide relational fields.
- Concepts like institutional transference and lateral transference arose at La Borde to capture non-linguistic, material and affective relations.
