GALLO-BELLUZZO, S. R.; CORBETT, E.; AIELLO-VAISBERG, T. M. J. The suffering child: parents’ imaginary about the child with problems. Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Research in Psychoanalysis and Phenomenology: Qualitative Research in Mental Health – Psychoanalytic and Phenomenological Perspectives, Campinas: Pontifical Catholic University of Campinas, 2008.
Abstract: This study aims to investigate the collective imaginary of parents whose children were referred for psychodiagnostic evaluation regarding “children with problems,” in order to generate knowledge that contributes to the development of differentiated psychotherapeutic and psychoprophylactic practices. To this end, interviews were conducted using the Thematic Drawing-and-Story Procedure [D-E (T)] as a facilitator of emotional communication. The resulting material was analyzed through the psychoanalytic method, applied to the identification of experiential psychological fields in which the unconscious is organized. Two non-conscious fields were identified, named “The parents are to blame” and “What my child has is not a problem”. The first field configures a transitional-imaginary world derived from the central belief that a child with problems is a victim of parental neglect. The second field is organized around the belief that children would only exhibit problems if they were victims of organic diseases. Together, the identified fields suggest that the studied group tends to deny the possibility that children experience psychological difficulties, in a movement that somewhat devalues their affective-emotional subjectivity.