PAIVA, S. de A. Corações hipermodernos: um estudo qualitativo realizado com mulheres atendidas em serviços privados no Brasil sobre eventos de vida, traços de personalidade e os sentidos e significados atribuídos ao infarto do miocárdio e ao câncer de mama [Hypermodern hearts: a qualitative study with women treated in private services in Brazil about life events, personality traits and meanings given to myocardial infarction and breast câncer]. Doctoral Thesis – Universidade Estadual de Campinas. Campinas (SP), 2014.
Available on: http://repositorio.unicamp.br/jspui/handle/REPOSIP/312737
This study highlights the hypermodern individual, the ways he reacts and lives in the contemporary world and the psychosocial determinants involved in illness. It focuses on the characteristics and demands of hypermodernity and their effects on the individual’s health. It aims to reveal life events that were experienced as traumatic and that, according to the patients interviewed, contributed to their illness. It analyses the personality traits according to the theory of the archetypes and the meanings given by the patients to their illnesses: Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI) and Breast Cancer (BC). The research was carried out at two private hospitals in Brazil. The study is based on the Clinical Qualitative Method, through semi-directed interview and the Drawing-and-Story Procedure, in an intentional sample, closed by saturation, during the period of hospitalization and immediately after being discharged from hospital (15 to 30 days). The interviews were studied based on content analysis and the Drawing-and-Story Procedure in the light of Analytical Psychology. The subjects were seven female patients: two with Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI), one with Takotsubo syndrome, a rare cause of cardiogenic shock due to an acute left ventricular aneurysm in the absence of coronaropathy, three with Breast Cancer (BC) and one with both pathologies. Through the analysis of the interviews and the symbols present in the drawings, we observed modern society’s demands for hyperformance and hyperfection, which when excessive are linked to illness. Through the symbolic trajectory of life and death expressed in the drawings, we observed the three types of thought in the structure of the psyche forming the basis for mental equilibrium: rational, symbolic and mythological. The images clustered in the life and death trajectories, present in the sequence of the five drawings of each patient, permitted the clinical investigation of the personality, through a deeper analysis of the archetypal expressions of the feminine, based on Greek Mythology. The archetypes arise as archaic, important figures of the individual’s imagery, as a symbolic expression of the collective unconscious. The most important images are the archetype of the hero, the great mother, the self, love (Eros) and religious concepts. The motif of the house, present in the drawings of all patients in this research, showed its importance as a symbolic representation of the body, as a relation to time through life’s memories and as a post-surgical starting point of reference in the path ahead. Traumatic life events, such as painful separations, work and love related stress, death of dear ones, with unresolved grief, may cause fragility and lower the immune system’s ability to react, causing damage to health. In conclusion, infarction and breast cancer deeply affect women’s lives; understanding the meanings given to illness can contribute to mental stability and to the expansion of consciousness. Such knowledge may be crucial for both primary and secondary prevention. The study is unique in its use of graphic expressions, and suggests that psychotherapeutic work at the hospital may contribute to positive self-transformation, indispensable for the patients to cope with their illness and to achieve meaningful and healthier life experiences.