Theme and meaning in the constitution of the ideological sign ‘cure’ in autobiographical narratives of therapists in integrative and complementary health practices

The objective of this study is to analyze the theme and the meaning in the constitution of the ideological sign “cure” as enunciated by a participant of the “Updating Course in Hand Therapy: Focus on Practices and Narratives in Massage Therapy and Shantala”. The subject participating in this study is a popular educator and therapist in health, who bases their practice on the precepts of Freire's pedagogy for the promotion of health care. The corpus of this study consists of several autobiographical narratives collected throughout the training. For analysis, the concept of meaning and theme (Volóchinov, 2017) was used, drawing from discussions about discursive genre in Bakhtin (2006), ideological sign (Volóchinov, opus cit), and the notion of Popular Education (Freire, 1970; 1992). The analysis revealed that, in the context of the enunciative construction, the sign "cure" for the educator only acquires meaning if it is associated with connection and well-being if the touch opens the heart to the flow of the unconditional and makes the being vibrate.