GLIBER, A. R. Um estudo compreensivo da personalidade de crianças obesas: enfoque kleiniano [A comprehensive study about obese children personality: kleinian approach]. Master’s Dissertation – Instituto de Psicologia da USP. São Paulo (SP), 2012.
Available on: doi: <10.11606/D.47.2012.tde-11052012-110010>
Currently, obesity, considered a public health problem, has been the target of numerous studies given the seriousness of this chronic disease and its high epidemiological rates. Few studies have been done in an attempt to understand the psychodynamics of this issue. This research is inserted in this direction, and intends to describe, through the Kleinian perspective, the main aspects and psychodynamic contents of the obese children studied. The participants were six children from eight to ten years of age with a clinical diagnosis of obesity. The Drawing-and-Story Procedure and the Test of Children’s Thematic Apperception of Animal Figures were used as instruments for data analysis and interpretation, besides a semi-directed interview with the mothers, aiming at obtaining data from the participants’ life histories. The analysis of the instruments was based on Tardivo (1997), identifying the basic attitudes, significant figures, expressed feelings, tendencies and desires, impulses, anxieties and defense mechanisms. The results found indicated that the children evaluated were voracious, had repressed aggressiveness and, in most cases, used defensive mechanisms predominantly related to the schizo-paranoid position, such as splitting, denial and idealization to deal with situations of loss and suffering, which indicates the predominance of the partial object relationship, although attempts at reparation were evident in some moments. Signs and symptoms indicative of clinical depression were also observed in part of the sample evaluated. It was observed that the children’s life history, the internal and external environment, the learned behaviors, and the emotional development interfered in the evolution of obesity. It sanctions the importance of a psychotherapeutic intervention that can help children integrate the partial objects and strengthen the ego so that they can deal more effectively with the depressive guilt, because, many times, marked damages in the objective relations, can be associated to the development of diseases, disorders or even great psychic suffering.