RODRIGUES, E. C. G. O imaginário coletivo de mulheres de meia-idade com câncer de mama em tratamento quimioterápico [The collective imaginary of middle-aged women with breast cancer undergoing chemotherapy]. Master’s Dissertation – Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, SP, 2021.
Available on: https://doi.org/10.11606/D.59.2021.tde-16062021-152438
Abstract: Collective imaginary as a human conduct consists of an ideo-affective complex constituted from intersubjectivity and has affective foundations in affective-emotional sense fields. Female middle age is a time of development with marked bodily changes and psychic restructuring which; in the face of breast cancer, it can be even more challenging. This study aimed to get to know the collective imaginary of middle-aged women with breast cancer throughout chemotherapy. It’s a qualitative, primary, empirical, longitudinal research, with a Winnicottian psychoanalytic approach and from the perspective of the affected woman. When reviewing the literature, a meta-synthesis was carried out and pointed out the experience of female incompleteness resulting from the treatment. There were no studies of the collective imaginary of middle-aged women affected by breast cancer in a longitudinal perspective. Five women with breast cancer between 48 and 60 years old, who were about to start chemotherapy treatment linked to the public health network in a hospital specialized in cancer care, located in the interior of the state of São Paulo, were selected for this study. Three individual and face-to-face meetings were held with each participant, distributed throughout the chemotherapy treatment: before the beginning, approximately half the cycles and at the end of the treatment. In these moments of treatment, the techniques of open interview and The Thematic Drawing-and-Story Procedure were used as dialogical mediators. Notes were made in a field diary after each meeting and a form for sociodemographic characterization was completed only once. Ethical protocols required by the current legislation were observed, the person in charge of the institution signed a Term of Acceptance and the participants signed the Informed Consent Form. The meetings were recorded and transcribed literally and in full. The whole set of material, including non-verbal cues, was analyzed according to the psychoanalytic interpretive method, which consisted of three stages: making contact by sketching preliminary directions; capture dominant themes and name the affective-emotional sense fields, which resulted in five fields: There is risk/risk: desiring life daily; If I die, she will suffer; I want to be a grandmother; To know again the body that I inhabit; Someone and only. The fields covered the affective and emotional bases: fear of the imminence of death, feelings of sadness and abandonment in the absence of a welcoming environment, the desire to live, to know and remain in contact with grandchildren, feeling of guilt for causing suffering to the adult daughters and sons, re-elaboration of the corporal experience. Imaginary emerged about: cancer, chemotherapy, body and family, all linked to the experiences of suffering and formed defensively. New affective situations of acceptance during the course of treatment helped the participants to move through less defended imaginary and with a glimpse of re-elaborations and assimilation of cancer in existence. It is hoped that this knowledge can generate reflection on the challenging affective bases, on the inhabited imaginary and mainly on the dynamics presented throughout the treatment, both imaginary of suffering, as well as imaginary about the continuity of their existence.