TRANSPHOBIA, DEFENSE MECHANISMS, AND HEALTHCARE FOR TRANS PEOPLES

• Grant number: 24/14556-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: November 01, 2024
• End date: October 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Social Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Lívia Gonsalves Toledo
• Grantee: Letícia Nogueira Cintra Moreti
• Host Institution: FAC EDUCACAO ARTES/UNIVAP

Abstract

Health is a right for all and a duty of the State, which must promote it in a qualified, equitable, and universal manner for the population. However, the trans population, as abject beings, faces various barriers that prevent the guarantee of their rights to access health services, arising from social transphobia. This project aims to identify and analyze, among trans people (transgender, transsexual, and travesti), from a psychoanalytic perspective, the resistances and defense mechanisms activated within this population concerning their physical and mental healthcare when specific demands requiring qualified health assistance are detected. Although defense mechanisms pertain to individual psychic forms, they are considered here as psychosocial phenomena, given that the problem of healthcare access is structured within the collectivity of this population. Through a qualitative methodology, based on narrative research obtained through interviews to closely approach the subject's comprehensive experience, this study intends to investigate, in this context, the relationship between the conceptions of death and mourning for these individuals and whether there are preventive health treatments. The hypothesis is that the adverse experiences arising from transphobia activate defense mechanisms and resistances in these individuals, compromising their access to healthcare.