The vicissitudes of the psychoanalytic clinic with children in the twenty-first century: delimitation of technical parameters

• Grant number: 11/20420-9
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: April 01, 2012
• End date: March 31, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Jorge Luís Ferreira Abrão
• Grantee: Jorge Luís Ferreira Abrão
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Letras (FCL-ASSIS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Assis. Assis , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Since the arising of children´s psychoanalysis in the early 1920s, through the pioneering work of Melanie Klein and Anna Freud, many changes occurred in the technique of child analysis. Social change and development of psychoanalysis itself are among the factors that contributed to expansion and modification of technical parameters for children´s analysis. During the twentieth century there were many changes in social relations, which consequences reverberated in the current concept of childhood in society, or in the way children were educated. On the other hand, the expansion of clinical chart addressed by psychoanalysis led to changes in clinical practice with children as well as the diffusion of psychoanalytic knowledge to other countries with different cultural contexts. We pointed that all these changes were reflected in psychoanalytic practice with children developed in Brazil nowadays, both in the forms of psychological distress´ manifestation and the handling techniques employed to address the patients. However, these technicalities are found little recorded and systematized. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the technical characteristics of psychoanalytic practice with children in the twenty-first century from the experience of professionals linked to Psychoanalytic Societies existing in Brazil. In order to give feasibility to this objective we will perform a qualitative research of historical nature related to the theory of technique for the purpose of establishing parameters that contribute to the psychoanalytic practice with children today. From a historical contextual approach that seeks to set up relations between the events that marked the development of psychoanalysis with the social and cultural context in which it is inserted, we will interview psychoanalysts linked to the Psychoanalytic Societies affiliated to existing IPA in Brazil, that have solid clinical experience with children older than 10 years, and also that participates in the training of other professionals. From the interviews we will identify the origins of psychoanalysis of children in Brazil, the forms of manifestation of psychological distress in children today, the changes occurred in the technique and the vicissitudes of psychoanalytic technique used with children today. (AU)