OLIVEIRA, D. O. F. Gênero e drogas: Imaginário de Trabalhadores de um Serviço de Saúde Mental [Gender and drugs: The imaginary of mental health workers]. 126f. Master’s Dissertation – Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Campinas, Campinas (SP), 2020.
Available on: http://tede.bibliotecadigital.puc-campinas.edu.br:8080/jspui/handle/tede/1325
The present research aims to investigate the collective imaginary of a public mental health service’s workers about female drug users, into a concrete psychoanalytic psychological perspective. It is justified as the contemporary society is organized, in many aspects, according to gender norms, in a way it can interfere with how people in general – and the mental health workers in particular – relate to such female users. Organized as a qualitative research with psychoanalytic method, it approached 12 workers from an Alcohol and Drugs Psychosocial Care Center in collective psychological interviews articulated around the use of Thematic Drawing-and-Story Procedure. The psychoanalytical consideration of the material allowed the interpretative production of four fields of affective-emotional meaning: “Cruel life”, “Evil substance”, “From bad to worse” and “Saved by motherhood”. There is a division regarding the conceiving of substance dependence as determined by the drama of living or caused by the psychopharmacological action of the drug itself on the organism. There is also a convergence of pessimistic views regarding the impossibility of overcoming the problem which does not change according to the user‟s gender, but does change when one imagines that becoming a mother might heal the woman. The overall picture imposes the conclusion that the combination between the lucidity expressed by the “Cruel Life” field and the pessimism contained in the “From bad to worse” field announces that, according to the participants’ imaginary, the use of drugs is strongly linked to the context of poverty and social inequality. At the same time, it indicates that gender is important when linked to the maternal condition.