FREITAS, S. O. Histórias de adoção tardia: considerações a partir da analítica existencial heideggeriana [Late adoption stories: considerations from Heidegger’s Existential Analytics]. Master’s Dissertation – Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte. Natal (RN), 2014.
Available at: https://repositorio.ufrn.br/handle/123456789/19405
Abstract: Adoption establishes a filiation status, resulting from a legal act, which attributes to the child and parents the rights and obligations associated with such a condition, being legally irrevocable. Nevertheless, in practice there are adoptions that do not concretize and the child returns to justice during or even after the legal process is closed. Late adoption is the denomination of the adoption of children over two years and it is still permeated by myths and stigmas, leading to a frequent return of the child to justice in these cases. The late adoption involves a process of building a unique relationship with a child whose backstory is commonly marked by the dissolution of the relationship with the family of origin, due to violation of rights and, in some cases, the experience of institutional care. Given such a scenario, this research, based on the Existential Analytic proposed by Martin Heidegger, seeks to understand the experience of mothers and children in the process of late adoption, in order to obtain subsidies to psychological attention in this context. This is a qualitative, phenomenological study with a comprehensive focus. The participants were two mothers and two children who have gone through late adoption for about two years. The procedures of data generation contemplated narrative interviews with mothers and individual meetings with children, in which ludic resources were used as mediators of expression (free drawings, unfinished children’s story and “Story-Drawings” on late adoption). The procedures were audiotaped and transcribed. Data analysis was grounded in Heidegger’s hermeneutics. The late adoption process, permeated by historical, social and cultural determinants and the web of meanings that create the historical singularity of each person involved have proved to be complex as seen in the narratives. The construction of the meanings of parenthood and filiation has been developing in the families in the study, from the experience of being-with-the-other, caring and dwelling in their peculiar modes of expression. The family of origin and the adoptive family mingle and differentiate by means of the experience of children, especially because of the existence of biological siblings. Data point to the importance of psychological care to family core in late adoption processes