HAMES, Suely Lopes (1992) – Considerações sobre a realidade externa e o mundo interno de crianças portadoras de doença péptica [Some thoughts on external and internal world of children with peptic disease]. Master’s Dissertation. São Paulo (SP), Faculdade de Psicologia da PUC-SP, 246 pp.
There is much evidence supporting that continuous gastric secretion could be influenced by chronic psychological impulses and therefore this increased secretion may be a factor in the peptic ulcer pathogenesis. The aim of this work was to analyze the life situation of 8 children (age ranging from 8-13 years) with peptic disease and to study their outstanding psychological traits, considering also their emotional development periods.
The medical promptuary and a psychological interview with the responsible person for the patient and the Drawing-and-Story Procedure (D-E) were performed for data acquisition. Data processing was achieved by the comprehensive method and discussed from a psychosomatic point of view based on psychoanalytic fundamentals. In synthesis, results concluded that: a) the life situation of the children has been always involved with multiple aspects that were potentially troublesome, the clinical outbreaks are related with traumatic situations and such situations influence the evolution of peptic disease; b) some aspects of the emotional dynamics found are characteristics that indicate a schizoparanoid position, which enables us to affirm that these children are found to be emotionally immature; c) through the incapacity of expressing themselves and dealing with aggressive impulses, the children found in the soma a form of expressing and relieving the persecutory anxiety and of being destroyed by impulses; d) by introjection of parental imago as partial objects, the object relation with these imago are marked by poverty, and even, by the absence of affective relationships, generating like this, feelings of abandonment and sadness; e) the introjection of these partial objects does not permit an interrelation with a total person. This makes the children want external gratification, implied in the increase of the needs of affection and protection. The peptic process seems to develop as a reaction to these voracious unsatisfied needs; f) the children that have the peptic disease bring with themselves the impossibility of satisfying their necessities and the incapacity of choosing an object that can be gratifying. This conflict generates anxieties that can trigger exaggerated gastric secretion.