FRANCO, M. H. P.; MAZORRA, L. Criança e luto: vivências fantasmáticas diante da morte do genitor [Children and grief: fantasies about a parent’s death]. Estud. Psicol. Campinas, v. 24, n. 4, out-dez. 2007.
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This qualitative clinical study aimed to investigate fantasies of children bereaved by the death of one or both parents and their relationship with the process of mourning elaboration. Case studies were carried out with boys and girls, from three to eight years old, bereaved as a result of the death of one or both parents, indicated for psychotherapeutic treatment in a clinic-school. As instruments of investigation, interviews with the surviving parent or responsible for the child, a family interview, three play interviews and the application of the drawing-story procedure with the child were used. The fantasies of annihilation, guilt, castration, omnipotence, rejection, identification, retaliation, idealization and de-idealization of the lost object, aggressiveness, denial of the loss, regression, reparation, and repetition of the situation of the loss were identified. Feelings, behaviors and symptoms through which the fantasies were expressed were pointed out. The construction of the fantasies proved to be related to the psychosexual and cognitive development and to the child’s mode of egoic functioning, conditions surrounding the death event, and family dynamics. Among these factors, the facilitators and complicators of the elaboration of mourning were pointed out. It was noticed that the fantasies reflect the mourning process and that their knowledge enables the understanding of feelings, behaviors, and symptoms, and that they are associated with elaborative processes of mourning.