As repercussões emocionais em irmãos de deficientes visuais [Emotional repercussions on siblings of visually impaired people]

VILLELA, Elisa M. B. (1999) – As repercussões emocionais em irmãos de deficientes visuais [Emotional repercussions on siblings of visually impaired people]. Master’s Dissertation. São Paulo (SP), Instituto de Psicologia da USP, 191 pp.
The goal of this essay was to investigate the affective experience of brothers and sisters as members of a family in which there is a child with a visual impairment. It is known that the current nuclear family detains the monopoly of the affection and the education of the individuals for life. As a subsystem of the family institution, the relationship between siblings has a high standard in the development of the personality. Despite its value, there is a lack of research and acknowledgment about this subject. Only after the 80′, we find systematic studies about this topic. In the psychoanalysis field, some authors have dedicated their studies to understand the siblings relationship, not only as the extension or replacement of the relationship with the primary object, but also a phenomenon with its own specification as well. The families with a deficient member develop a peculiar dynamic, and the sibling relationships suffer the influence of this dynamic. This essay had as a purpose to examine the fantasies and the nodal conflicts of siblings listening to their own reports. We conducted our research with ten children, between 6 and 11 years old, brothers or sisters of visually deficient children. We have done it taking advantage of the sources in the interviews and the Drawing-of-Family-with-Story Procedure (DF-E) present by Trinca. The data obtained revealed a basic system of mental functioning centered on hostility repression. The sibling rivalry is a fundamental experience in the development of the ego’s functions. It also reveals itself in the configuration of a defensive structure that the child develops against the hostility related to his/her brother or sister. If this experience can not be lived by the children, it remains unconscious, and it does not have any chance to transform itself into a positive action for their evolution and their self knowledge. The emotional cost observed, among those children who have been studied, was that on behalf of maintaining the fraternal relationship there is a distance that is created in relation to their real desires and necessities that takes them away from themselves. Nevertheless, the recognition and the acceptance by the family of these negative feelings of their no-handicapped children, most of all from their mothers, will help them to live fully these feelings and to organize them. This organization will help them to grow with a truthful character. This way, the development of a prophylactic psychological work within the family that has a deficient member, is justified.