CARETA, D. S. Análise do desenvolvimento emocional de gêmeos abrigados no primeiro ano de vida: encontros e divergências sob a perspectiva Winnicottiana [The analysis of the emotional development of twins sheltered in their first year of birth: encounters and divergences under the Winnicott’s perspectives]. Master’s Dissertation – Instituto de Psicologia da USP, São Paulo (SP). 2006.
Available on: doi: <10.11606/T.47.2006.tde-16112006-165108>
This essay is aimed at investigating the psychic development of twins institutionalized since before one year of age. Parted at birth, one child is sent to a hospital where it stays for eight months before being sent to an institution. The child undergoes the absence of the early motherly contact. As for the other child, there is the early motherly contact and from the family, however, discontinued. At ten months of age, the child is then sent to the institution. The study is set up when the twins are five years old, and are still inmates at the same institution, and are on the verge of being adopted. This research is qualitative – a case study – grounded on the psychoanalytic method – according to D.W. Winnicott’s lights. By using comprehensive and intervening psychological diagnosis, as well as projective techniques such as Hour Game and the Drawing-and-Story Procedure, it aims at understanding the intra-psychic life of the twins. Additional tools such as the documented study of the family history, along with the interviews carried out at the shelter, contribute to a thorough view of the cases. As data analysis is performed, expressive differences in the functioning psychic of the twins come to light: on the one hand, the child sent to the institution only just after birth shows more interaction with the environment, when confronted with emerging depressive anguish shows regressive behaviour. Also, the child makes it easy for the implementation of interventions. On the other hand, the child who parted from its home at ten months of age reacts otherwise. This, when confronted by desperate anguish, utilises defence mechanisms such as negation and avoidance, whose interventions are, in most cases, avoided in order to maintain the ongoing defensive system. When it comes down to the defence system of the two twins, the first shows regressive behaviour and fragility –as it faces the environment and dissociation in regressive and evolved movements. The second twin shows aggressive behaviour and opposition to limits and regulations as means of controlling the environment followed by aggression and violence in the relationships leading to difficulty in interacting and isolation from the environment. In addition to the clinical aspects, the influence of the psychopathological institutional aspects might also be pondered, such as the split-off of the twins. The research, too, permits visualising what damages to the development come from oppressive homes and not only from institutional contexts, and that the adoption process should be thought over, and restructured in order to soothe the state of anxiety, as is observed in the twins during adoption, or the sending back to shelter of the second child, after its adoption. Thus, we conclude that even children under shelter can show healthy aspects, in that the children will benefit from the good experiences of the environment, and be able to love and hold affective relations. For this reason, the institutional context should be given assistance, principally psychological assistance, and then offers the children under shelter an appropriate environment which favours their development.