LIMA, C. B. O atendimento psicanalítico de crianças em família: o sintoma familiar [Psychoanalytic attendance to children in family: the family symptom]. 255 p. Doctoral Thesis – Instituto de Psicologia da USP. São Paulo (SP), 1997.
Available on: https://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/47/47131/tde-02082019-112733/pt-br.php
This work owes its origins to the concept that a child’s symptom is directly related to family relationships and that one cannot begin an individual analysis without separating the child from his/her parents. It consists in attending to the family with an analytic methodology focusing on the child. It is a family-based work which rests on three main points: 1. the child is the main reference; 2. it is employed between the diagnostic and a possible start of personal analysis, and can include the evaluation stage; and 3. every attendance is taken to be an analysis session. Two principal instruments are considered: the person of the psychotherapist, with his or her personal and professional development, and the context, which follows the specifications of the analytic setting. The content to be analysed is made up of verbal and nonverbal expressions, of transferencial relations and of the psychotherapist’s countertransference. The work is performed with families of average socio-economic level. The children were in a broad age range, from five to nineteen years old, and presented symptoms such as agitation, inattention, irritability, intolerance, learning difficulties, eating disorders and others. Results reveal the possibility of attending to families, giving support to the following clinical claims: the family is always implicated in some manner with the child symptoms; the non-discrimination between child and parents inhibits understanding of what, from whom, and to whom one is speaking; the parents emotional immaturity is a factor favoring projections on to children, resulting in harm to them; the parents unresolved oedipus can create a hostile, competitive and disrespectful climate on the parents part, and may favour complications, halting children’s development; the inability to live love within family relationships, specially in relation to children, does not favour the growth and blooming of their true selves. Moreover, results indicate that some relief of the child’s symptoms is possible, and that the use of this methodology becomes possible to dispense with individual analysis, or even dismiss it, in cases where family influences were decisive in creating and/or maintaining the child’s symptoms. This attending procedure reinforces the importance of the psychotherapist’s development and the building of an adequate setting, emphasizing the care required on receiving a child for diagnosis, not to consider him/her immediately as the patient, given an explicit request by the family. It reinstates a legitimate parental authority, especially the father’s, allowing the resurgence of positive affects, putting hope in love and human relationships. Finally, brings a new meaning to the child’s initial distress.