ROCCO, M. C. C. Maternal experience, psychodynamics and the development of the self of women and girls victims of sexual abuse: a transgenerational study.
Master’s Dissertation. Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto (SP), 2019.
Available on: https://doi.org/10.11606/D.59.2019.tde-17062019-110902
Child sexual abuse is a serious public health issue both in Brazil and worldwide, being a complex and universal phenomenon, with a high prevalence in the population. The family institution is composed of stories and inheritances that are passed on by previous generations that interfere with the constitution of the child’s self, just as mothering is a repetition of the mother’s primitive bonds. Considering this, the objective of this research is to investigate the conditions of the self’s development, the psychodynamics and the maternal experience of women of the same family who were victims of sexual abuse, and whose daughters were victims of this kind of violence as well, crossing the results of the evaluation of mothers and daughters, in order to identify possible patterns in motherhood susceptible to transmission between generations. For this, a clinical-qualitative and psychoanalytic research was carried out using projective techniques of psychological evaluation in a family composed of a mother, a grandmother and two girls, all of them victims of sexual abuse. The evaluation of the mother consisted of a semi-directed interview, the presentation of a work of art as a mediator of communication and the use of the Drawing-of-Family-and-Story Procedure. With the children it was used the Raven’s Colored Progressive Matrices test; the House- Tree- Person test- HTP and the Drawing-and-Story Procedure. For data analysis, the method of free material inspection was used, employing the winnicottian theory of emotional maturation and of the Transgenerational Psychic Transmission as background for the comprehension of the cases. The results showed that the repetition of the experience of abuse in the generations of the family reveals the transmission of a crypt, which holds content concerning abuses, fragility and ill-treatment (characteristic of the erosion of the field of tenderness), as well as guilt, seduction and sexuality (characteristic of the field of passion). It was observed in the participants a reproduction of the maternal figure’s holding disability, few experiences of care and protection, neglect, helplessness and a “superficial” precocious maturation. It is concluded that the heart of the problematic of this family is the search for an affective encounter to supply the unmet needs of dependence, which has never been experienced. This research has attempted to elucidate and deepen the understanding of cases of sexual abuse characterized by a repetition of violence in the generations and evidenced the importance of a specific management by psychologists for such cases.