FLORES, Ricardo J. (1984) – A utilidade do Procedimento de Desenhos-Estórias na apreensão de conteúdos emocionais em crianças terminais hospitalizadas [The utility of the Drawing-and-Story Procedure for the apprehension of emotional contents in hospitalized terminal children]. Master’s Dissertation. Campinas (SP), Instituto de Psicologia da PUCCAMP, 221 pp.
This paper had as an objective the verification of the usefulness of the Drawing-Story Procedure (D-E) in the apprehension of emotional contents in terminally ill children. The group studied was that of 30 children hospitalized with leukemia, of both sexes, with ages ranging from three to ten years old from a low social-economic status. The thirty test results obtained were analyzed from a global perspective and some mechanisms similar to those described by psychoanalytical writers. Specifically, in relation to D-E, it was found, in these children, anxieties of separation and also of being rejected. The children demonstrated a clear perception of the imminence of death, even if nothing was told about it. By the fact that they thought that they were going to die, they felt rejected as people and abandoned. They maintained the idea that death was a consequence of this rejection and abandonment, and that it occurred as a punishment. Death is described as a dive in darkness, a disintegration of the person, a destructive attack on the part of objects full of terror. Thus, the instrument’s utility was shown by the apprehension of emotional contents in terminally ill children, in the sense that it has permitted a greater understanding of the situation of death and dying.